Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Critique Of The Global Trafficking Discourse And U.S. Policy, Moshoula Capous Desyllas

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This article examines the dominant discourse on trafficking in persons and the implementation of international and U.S. policy to address trafficking globally. Features of the United Nations Protocol and the Trafficking in Victims Protection Act demonstrate how trafficking frameworks currently in place contain underlying fears of migration and female sexuality. The implications of policy on the construction of third world women as "victims to be saved" through governments, National Government Organizations, feminists and the media will show how these misrespresentations only reinforce racism and dualistic simplifications of a complex issue. An emphasis is placed on the importance of women's agency …

Evaluating The Effectiveness And Benefit-Cost Of Michigan Background Check Program Using Crime Opportunity Theory, Judith Brown Clarke

Dissertations

Elderly persons in long-term care settings are exceptionally vulnerable to abuse, neglect, and exploitation necessitating special protective measures by criminal justice, social services, and health care agencies. In 2006, 28.6% of Michigan households with a family member in long-term care reported that person having experienced one or more forms of abuse including physical, caretaking, verbal, emotional, neglect, sexual, and exploitation (Post, 2006). Criminal justice agencies were scrambling to identify programs aimed at reducing elder abuse in long-term care. Michigan was selected as one of seven states designated as a federal pilot test site. As a result, the Michigan Background Check …

Perceived Organizational Support And Ethical Work Climates As Predictors Of Turnover Intention Of Licensed Nurses In Skilled Nursing Facilities, Anna A. Filipova

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to replicate Victor and Cullen's (1987; 1988) studies to confirm whether ethical climates (ECs) arise in skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), and whether organizations and groups within organizations have identifiable ECs; and (2) to test a model that examines the effects of ECs and perceived organizational support (POS) on licensed nurses' turnover intention (TOI) through job satisfaction (JS) and organizational commitment (OC).

A cross-sectional survey design was implemented. Three hundred and fifty nine freestanding SNFs were selected in a midwestern state. While a total of 110 facilities (31%) agreed to participate, responses were …

Economic Impacts Of Casino Gambling On Rural Michigan Communities, Mark Steven Reece

Dissertations

When considering future casino development, it is important to know whether the magnitude of a casino's economic impact.

A way to understand the impact of adding a casino to a rural Michigan community is to study the economic changes during the 6 years surrounding casino's opening. If significant changes occur in population, employment, and commercial, industrial, and residential property values, it may be possible to attribute this change to the introduction of a casino.

Township level data is used for an index of annual percentage change, preceding and following an opening. This study tests for movement in the community's economics …

Public And Private Sources Of Assistance For Low-Income Households, Chi-Fang Wu, Mary Keegan Eamon

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This study examined the types and combinations of public and private assistance received by three types of low-income households, including those with children, without children, and elderly without children. Using data from the 1996 and 2001 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the results indicate that a large percentage of low-income households rely on public assistance, and receipt of private assistance is much less common. Approximately 7% of the sample use both types of assistance. The findings highlight differences in combinations of public and private assistance used by different household types. Wealsofound some significant differences in …

Community Development Corporations And Public Participation: Lessons From A Case Study In The Arkansas Delta, Valerie H. Hunt

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In this paper, I focus on the role of community development corporations (CDCs) in fostering public participation in the local political process. Using survey and interview data gathered from CDCs operating in the Mississippi Delta region of Arkansas, I show that the CDC is an important intermediary between the citizens and the local political arena. While, according to this study's findings, the CDCs' long-term goal is to develop a lasting sense of efficacy among CDC participants, leading to direct political participation by citizens, the nature of CDC funding does not fully support these efforts. As a result, these critical activities …

Astroturf, Technology And The Future Of Community Mobilization: Implications For Nonprofit Theory, John Mcnutt, Katherine Boland

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Nonprofit Organizations advocate for the poor, the disenfranchised and the oppressed. This process is thought to build social capital and civil society, while engendering the development of social skills and deliberation. In recent years, scholars have observed that nonprofit advocacy organizations have moved from membership associations to professionalized policy change organizations. Virtual advocacy will move the process farther afield. Astroturf, the creation of synthetic advocacy efforts, continues this process further. All of this has troubling implications for nonprofit organizations and nonprofit theory. This paper describes the astroturf phenomenon, reviews pertinent nonprofit theory and speculates on the impact of astroturf for …

Coordination, Collaboration, And Culture: Local Economic Development In A Time Of Networks, Gregg G. Guetschow

Dissertations

Social coordination takes form in accordance with three pure types: markets, hierarchies, and networks. The research that is the subject of this dissertation explored coordination through interorganizational networks involved in policy implementation. Of specific interest was the decision on the part of network participants to cooperate with other network participants to undertake implementation tasks. Conventional models of decision-making do not account for the interdependent and strategic nature of these interactions. To address this gap in understanding, a model of decision-making was developed. Central to this model are the influences of political, organizational, and professional culture and focal effects directing network …

Metaevaluation Case Study Of Four Evaluations Of Osha Vpp Programs, Jafar Momani

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the controversy about shifts in the U.S. Administration's policy related to the Labor Department (OSHA) shift from enforcement to partnerships and voluntary protection programs (VPP). A metaevaluation of four OSHA VPP evaluation reports was conducted and included the investigation of objectives, methodologies, strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Conducting a crosswalk of the 1994 Joint Committee evaluation standards (JCS) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) standards was an opportunity to provide additional validity to the evaluation standards, evaluation reports findings and conclusions, and to highlight the importance of the shared elements between …

Public Administration Theory And Views Of The Human Person, Gerald L. Zandstra

Dissertations

Public administrative theory, despite its reach into American life, lacks broad agreement about its field of inquiry, its underlying presuppositions, and its purpose. Theorists such as Herbert Storing, Stephen Bailey, Richard Stillman, David Hart, Vincent Ostrom, William Dunn, Bahman Fozouni, Mark Rutgers, Michael Harmon and others have observed and lamented these shortcomings. Without well-developed theory, the objectives of public administration are a moving target.

