Suchergebnisse

The Australian government purports that employment will improve welfare recipients' wellbeing. However, longitudinal analysis of the subjective wellbeing (SWB) of 135 single parents who were compelled to make the transition from welfare to work revealed that as work hours increased, subjective wellbeing did not improve, and in some cases worsened. Participants who were employed at baseline increased their work hours by an average of 4.75 hours per week; however no change was detected in their SWB. Conversely, participants who moved from not working at baseline to working at follow-up increased their work hours by an average of 15.84 hours per week. For these participants, the change in work hours negatively predicted 20–34 per cent of the variance in SWB. From these data, it is concluded that those parents who were already working were those who faced fewer barriers to employment compared to those who were compelled to work. Those who were previously unemployed may not have the material, social and psychological resources to make a successful work transition.

Cook KE. Social support in single parents' transition from welfare to work: Analysis of qualitative findingsSince 1995, single parents have been required to participate in welfare‐to‐work activities. While quantitative meta‐analyses have consolidated the social and economic impacts of such transitions, no attempt has yet been made to synthesise the qualitative evidence. In this article, I offer an analysis of 16 qualitative articles that explore the role of social support in the lives of single mothers making the transition from welfare to work. By focusing on the functions and reciprocal nature of social support, this study examined how welfare‐to‐work programmes shift women's dependence from the state onto family and friends, many of whom are in similarly impoverished situations and/or are unable to provide adequate support. Furthermore, women are often required to reciprocate the support they receive, which creates additional barriers to a successful welfare‐to‐work transition.

AbstractWhen Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed a major welfare reform law in 1996, there were significant concerns across the public policy spectrum about how it would be implemented and how it would affect poor families, in part because the law shifted much responsibility for decision making from the federal government to state and local officials, a process called "devolution." The Kellogg Foundation was one of the concerned parties, and, as a result, it launched the Devolution Initiative to learn about the changes taking place and mobilize responses to the reform as its implications unfolded. The author revisits the Foundation's Devolution Initiative and its external evaluation from the perspective of evaluation as a strategic intervention. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc., and the American Evaluation Association.

AbstractThe David and Lucile Packard Foundation employed an evaluation‐focused grant‐making strategy over more than a decade in a particular child development service area, the home visitation approach, that illustrates, among other lessons, the management of disappointing evaluation results.

"As societies are experiencing increasing levels of immigration from contexts outside of the Western, industrialized world, child care programs are experiencing, simultaneously, increasing diversity in enrollment. A question that has been raised by early childhood advocates and practitioners is whether the former articulations regarding definitions of quality, models of relationships, and peer relations in the child care context are accurate and relevant within the increasing racial, linguistic, and ethnic diversity of the United States. The Culture of Child Care provides a much-needed integration of research pertaining to crucial aspects of early childhood development-- attachment in non-familial contexts, peer relations among ethnically and linguistically diverse children, and the developmental importance of child care contexts during early childhood. This volume highlights the interconnections between these three distinct bodies of research and crosses disciplinary boundaries by linking psychological and educational theories to the improvement of young children's development and experiences within child care. The importance of cultural diversity in early childhood is widely acknowledged and discussed, but up until now, there has been little substantive work with a cultural focus on today's educational and early child care settings. This innovative volume will be a unique resource for a wide range of early childhood professionals including basic and applied developmental researchers, early childhood educators and advocates, and policymakers"--

Despite variation in Canadian privacy laws between provinces and territories, increasing legislative protection of personal privacy has imposed restrictions on health research across the country. The effects of these restrictions on patient recruitment include increased study costs, durations, and decreased participation rates. Low participation rates can jeopardize the validity of research findings and the accuracy of measures of association by introducing non-response, or participation bias. We constructed simulations to assess potential effects of non-response bias on the accuracy of measures of association in a hypothetical case-control study. Small biases that alter the probability of selecting an exposed case can lead to dramatic inflation or attrition of the odds ratio (OR) in case-control studies. ORs are more unstable and subject to error when the true probability of selecting an exposed case is greater, such that strong positive associations are subject to error even at low levels of bias. Well-powered, population-based epidemiological research is a cornerstone of public health. Therefore, when weighing the benefits of protecting personal privacy, the benefits of valid and robust health research must also be considered. Options might include special legislative treatment of health research, or the use of an "opt-out" (vs. the current "opt-in") construct for consent in confidential research.

WorldCom was a large telecom company that enjoyed an almost meteoric rise during the 1990s but ran into trouble in the early 2000s. 2001 was particularly difficult. This case gives future generations of accountants the opportunity to study the largest accounting scandal in history from an internal financial accounting perspective. To the extent possible, this case uses the actual "voices" of participants to gain an understanding of their viewpoints and motives. We get a chance to see some participants at their best and others at their worst.
While our primary focus throughout this case is on the financial accounting issues, we also briefly touch on some of the safeguards available in preventing accounting fraud: internal controls, internal audit, external audit, and the Audit Committee. Throughout this case, you should ask yourself, "How would I respond if I were the corporate decision maker?"