Positioning Social Work Researchers for Engaged Scholarship to Promote Public Impact

The concept of engaged scholarship has garnered significant attention across numerous scientific disciplines. Engaged scholarship can be conceptualized as both a method centered on cocreating and applying new knowledge and a movement focused on prioritizing community identification of needs and social problem-solving strategies. In an effort to position social work researchers for engaged scholarship to promote public impact, we provide an overview of the following engaged-scholarship mechanisms: (a) community-based participatory research, (b) participatory action research, (c) practice-based research networks, (d) translational research, (e) transdisciplinary scientific collaborations, (f) systemic evaluation, and (g) developmental evaluation. We address the contextual factors that may influence the extent to which social work researchers can successfully pursue engaged scholarship and conclude by explicating a plausible relationship between engaged scholarship and public impact scholarship. Specifically, we apply the diffusion of innovations model and community dissonance theory to conceptually position engaged scholarship as a vehicle for promoting and optimizing public impact scholarship

The unique and interactive effects of parent and school bonds on adolescent delinquency

Parent and school bonds are protective against delinquency. This study used longitudinal data and multilevel Poisson regression models (MLM) to examine unique and interactive associations of parent and school bonds on youth delinquency in a sample of rural adolescents (n = 945; 84% White). We investigated whether youth sex or transitioning to a new middle school moderated the linkages between parent and school bonds and later delinquency. Results indicated reduced delinquency was associated with positive parent and school relationships. Parent and school bonds interacted such that linkages between parent bonding and youth delinquency were stronger when youth also had high school bonding – suggesting an additive effect. However, interactive effects were only found when youth remained in the same school and became nonsignificant if they transitioned to a new school. Findings support prior evidence that parent and school bonds – and their interaction – play a unique role in reducing delinquency

Cultivating a Research Tool Kit for Social Work Doctoral Education

Social work doctoral education can prepare students to become research scholars whose work has impact by providing and promoting the development of an appropriately sophisticated and diverse research methods tool kit. Students can cultivate their tool kits through course work, mentored research experience, and specialized workshops. The tool kit is best grounded in guided reading of methodological texts—that is, reading methodological texts while conferring with advanced peers, faculty, and research supervisors—which provides essential teaching and experiences to enhance understanding and use. This article lays out a rationale for guided reading and provides an example of primer text and recommended readings to support guided reading for one set of related research methods: randomized experimentation and finite mixture modeling

Intervening for sustainable change: Tailoring strategies to align with values and principles of communities.

This paper presents a rationale for tailoring implementation strategies within a values-driven implementation approach. Values-driven implementation seeks to organize implementers around clarifying statements of their shared values in ways that harmonize implementation dynamics related to individual and group mental models, relationships among implementers, and the implementation climate. The proposed approach to tailoring strategies is informed by systems theory and emphasizes the need to focus on both tangible events and behaviors, as well deeper patterns, structures, relationships, and mental models, in order to increase the likelihood of sustaining implementation efforts and improving outcomes for people and communities. We offer for consideration three specific sets of context determinants that are under-represented in the implementation literature and that emerge as especially relevant within a systems approach to identifying and successfully tailoring implementation strategies in the implementation setting including relationships, mental models, and implementation climate

Intervening for sustainable change: Tailoring strategies to align with values and principles of communities

This paper presents a rationale for tailoring implementation strategies within a values-driven implementation approach. Values-driven implementation seeks to organize implementers around clarifying statements of their shared values in ways that harmonize implementation dynamics related to individual and group mental models, relationships among implementers, and the implementation climate. The proposed approach to tailoring strategies is informed by systems theory and emphasizes the need to focus on both tangible events and behaviors, as well deeper patterns, structures, relationships, and mental models, in order to increase the likelihood of sustaining implementation efforts and improving outcomes for people and communities. We offer for consideration three specific sets of context determinants that are under-represented in the implementation literature and that emerge as especially relevant within a systems approach to identifying and successfully tailoring implementation strategies in the implementation setting including relationships, mental models, and implementation climate

Towards a heart and soul for co-creative research practice: A systemic approach

© Policy Press 2019 The language of co-creation has become popular with policy makers, researchers and consultants wanting to support evidence-based change. However, there is little agreement about what features a research or consultancy project must have for peers to recognise the project as co-creative, and therefore for it to contribute to the growing body of practice and theory under that heading. This means that scholars and practitioners do not have a shared basis for critical reflection, improving practice and debating ethics, legitimacy and quality. While seeking to avoid any premature defining of orthodoxy, this article offers a framework to support researchers and practitioners in discussing the boundaries and the features that are beginning to characterise a particular discourse, such as the one that is unfolding around the concept of co-creation. The paper is the outcome of an online and face-to-face dialogue among an international group of scholars. The dialogue draws on Critical Systems Heuristics’ (Ulrich, 1994) questions concerning motivation (revealing assumptions about its purpose and value), power (interrogating assumptions about who has control and is therefore able to define success), knowledge (surfacing assumptions about experience and expertise) and legitimacy (disclosing moral assumptions). The paper ends by suggesting important areas for further exploration to contribute to the emerging discourse of co-creation in ways that support critical reflection, improved practice, and provide a basis for debating ethics and quality

