Social Work Commons^™

Title I Evaluation System, Maple Lane High School, Terrence A. Green

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of the project is to establish a data gathering system that will provide decision makers an information base on which to 1) Plan for current program maintenance, 2) Plan for program change and 3) Identify changes in student need as a basis for future Title I funding.

In establishing the system, two requirements had to be met. First, the system had to be simple so a person with limited training could operate it. Second, the system had to keep individual students identifiable to facilitate treatment and academic program planning. Developing the system within these constraints required the data …

A Postulated Alternative To Current Oregon Marital Statute (Ors 106.71): A Frankly Revisionist Analysis Of The Concrete Situation, Ken Jones, Ray Kendall, Jan Nolley, Jill Weeden

Dissertations and Theses

According to the Oregon Marriage statute an applicant for a marriage license must present a physician's statement that he is free from certain mental and physical conditions. When the examining physician is not satisfied that the applicant is free from these conditions, the applicant is referred to the Committee of Three, a special standing committee appointed by the Board of Social Protection for determining whether or not a license to marry should be granted.

In the spring of 1970 such a situation was referred to the committee for its consideration. As a result of the committee's involvement with this applicant, …

Action-Oriented Group Therapy For Lower-Socio-Economic-Status Clients, Joan C. Peters

Dissertations and Theses

An attempt is made to present a model of group therapy for Lower-Socio-Economic-Status (LSES) clients. The theoretical issues include a definition of traditional group therapy along with a brief description of the more recent sensitivity training approaches. A rationale for combining these two different group approaches is presented to form the model for action-oriented group therapy (ACT groups) which utilizes both the traditional approach and action techniques of the sensitivity group. It is proposed that this hybrid, the AOT group, is more appropriate for treating the LSES client. The needs and expectations of the LSES client are discussed. The goals …

The Utilization Of Aides In Public Welfare; Analysis, Evaluation, And Proposal, Leonard Mark Robinson, Shirley Ann Youngstrom

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this project was to trace the developments which led to the utilization of para-profess iona1 persons as service aides in public welfare departments and to examine, in particular, the developments in Oregon at the state and county levels. The establishment of such programs was mandated in the Social Security Amendments of 1967. A review of the 1967 legislation showed the legislative intent to be inconsistent with the stated purposes of the program. This inconsistency, it was found, has been reflected in Oregon’s aide program. The theoretical origins underlying the aide concept were also examined in order to …

The Influence Of Tradition On The Process Of Organizational Change: A Study Of Two Oregon Child Care Centers: Edgefield Lodge, Troutdale, And St. Mary's Home For Boys, Beaverton, Helen Paula Grant

Dissertations and Theses

For over two centuries, child-caring institutions in the United States have helped families care for their children, and have been solicitous as well for the dependent, neglected, and retarded children. Since the founding of the first orphanage in the United States in 1737 by the Ursuline Sisters, after the ravage of an Indian massacre, child care has developed slowly from simple custodial care to institutions giving specialized care in some one single area. This change was a result not only of the need of children for specialized care but also of the advances in the nation's social, economic, and medical …

A Demographic Study Based Upon Income, Age And Education Variables As Related To The Willingness Or Unwillingness To Accept Foster Children, John Hughes

Dissertations and Theses

The research problem in this thesis can be briefly stated as a study of a general population to test certain demographic variables, in particular those of income, age and education, which may or may not have a significant relationship to an expressed willingness to care for foster children; and to further examine whether certain special characteristics of a child, in particular those of increased age, physical handicap, minor emotional problems or mental retardation, further increase unwillingness to care for foster children.

The sample was selected by a two- stage cluster sampling taken from the Southeast catchment area of metropolitan Portland, …

Post-Divorce Visitation Of Minor Children: An Exploratory Study, Barbara Griffith

Dissertations and Theses

ORS 107.100 gives the court broad powers to secure the "best interests" of minor children as third parties to a divorce. Further, the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled in Tingen vs. Tingen that the best interests of a minor child involve a complex constellation of factors pertaining to the parents, the environment, and the adjustment of the child. It has been assumed in case law that "reasonable visitation" of the minor child by the non-custodial parent is usually in the best interests of the child and is a right" of the non-custodial parent.

Most judges order reasonable visitation as part …

Changing The Custody Of Children Whose Parents Have Been Divorced: A General View Of The Process, Dorothy E. Bateman

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this project was to obtain a preliminary description, through study of the legal files, of that group of persons who appear before the Court of Domestic Relations for a reconsideration of the custody decision made initially, at the time of divorce. A sample of 92 cases heard in Multnomah County in 1965 was obtained.

