Professionals’ Experiences With and Perceptions of Children Exposed to Severe and Homicidal Violence in Sweden

The present study aimed to examine professionals’ experiences, perceptions, and knowledge regarding violence-exposed children in order to clarify the status and opportunities these children have in the Swedish legal system. A questionnaire was distributed to 63 professionals, representing police, prosecutors, social personnel, and treatment personnel. Findings revealed several problems that hindered effective work. Routines and guidelines were lacking and knowledge gaps regarding these children were found among all professions. Perceptions that children remember and tell were widely held, although conditions enabling sufficient reports are seldom met. Results can be used to guide necessary changes in national routines and guidelines to ensure recovery and maintaining of societal rights of this group of psychologically abused victims.     

Why Place Really Matters: A Qualitative Approach to Housing Preferences and Neighborhood Effects

The idea that a person’s neighborhood or zip code can predict his or her life outcomes has motivated a host of housing policies aimed at redressing racial segregation and breaking up areas of concentrated poverty. This article critically examines underlying assumptions about high-poverty neighborhoods that motivate those policies. Using ethnographic methods, I present the location preferences of residents living in a low-income neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio, and show the ways in which their perceptions of their neighborhood run counter to common portrayals. This analysis provides clues as to why the underlying logic of dispersal and mobility may be flawed. I conclude that place matters very much to people living in this neighborhood, just not in the way commonly implied by dispersal and mobility policy advocates. The implication is that stability, rather than mobility, ought to be the focus of more housing discussions.     

Continuing education: Toward a life-course perspective on social learning

Sutherland's differential association theory and the life-course perspective have at times been conceptualized as contrasting theories of criminal behavior. I argue instead that our understanding of delinquency, the dynamics underlying criminal persistence and desistance, and intergenerational patterns will be enhanced by a more explicit integration of these two traditions. I focus on family processes as these are foundational intimate relationships that remain underappreciated as a source of lifelong learning and influence. Although family support and variations in parental supervision have been amply investigated, “direct transmission” takes place within the family as well as within the confines of the more heavily studied world of adolescent peer groups. I identify five dimensions of direct transmission and illustrate these dynamic processes with qualitative data from two longitudinal studies and results of recent quantitative analyses. The analysis is generally in line with Sutherland's original formulation but includes several extensions and modifications. It is important to include a role for human agency, and for “noncriminal” definitions and lifestyle factors, in addition to the directly criminogenic definitions Sutherland and subsequent researchers have emphasized. The focus on social processes is, however, consistent with Sutherland's goal of highlighting limitations of psychological and biological differences explanations.     

地方政府公共服务创新：驱动机制与路径选择——中国情境下的分析框架和经验证据

不断推进地方政府公共服务创新是破解当前公共服务供给困境,构建我国治理体系和治理能力现代化的重要组成部分。在对国内外相关文献分析的基础上,从政治制度、社会需求和资源支撑等视角出发,构建了中国情境下地方政府公共服务创新驱动机制的分析框架,通过模糊集定性比较分析的方法,对"中国地方政府创新奖"下公共服务创新类项目进行了系统比较分析。研究发现,在中国情境下,晋升激励是引致地方政府创新成功的充分条件,领导支持是驱动地方政府创新成功的必要条件;而在创新的代表性路径中,公民参与和媒体报道也发挥着重要作用,经济发展水平和改革本身的难度对创新工作的影响有限;行政主导型、需求诱发型和多方互动型的创新模式是我国地方政府公共服务创新时选择的主要路径模式。未来中央应更注重从制度层面激发地方政府公共服务的创新热情,降低社会公共服务需求的政府进入门槛,同时应注重激发公共服务创新要素组合的叠加效应。     

Diagnostic criteria for postbullying disorder: A phenomenological research design of bullying victims

This study aimed to investigate the diagnostic criteria for postbullying disorder, which enable the persons who provide therapy services for bullying victims, because until now, there are no criteria to help clinicians diagnose postbullying disorder. This study employed phenomenological research design. Purposive sampling was adopted to sample six university students who are experiencing the bullying behavior from their colleagues in the university campus. The results revealed that there are eight criteria for diagnosing postbullying disorder among victims. These are trauma exposure, symptoms of penetration, avoidance, perception and negative emotions, self‐destructive behavior, dysfunction due to symptoms, duration (1 month or more) of symptoms, and the criteria that the bullying symptoms cannot be attributed to the use of substances or drugs of another medical conditions. Results shed new light on the diagnostic criteria for postbullying disorder and proved the usefulness of these criteria in understanding the development of the postbullying symptoms among victims. These findings enable schools and universities to plan psychotherapy interventions for victims.     