This project does not attempt to resolve this deficiency. Instead, it is intended to address a primary question pertaining to public administration's core principles: what is the nature of the human person? The line of argumentation …

Globalization, Welfare Reform And The Social Economy: Developing An Alternative Approach To Analyzing Social Welfare Systems In The Post-Industrial Era, Vanna Gonzales

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Our understanding of the relationship between globalization and contemporary social welfare systems is heavily influenced by three conventional approaches to studying welfare reform: the political economy, moral economy, and mixed economy approaches. In addition to analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each of these approaches, a central aim of this article is to introduce the social economy approach as an emergent alternative. Drawing from a growing body of work on institutional innovation within the European third sector, I argue that the social economy approach makes a valuable contribution to understanding the role of welfare networks in reconfiguring globalizations' impact on …

Color-Blind Individualism, Intercountry Adoption And Public Policy, Pamela Anne Quiroz

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A prevailing ideology of color-blindness has resulted in privatizing the discourse on adoption. Color-blind individualism, the adoption arena's version of color-blind discourse, argues that race should not matter in adoption; racism can be eradicated through transracial adoption; and individual rights should be exercised without interference of the state. As privatization has increasingly dominated our world and disparities between countries have grown, so too has intercountry adoption. This paper examines the colonial aspects of intercountry adoption and implications for conceptualizing global human rights from our current emphasis on individual rights, as the real issue continues to be which children are desired …

Introduction: Globalization, Social Justice, And Social Welfare, Frederick Fritz Macdonald, James Midgley

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Although the literature on globalization has increased exponentially over the last decade, the term is still poorly defined and its many facets and complexities are under-appreciated. A major problem is the way the effects of globalization on social welfare have been reduced to simplistic, rhetorical statements that either condemn all aspects of globalization or uncritically extol its benefits. In reality, however, globalization has complex and paradoxical consequences for human well-being. For example, international trade is widely viewed by many progressive observers as being exploitative and unequal and many are appropriately critical of the way neo-liberal writers wax lyrical about its …

Perspectives On Globalization, Social Justice And Welfare, James Midgley

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Although the social science literature on globalization has proliferated, social policy and social work scholars have not adequately debated the consequences of globalization for social welfare and social justice. Drawing on different social science interpretations of globalization, four major perspectives that offer different analytical and normative insights into globalization are identified and their implications for social welfare and social justice are briefly examined. The implications of these perspectives for social policy and social work scholarship are also considered.

Globalization, Immigration And The Welfare State: A Cross-National Comparison, Qingwen Xu

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Over the past decades, the forces of globalization have helped created a huge wave of immigration. The relationship between globalization and immigration has been intensely examined in the last decade with a focus not only on whether and how much globalization has caused international immigration but also how to promote and sustain a just global system for the growing number of immigrants. This study selects three developed countries with different welfare state philosophies and traditions-Australia, Sweden and the United States-and compares how they cope with the growing number of immigrants and their various needs. This paper reflects thinking about states' …

Toward Global Welfare State Convergence?: Family Policy And Health Care In Sweden, Canada And The United States, Gregg M. Olsen

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Accounts of the welfare state and the dynamics governing its development have been pivotal and highly contentious in the social policy literature over the past few decades. Since the 1980s, research has suggested that, as a result of domestic pressures and strains and/or the impact of globalization, welfare states were declining in tandem. However, most of these studies were quantitativefocusing upon 18 or more advanced capitalist nations and, in their search to uncover broad cross-national trends, utilized narrow welfare state indicators. This study investigates the extent to which the social democratic welfare state in Sweden, the social liberal welfare state …

Sex Panic And The Welfare State, Benjamin Shepard

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

2006 marked the tenth anniversary of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. The 1996 law was the culmination of decades of erosion in backing for basic provisions of the U.S. social safety net. The following reviews the political campaign that undermined thefoundationfor this vital component of the New Deal/Great Society income supports. A series of panics diminished approval for the welfare state, leading to the 1996 "reform." Panic discourse increasingly accompanies policy debate. Examples of anti welfare, anti outsider panic discourses are explored.

American Identity And Attitudes Toward English Language Policy Initiatives, Carlos Garcia, Loretta E. Bass

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Relatively little is known about what individual-level factors drive Americans' attitudes toward offering services to immigrants. Using national-level data and logistic regressions, we examine what factors co-vary with whether respondents agree or disagree with specific policy initiatives regarding support for English language use for immigrants. We then examine what factors are related to whether respondents agree that tax money should be used to fund English classes for immigrant children and adults. We find that age, race, and general warmth toward undocumented immigrants predict English-only attitudes, and that marital status, education, and warmth toward undocumented immigrants predict attitudes toward the use …

Controlling The Levers Of Power: How Advocacy Organizations Affect The Regulation Writing Process, Richard Hoefer, Kristin Ferguson

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The Federal regulation-writing process is vital to understanding how laws are translated into policy. This paper re-examines data on human services interest groups active in lobbying the executive branch to determine what factors influence their effectiveness. Building on findings from Hoefer (2000), structural equation modeling is used to re-analyze the original regression model of interest group effectiveness (IGE) on a sample of 127 Washington D.C.-based interest groups. Results indicate that some of the previous findings are not supported and an alternative model is proposed. A group's position, context and access to information and policymakers emerge as significant determinants of IGE. …