A survey of the literature revealed that much of what has been written on the subject of divorce and custody is primarily from a statistical or legalistic standpoint and very little bears directly on the granting or obtaining of custody or the problems …

Factors In Evaluation Of Student Performance In A Graduate School Of Social Work, Sharon J. Copeland, Gerald E. Warner

Dissertations and Theses

This study refined the criteria for the measurement of graduate student performance in a school of social work.

By using present criteria from other studies and general student performance criteria from school brochures a questionnaire was constructed. This questionnaire was administered to a. sample of students, faculty and field instructors from Portland State University School of Social Work. The data from the completed questionnaires were then processed by computer to determine the means, standard deviations of the items, and the correlations between items and between raters.

Through the computed correlations, means, and standard deviations the acceptability and reliability of the …

Factors In Assessing Effectiveness Of Orientation Programs For Public Welfare Caseworkers, Clyde Ferguson

Dissertations and Theses

A study done in 1968-1969 by students at Portland State University School of Social Work at the request of the Oregon State Public Welfare Commission Staff Development Division sought to devise an instrument for assessing the effectiveness of teaching the casework principles of Felix P. Biestek to casework trainees in the public welfare's orientation program. The test instrument developed was found to have low, but acceptable, internal reliability.

Building on the previous year's work, this 1969-1970 study sought to determine the validity of the test instrument by relating test scores to two measures of job performance, namely the latest supervisory …

Attitudes Of Youth Toward Social Institutions: A Comparative Study, Connie Mcgonigle, James F. Bakke

Dissertations and Theses

In August, 1968, after a series of confrontations in the city parks between young dissidents and the police, the Mayor of Portland called upon the Metropolitan Youth Commission to form a special study committee to explore the areas of conflict and to recommend ways in which municipal government might constructively respond to the young people in the community. The independent research project on the alienation of youth, the results of which are reported here, was an outgrowth of the interest generated by the request from the Office of the Mayor. Under the auspices of the Metropolitan Youth Commission (MYC), a …

Verbal Accessibility And Authoritarian Family Ideology: A Study Of 50 Graduate Social Work Students And Their Spouses, Linda Louise Metz

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is the fourth in a series of empirical investigations concerned with symbolic interaction in marriage. Its basic assumption is that personal predispositions of marital partners as well as the social context of their marriage influences marital intimacy particularly the partner's readiness to communicate verbally with each other about important attitudes and feelings.

Fifty married graduate students attending Portland State University School of Social Work and their spouses comprised the sample. The subjects responded to three instruments: (1) a personality scale (Authoritarian Family Ideology – AFI) developed by Jane Loevinger, (2) a measure of verbal accessibility (VA), and (3) …

Evaluation Of The Role Of Neighborhood Health Coordinators In A Comprehensive Neighborhood Health Services Project, Sharron Faye Easley

Dissertations and Theses

This study evaluates the role of the Neighborhood Health Coordinators (NHC's) within Kaiser Foundation's Comprehensive Neighborhood Health Services (CNHS) Project. This project was established in September 1967, under the provisions of the 1966 amendments to the Economic Opportunity Act, to provide and make readily available comprehensive medical care to low-income persons. In compliance with the stipulations of this Act, persons who reside in target areas, designated as depressed neighborhoods, were hired to serve as NHC's. These indigenous non-professionals serve as links or "gatekeepers" between the low-income persons enrolled in this program, and the Kaiser medical care facilities which include the …

Judging Development And Sexual Identity In Children's Art, Susan Lathrop Dietsche

Dissertations and Theses

This study identified selected characteristics of sexual identity and artistic development using 481 pictures from a collection of 1,008 pictures drawn by first through fourth grade males and females. The pictures were collected by the E. C. Brown Trust Foundation to study children's concepts of reproduction.

Three general hypotheses were developed: I. Sex differences are observable in children's art; II. There are observable differences in artistic development as grade level changes; III. Observations by social workers of content in children's art are reliable. From a search of the literature, certain variables were identified, including content, use of color, and aspects …

The Complaint Process In Protective Services For Children, William L. Carey

Dissertations and Theses

This is a descriptive study of the community process by which a complaint is made to a protective service agency. It is by this process that deviant child care is first identified and the decision to take action is made. The study develops a typology of the complaint process and identifies seven elements as significant in complaints that reach community agencies. The elements were: the complaint situation, the precipitating events that brought the complaint situation to the attention of someone outside the nuclear family, the relationship between the complainant and family, the complainant's motivation for responding to the complaint situation, …

Measuring Trainee Comprehension Of Casework Relationship In A Public Welfare Orientation Program, Margaret Berweger

Dissertations and Theses

This study was undertaken as a first step in measuring effectiveness of the Oregon State Public Welfare Orientation Center program in teaching principles of the casework relationship as conceptualized by Felix P. Biestek. This anticipated the development of a reasonably reliable instrument, improvement and validation of which would be undertaken in a subsequent study.

