Reginald O. York

Rural and Urban Social Work Practice: Is There a Difference?

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE of social work in rural areas, after a hiatus during the 1940s and 1950s, have reemerged as a relevant concern for the profession. Part of the stimulus for this renewed concern is the perception that social work practice principles derived from urban settings may not be relevant to rural problems.’ If the rural context is different in terms of its needs, culture, and value systems, then the logical assumption would be that social work must be practiced differently if it is to be appropriate to its context. The literature on rural social work specifies that rural social workers emphasize different professional roles, are generalists rather than specialists, and rely more upon the use of informal networks than do their urban counterparts.? However, little empirical evidence suggests that social workers in rural areas actually differ

The Power of Positive Mentors: Variables Associated with Women's Interest in Social Work Administration.

Abstract Some of the strategies for overcoming obstacles to gender parity in organizations include consciousness-raising, mentoring, informal support, training, and role modeling. The present study explored whether there was evidence to support the use of these strategies based upon the past experiences of female graduate social work students. Experiences with mentors and consciousness-raising were the only two variables found to be predictors of interest in administration among these students. Even though these students expressed a preference for the masculine stereotype in their descriptions of the good administrator, this variable was not found to be a predictor of interest in administration.

Influence of Feminism and Professional Status Upon Service Options for the Battered Woman

This paper reports on a survey of volunteers from domestic violence agencies and social workers throughout one state. Respondents were given a hypothetical case of an abused wife and asked to rate the level of their emphasis upon several services in their work with this woman. The services were divided into two categories: those which focused upon independence and those which focused upon interpersonal dynamics. It was found that feminist ideology and gender were better predictors of emphasis upon independence than either professional status, age, gender, experience with abused wives, or personal history with spouse abuse. The finding that social workers emphasized independence more so than did volunteers ran counter to some concerns expressed in the previous literature.This paper reports on a survey of volunteers from domestic violence agencies and social workers throughout one state. Respondents were given a hypothetical case of an abused wife and asked to rate the level of their emphasis upon several services in their work with this woman. The services were divided into two categories: those which focused upon independence and those which focused upon interpersonal dynamics. It was found that feminist ideology and gender were better predictors of emphasis upon independence than either professional status, age, gender, experience with abused wives, or personal history with spouse abuse. The finding that social workers emphasized independence more so than did volunteers ran counter to some concerns expressed in the previous literature.

TEACHING SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH: DOES ANDRAGOGY WORK BEST?

While the traditional approach to education views the student as a passive receptacle of knowledge, the model of adult learning known as andragogy views the learner as an active learner in the process. In this article, educational outcomes and student satisfaction were reported for three sections of an introductory research course at the undergraduate level. Two of these sections employed a text that was organized according to the principles of andragogy while the other section used a traditional text. Modest support for the model of adult learning (andragogy) was revealed in the qualitative data analyzed because more students evaluated this model as positive than as negative. The quantitative analysis of data failed to provide support for this model because there was not a statistically significant difference between the three sections on knowledge, satisfaction, or change in psychosocial variables such as willingness to participate in research activities.

The Interaction of Parental Alcoholism and Alcoholism as a Predictor of Drinking-Related Locus of Control

Various research studies have suggested that an external locus of control regarding drinking-related behavior inhibits recovery from alcoholism. The relative influence of alcoholism and parental alcoholism upon drinking-related locus of control was the focus of the present study. Subjects who were both alcoholics and the adult children of alcoholics (ACOA) were found to have a much higher extenal drinking-related locus of control than persons with only one of these two conditions. Alcoholics who were not ACOA were found to have a higher level of externalily than subjects who were ACOA but not alcoholics, who, in, turn, were more external in their control orientation than subjects who were neither alcoholics nor ACOA. Of particular importance was the finding that the interaction of alcoholism and parental alcoholism was a predictor of drinking related locus of control (p = .08), suggesting that the effect of these two conditions upon externality may not be purely cumulative.