Developing and validating a new scale to measure the acceptability of health apps among adolescents

Background The acceptability of health interventions is centrally important to achieving their desired health outcomes. The construct of acceptability of mobile health interventions among adolescents is neither well-defined nor consistently operationalized. Objectives Building on the theoretical framework of acceptability, these two studies developed and assessed the reliability and validity of a new scale to measure the acceptability of mobile health applications (“apps”) among adolescents. Methods We followed a structured scale development process including exploratory factor analyses (EFAs), confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs), and employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to assess the relationship between the scale and app usage. Adolescent participants used the Fooducate healthy eating app and completed the acceptability scale at baseline and one-week follow-up. Results EFA (n = 182) determined that the acceptability of health apps was a multidimensional construct with six latent factors: affective attitude, burden, ethicality, intervention coherence, perceived effectiveness, and self-efficacy. CFA (n = 161) from the second sample affirmed the six-factor structure and the unidimensional structures for each of the six subscales. However, CFA did not confirm the higher-order latent factor model suggesting that the six subscales reflect unique aspects of acceptability. SEM indicated that two of the subscales—ethicality and self-efficacy—were predictive of health app usage at one-week follow-up. Conclusions These results highlight the importance of ethicality and self-efficacy for health app acceptability. Future research testing and adapting this new acceptability scale will enhance measurement tools in the fields of mobile health and adolescent health

Attending to Attention: A Systematic Review of Attention and Reading

Background: Extensive research has conclusively linked inattention to poor reading performance. The process by which this relation occurs remains somewhat undefined, which makes it difficult for practitioners to identify key intervention targets. Objectives: This systematic review will synthesize current peer-reviewed research on the developmental relationship between inattention and reading. The primary aim of this review was to describe how inattention negatively relates to the development of literacy from preschool through middle childhood. A secondary aim of this review was to summarize recent research on the potential differential relationship between attention and literacy among students overrepresented in ratings of inattention, including boys and students of color. Design and Methods: PsycInfo, Education Full Text, ERIC, and ProQuest Education, and Dissertations and Theses were searched, using a broad search string. The initial search resulted in 1,262 potentially relevant studies published since the most recent authorization of the Every Child Succeeds Act (i.e., from December 2015-2019) for review. Out of 1,262 citations found, 70 empirical studies were screened and assessed for eligibility, and 16 met the specific inclusion criteria. A coding sheet was then used to synthesize data from the included studies. Results: Among preschool and elementary school children, inattention, whether measured through observer ratings or performance tasks, has a consistent, negative impact on reading skills as reported both by teachers, standardized instruments, and classroom performance outcomes. Results point to multiple pathways through which inattention may have a negative impact on reading outcomes. Evidence points to a negative and direct effect of inattention on the development of and performance in reading concurrently and over time. Inattention may have an additional, indirect, and negative effect on reading performance through its negative impact on early literacy and cognitive skills, including phonological awareness and processing, vocabulary, and working memory. There is a lack of research on potential differential processes by which attention relates to reading among subgroups of children who are at elevated risk for poor literacy outcomes. Conclusions and Implications: Assessing for and intervening in early attention problems in preschool and kindergarten is essential to promote optimal reading outcomes for all students. There is an urgent need for future research to investigate potential differential processes in the relation between attention and reading performance for children who are at an elevated risk for reading problems. School social workers are especially prepared and located to address the interaction of child and classroom factors within schools that impede student performance in early grades and set up challenges for later success

Early Educational Intervention, Early Cumulative Risk, and the Early Home Environment as Predictors of Young Adult Outcomes Within a High-Risk Sample

The extent to which early educational intervention, early cumulative risk, and the early home environment were associated with young adult outcomes was investigated in a sample of 139 young adults (age 21) from high-risk families enrolled in randomized trials of early intervention. Positive effects of treatment were found for education attainment, attending college, and skilled employment; negative effects of risk were found for education attainment, graduating high school, being employed and avoiding teen parenthood. The home mediated the effects of risk for graduating high school, but not being employed or teen parenthood. Evidence for moderated mediation was found for educational attainment; the home mediated the association between risk and educational attainment for the control group, but not the treated group

Adult outcomes as a function of an early childhood educational program: An Abecedarian Project follow-up.

Adult (age 30) educational, economic, and social-emotional adjustment outcomes were investigated for participants in the Abecedarian Project, a randomized controlled trial of early childhood education for children from low-income families. Of the original 111 infants enrolled (98% African American), 101 took part in the age-30 follow-up. Primary indicators of educational level, economic status, and social-adjustment were examined as a function of early childhood treatment. Treated individuals attained significantly more years of education, but income-to-needs ratios and criminal involvement did not vary significantly as a function of early treatment. A number of other indicators were described for each domain. Overall, the findings provide strong evidence for educational benefits, mixed evidence for economic benefits and little evidence for social-adjustment outcomes. Implications for public policy are discussed