The population tested was made up of male and female college graduates, newly hired by the State, who were then entering a four week orientation program for caseworkers. Their education and experience varied, but all had passed the State Civil Service examination for this position.

Learning …

Some Interrelationships Between A Community Work And Training Program And Selected Indices Of Family Functioning, Audrey K. Arnst

Dissertations and Theses

This was an exploratory study of some of the relationships between a Community Work and Training Program and the family functioning of certain participants in that program. The CWT projects studied were those operated by the Public Welfare Departments of Clackamas and Marion Counties, Oregon during the three-year span between January 1, 1965 and December 31, 1967.

Participants' names were randomly selected from the records of the two welfare offices and the respondents interviewed during the summer of 1968. A questionnaire was developed which consisted of twenty primarily open-ended questions and this was administered to a total of sixty couples. …

Child Care Arrangements In Affluence And Poverty, Josephine Jeannette Gurrola

Dissertations and Theses

A study of the attitudes of 40 mothers toward their child care arrangements tested hypotheses concerning the conditions of economic and child care necessity under which mothers of two socio-economic groups would be satisfied with their arrangements. It was hypothesized that the satisfaction with an arrangement would be associated inversely with economic necessity and child care necessity. A prediction was also made that the mothers' expressive satisfactions with the child care arrangements (benefits to the child and relationship to the sitter) would only be realized after the instrumental necessities of convenience and dependability of the arrangement were met.

Interest in …

Verbal Accessibility Between Marital Partners As Studied In A Court Of Domestic Relations, Patricia Walker

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigated the concept of verbal accessibility in marriage. It is an example of the interactional approach to the study of marriage, which is concerned with the on-going socialization process in marriage. Verbal communication is one component of the socialization process and also of problem solving in marriage.

Interpersonal communication is influenced by many variables--personality, culture and social situation. Polansky (1965) conceptualized verbal accessibility as the degree of readiness to communicate verbally and to participate in communication about determinant attitudes. Determinant attitudes are those which have the most far reaching influence on other attitudes and on behavior.

One of …

Assessment Of Subjective Experiences Of Boys Entering The Community From A Correctional School, Thomas W. Dejardin

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to explore, classify, and evaluate the personal experiences of juvenile offenders following release from a state training school.

During a two month period beginning in the fall of 1967, a group of twenty-three releasees from the MacLaren School for Boys in Woodburn, Oregon were interviewed on a weekly basis in the Portland metropolitan area. The boys, ranging in age from thirteen to seventeen were contacted in their homes, schools, and other settings to learn of positive, negative, and critical experiences encountered in the community.

Open ended questions based upon a twenty- seven item schedule …

A Comparison Of Characteristics Of Terminated Afdc Cases With Cases Remaining Active From The June 1966 Afdc Load In Linn County, Oregon, William Everett Lowther

Dissertations and Theses

A study of the characteristics of AFDC cases active in Linn County, Oregon in June 1966 and of the difference in characteristics between those cases closed by September 1, 1967, and those cases remaining active on that date. The source of data was the case records of the Linn County Department of Public Welfare. There were 212 cases in the study with 200 suitable for full analysis.

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that there is a difference in selected characteristics between cases remaining active and cases that close. Case records were read and then characteristics …

Traits Associated With Choosing Social Work As A Career, Helen Ellsworth

Dissertations and Theses

This was a study of traits associated with the choice of social work as a career. Two samples of people from the metropolitan area of Portland, Oregon, who had shown an interest in social work, were studied, together with the factors that influenced this interest. The traits and factors considered were substantially those examined by Arnulf M. Pins in Who Chooses Social Work, When and Why?

