Social Work Commons^™

Social Support And Depression Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults, Julie Helen Grocki

Doctoral Dissertations

Late-life depression is a significant public and geriatric mental health concern and one of the most prevalent and common emotional disorders for all older United States citizens. This study examined how relationships with close friends and close relatives affected depressive symptomatology among African American and White older adults and explored how health, social and religious factors modified that relationship. The sample consisted of participants from the New Haven, CT cohort of the population-based longitudinal study, The National Institute on Aging project entitled “The Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly” [EPESE]. Respondents were ages 65-75 and older (mean age …

Www.Homeless.Org/Culture: A Cross-Level Analysis Of The Relationship Between Organizational Culture And Technology Use Among Homeless Service Providers, Courtney Marie Cronley

Doctoral Dissertations

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires federally-funded homeless service providers to participate in an homeless management information system (HMIS). While federally mandated, no one has examined how these technologies are being used. Theory and research suggest that the technology dissemination is contingent upon the organizational culture in which it is used. This study represents the first empirical analysis of HMIS use and explores the cross-level relationship between staff members’ HMIS use and organizational culture.

Staff members at 24 homeless service providers completed the Organizational Social Context (OSC) survey and scores from each provider were aggregated …

Extending Knowledge Of Parents’ Role In Adolescent Development: The Mediating Effect Of Self, Sally Beville Hunter

Doctoral Dissertations

Much previous work has demonstrated the importance of parenting for adolescents’ psychosocial functioning. Barber, Stolz, and Olsen’s (2005) recent monograph contributed in organizing and specifying the voluminous literature on parent-child/adolescent literatures by documenting specific paths among three commonly-studied dimensions of parenting (i.e., support, psychological control, and behavioral control) and three salient adolescent outcomes (i.e., social initiative, depression, and antisocial behavior). They did not, however, explore the possible mechanisms that underlie the consistent parenting effects they and others have found.

Theory suggests that the adolescent self would be a logical mediator of the effects of parenting. Further, measures of the self, …

The Effectiveness Of A Restraint Reduction Policy Implemented To Reduce The Use Of Physical Restraint With Children And Adolescents In A Residential Care Facility, Irma Molina Damen

Doctoral Dissertations

This simple interrupted time-series quasi-experimental study examined the effectiveness of a restraint reduction policy implemented in order to reduce the use of physical restraint in a residential treatment facility for children in the southeastern United States. Aggregate data on monthly physical restraint episodes from the agency were analyzed over a period of 4 years. A 22-month period was used as the baseline and the succeeding 26 months- when the restraint reduction policy was implemented- was the intervention phase. A regular regression model, estimated using ordinary least squares (OLS), modeled the effect of the policy change, and autoregressive integrated moving average …