A Qualitative Study Exploring Mothers’ Perceptions of Child Neglect

This research explores the experiences and perceptions of mothers receiving services for child neglect. Incidents of child neglect are reaching alarming rates in the United States, now representing 78% of all child maltreatment reports. Although risks factors associated with child neglect are well known, there continues to be uncertainty about how to proceed in assessing and intervening with families. The epistemological stance of constructivism and the theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism guided the qualitative methods of this research. Four overarching themes emerged focused on daily struggles, protecting my child, feeling trapped, and mutual trust. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Remediation of Social Withdrawal in Young Children:

The last 15 years have witnessed a marked increase in the development of intervention techniques designed to promote isolate children's friendships and to increase their peer group interactions. However, there has been a paucity of research directed towards defining social competence and its underlying skill components. With the practitioner in mine, the present report presents a recent intervention strategy for remediating social withdrawal, followed by our current development of a skill deficit model designed to expand our knowledge case of causal contributors. PEERS, a broad-based intervention program, involves all of the child's social agents, thus assuring him/her of entry into the peer group in an atmosphere of social support. Our more comprehensive view of social withdrawal examines deficits in four skill areas: the child's social, language, and motoric competences, and the parents' child-rearing ability. Additional research is needed to pinpoint the precise relationship between these skill components and social withdrawal. With the further contributions of researchers in the field, we foresee the development of a more refined set of intervention procedures which the practitioner may use selectively to meet the individual needs of each child.     

Women’s perspectives on the value of a father’s initiative in shifting gendered practices within families

This paper explores the qualitative perspectives of women about a community embedded fathers’ initiative in Northern England. Projects to improve the well-being of men and their children are less common within the landscape of parent and child support, with mothers more often being the target recipients. Asking women about their perceptions of an initiative for fathers then offers original insights from women who are positioned as ‘related outsiders’, in that they were ‘outside’ the project but ‘inside’ the family and community. Findings suggest that women are able to see the positive impact of such a project, identifying that it offers a shared space for men and children, time for mothers without their children and can help with shifting roles and attitudes around childcare and emotional labour in the home. The initiative was also seen by the women as offering men more healthy means of coping, including men moving away from traditional hegemonic practices, which in turn shifted some women’s long held gendered beliefs about men as fathers. This research then offers a relational gendered backstory to a father’s initiative, demonstrating how such initiatives can potentially ‘undo’ gender and the positive implications this could have for families.     

不孕女性情感反应与抗逆力生成的质性研究

对那些将生育子女视为社会角色和身份认同之关键的女性而言,不孕及其治疗是充满挣扎、奋斗与痛苦的历程.基于个案访谈分析不孕女性的情感反应和抗逆力生成机制的研究发现,女性在获悉自己患上不孕症后,会出现震惊与否认、内疚与愤怒、抑郁与孤独、焦虑与无助等负面的消极情绪.面对困局,她们逐渐接受不孕的事实,想方设法赋予不幸以意义;转变...     

Public Smart Service Provision in Smart Cities: A Case-Study-Based Approach

ABSTRACT

In view of the multitude of challenges urban public administration is struggling with, more and more cities are turning towards smart solutions using information and communication technology. Such Smart City approaches revert to data provided in the urban space by sensors, by citizens or by the archives of the authorities aiming at providing public services that increase the quality of life for citizens, optimize mobility within the city or enhance flexibility and responsiveness of public authorities. This article identifies such SC approaches as well as their basic technical requirements for the cities of Vienna, Singapore, and San Francisco and, by compiling the public service portfolios of these cities, creates an integrative, strategic overview of a SC’s range of services. This approach thus helps to create a scientific basis for the evaluation of SC services and to provide a strategic modular toolkit for public managers to plan and design SCs.