Traits measured by the Pins study of individuals who had gone on to graduate education in social work were held indicative of individuals most likely to become professional social workers. The Pins' questionnaire was …

The Use Of Self-Determination And Confidentiality In Casework And Group Work Practice: An Exploratory Study, George A. Fisher, James M. Hanson, Frances Peterson, Helen Phillips

Dissertations and Theses

This study is the seventh in a series begun in 1957 to relate social work theory to general systems theory. The purpose of this study was to assess, through the judgment of professional social workers, the use of the two concepts, self-determination and confidentiality, in casework and social group work situations. The two concepts were operationalized by construction of five practice principles for each concept. An instrument was developed in which a critical hypothetical situation exemplified each principle for both methods with a forced choice of four actions evidencing the degree of self-determination and confidentiality. Forty randomly selected trained social …

Social Exchange In Private Family Day Care Arrangements, Gerald Wesley Perry

Dissertations and Theses

A study of social exchange between working mothers and their sitters was based on a sample of terminated family day care arrangements in Portland, Oregon (1966-67). The sample, provided by the Multnomah County Public Welfare Commission and the Day Care Exchange Project of northwest Portland consisted of the arrangements of 27 mothers and 23 sitters.

Review of the literature on family day care revealed a paucity of research on the relationship between mothers and sitters in such arrangements. The purpose of the study was to test the hypothesis that continuity of a family day care arrangement is a function of …

A Scale Of Verbal Accessibility In Marriage, Barbara F. Kresse

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this project was to develop a tool to clarify one concept of verbal interaction in marriage. This concept, Verbal Accessibility, was developed by Norman Polansky and defined as the degree of readiness of the individual to communicate verbally and to participate in communication about his determinant attitudes. Verbal Accessibility is dependent on two variables: l) the enduring characteristics of the individual, and 2) the release of inhibiting factors in a given situation.

In order to facilitate the use of this concept in treatment, a scale was needed to measure Verbal Accessibility of both the person and of …

Using Eriksonian Concepts In Observing Developmental Levels In Two Groups Of Preschool Children, Roland J. Lindstrom

Dissertations and Theses

In this study concepts from Erikson's widely cited theory of child development were operationally defined and empirically tested.

The purposes of the study were: (1) to ascertain whether a set of social workers with an understanding of Eriksonian theory could use it in a meaningful way to observe pre-school children; (2) to ascertain whether the theory could be used to differentiate between culturally advantaged, culturally deprived, and, as emerged in the analysis, handicapped children; (3) to ascertain whether the theory could be used diagnostically to obtain information about a child's developmental level or problem area.

In the fall of 1966 …

Medical-Social Needs In A Sample Population Of Elderly Post-Hospital Patients, Rose N. Cooper

Dissertations and Theses

The EPP Project was a descriptive and inferential study designed to determine the psychosocial and medical needs of elderly post-hospital dischargees.

The areas of need assessed were (1) living arrangements, (2) use of leisure time, (3) vocational adjustment, (4) financial functioning and (5) adjustment to illness.

The instrument adopted for the purpose of this study was an adaptation of a scheduled in the New York Study. The New York Study, described in The Elderly Ambulatory Patient: Nursing and Psychosocial Needs by Doris Schwartz, Barbara Henley and Leonard Zeitz was a long-range study of the needs of elderly clinic patients. The …

Constructing A Tool For Measuring Common Social Work Activities, Patricia M. Armstrong

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is one in a series of studies concerned with the interrelationship of General Systems Theory and social work knowledge. The purpose of this particular study was to develop a questionnaire to test the generic quality of the actions performed among the three traditional specialties of social work -- casework, group work and community organization.

The universe from which the sample of concepts was obtained were the acts performed by people in behalf of others. Specifically, the 421 concepts in the sample were obtained from literature in the fields of social work, sociology, psychology, and counseling and guidance. These …

Unmet Social Work Needs In An Inmate Population Of A County Correctional Institution, Jerry M. Harkins

Dissertations and Theses

This descriptive study was designed to elicit the kinds, extensity and intensity of needs of the inmate population of Multnomah County Correctional Institution, a minimum security jail for misdemeanants.

A guiding hypothesis asserted that there were unmet needs of prisoners which could be met through social work services both within and outside the institution.

Almost the entire population of the institution was interviewed. Open-end and structured responses were recorded on schedules. Five broad areas of need were defined. These were 1) physical needs -- including food, clothing, shelter, and medical care; 2) social needs -- including interpersonal ties, group membership, …

Marital Interaction Theory: Some Implications For Research, Lucille S. Pugh

Dissertations and Theses

This project examines specific basic areas of marital interaction theory. Individual chapters are developed around the following themes: historical development of the theory of interaction; a theoretical discussion of selected concepts; personality as a determinant of interaction; communication in marriage; marital interaction patterns; methodology pertaining to research findings; and finally some implications for research which became apparent as this project developed.

The project lays the conceptual groundwork for a series of empirical studies that will use the interactional approach as a theoretical base. The immediate purpose of this project therefore is to describe the important dimensions of the interactional approach …