What factors are associated with social workers’ political participation,
and how does political ... more What factors are associated with social workers’ political participation, and how does political confidence mediate those relationships? To answer this question, data were collected in 2020 through an original online survey of members of the U.S.-based National Association of Social Workers (NASW). Informed by selfefficacy theory, researchers conducted a structural equation modeling (SEM) path model with political participation as the outcome variable, and political confidence as a mediating variable. Exogenous variables included: one’s self-reported political orientation, belief that social work has a political mandate, gender, and knowledge about how to effectively participate in politics. Results indicate that high political confidence is associated with political participation. Similarly, the belief that ‘the social work profession has a political mandate’ is positively related to political participation, both directly and indirectly through its positive association with confidence. This study suggests that political knowledgebuilding in curriculum and programming, while necessary, does not sufficiently influence political participation. Instead, to support a politically engaged social work profession, social work educators and professional bodies ought to couple content about political knowledge with political practice in ways that realistically increase students’ political confidence and commitment to the idea that social workers are mandated to engage in politics.
How COVID-19 and Racial Justice Protests Influenced Social Workers’ Perceptions of Policy and Political Participation
Social Work Research
Drawing on political opportunity theory, this study examined how the political context created by... more Drawing on political opportunity theory, this study examined how the political context created by the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests influenced social workers’ perceptions about social welfare policy and political participation in the summer of 2020. Authors conducted a thematic analysis of the open-ended survey responses of 120 social work practitioners. Regarding perceptions of policy, respondents reported that they experienced new awareness about the breadth and depth of structural racism in the United States; that they held pessimistic views of the government’s ability to mitigate harm associated with the pandemic or racial injustice; and that structural change, including the expansion of the social safety net, was needed. Regarding participation, respondents described how they used new forms of political engagement in part because of social distancing, but even more so because they were motivated by highly visible acts of racial injustice. At the same time, t...
The impact of U.S. refugee policy change & political rhetoric on nonprofit service providers’ emotional well-being
Journal of Community Practice, Jun 16, 2021
ABSTRACT This study examines how U.S. refugee policy changes from 2014 to 2018 affected the emoti... more ABSTRACT This study examines how U.S. refugee policy changes from 2014 to 2018 affected the emotional well-being of nonprofit service providers. Participants identified the general political climate, including funding cuts; the Trump administration refugee bans; the unpredictable nature of policy change; and most impactful, negative political rhetoric, as affecting their emotional well-being. Negative effects on emotional well-being included an increase in stress, anger, sadness, despair, depression, helplessness, and caution. Negative rhetoric also impacted professional identities and personal relationships. Positive effects include greater motivation for advocacy. Impact on emotional well-being differed by level of organization at which the participant worked and by organizational characteristics.
Strategies to Mitigate the Effects of Negative Political Rhetoric on Service Providers: A Study in Two Refugee-serving Organizations
Human service organizations, management, leadership & governance, Nov 22, 2021
ABSTRACT This paper explores the strategies that staff at two refugee-serving organizations found... more ABSTRACT This paper explores the strategies that staff at two refugee-serving organizations found helpful in mitigating their increased distress from negative political rhetoric aimed at their clients. Results point to the importance of organizational acknowledgment of the distress. Additionally, staff perceived that intentionally focused organizational interventions can mitigate the emotional impacts of negative rhetoric. Finally, strategies employees used to lessen their distress and regain a sense of efficacy included recommitment to the mission, advocacy for refugees among family and friends, strong reliance on religious faith in coping, and an avoidance of the rhetoric by decreasing engagement with news and social media.
Transforming Impossible into Possible (TIP) for Financial Capability: Application of Practice-Based Program Theory and Measures in Intervention Design
Research on Social Work Practice
Purpose: Financial knowledge often does not translate into financial well-being. This study looks... more Purpose: Financial knowledge often does not translate into financial well-being. This study looks at how knowledge might be converted to well-being for people living in low-income environments, based on a theory called Financial PSS. Methods: The study tests the validity of the two scales that make up Financial PSS: Perceived Financial Barriers and Financial Hope. Then it examines how these measures along with an intervention measure called TIP are associated with financial capability. Results: Results validated the Perceived Financial Barrier Scale and Financial Hope Scale. Next, the study found that the Perceived Financial Barriers Scale and the Financial Hope Scale are associated with financial capability, as is the TIP score. Conclusions: The study concludes that Financial PSS as a newly applied practice-based theory should be further tested. Workforce providers could integrate financial education and empowerment-based F-PSS process models and see a positive impact on their plac...
Using an institutional logics approach, this study investigates how the institutional logics of l... more Using an institutional logics approach, this study investigates how the institutional logics of leaders of grassroots social service nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Russia changed over time and how these changes related to changes in organizational mission, people served, professionalization, and interactions with the government. Relying on interviews as well as other data gathered, this analysis of organizational leaders’ narratives reveals the identities and experiences that these leaders turn to in their sensemaking of significant events. The findings show that, on the one hand, social welfare NGOs continued to provide services, increased their advocacy efforts, and professionalized their staff. Volunteer organizations, on the other hand, discontinued provision of social services turning instead to the recruitment and development of volunteers. Theoretically, this empirical case illustrates how an interplay of factors at multiple levels can affect the expression of logics...
Strategies to Mitigate the Effects of Negative Political Rhetoric on Service Providers: A Study in Two Refugee-serving Organizations
Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 2021
This paper explores the strategies that staff at two refugee-serving organizations found helpful ... more This paper explores the strategies that staff at two refugee-serving organizations found helpful in mitigating their increased distress from negative political rhetoric aimed at their clients. Results point to the importance of organizational acknowledgment of the distress. Additionally, staff perceived that intentionally focused organizational interventions can mitigate the emotional impacts of negative rhetoric. Finally, strategies employees used to lessen their distress and regain a sense of efficacy included recommitment to the mission, advocacy for refugees among family and friends, strong reliance on religious faith in coping, and an avoidance of the rhetoric by decreasing engagement with news and social media.
We present an analysis of the distribution of Hα emission measures for the warm ionized medium (W... more We present an analysis of the distribution of Hα emission measures for the warm ionized medium (WIM) of the Galaxy using data from the Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper (WHAM) Northern Sky Survey. Our sample is restricted to Galactic latitudes |b| > 10 • . We removed sightlines intersecting nineteen high-latititude classical H II regions, leaving only sightlines that sample the diffuse WIM. The distribution of EM sin |b| for the full sample is poorly characterized by a single normal distribution, but is extraordinarily well fit by a lognormal distribution, with log EM sin |b|( pc cm -6 ) -1 = 0.146 ± 0.001 and standard deviation σ log EM sin |b| = 0.190 ± 0.001. log EM sin |b| drops from 0.260 ± 0.002 at Galactic latitude 10 < |b| < 30 to 0.038 ± 0.002 at Galactic latitude 60 < |b| < 90. The distribution may widen slightly at low Galactic latitude. We compare the observed EM distribution function to the predictions of three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations of isothermal turbulence within a non-stratified interstellar medium. We find that the distribution of EM sin |b| is well described by models of mildy supersonic turbulence with a sonic Mach number of ∼ 1.4 -2.4. The distribution is weakly sensitive to the magnetic field strength. The model also successfully predicts the distribution of dispersion measures of pulsars and Hα line profiles. In the best fitting model, the turbulent WIM occupies a vertical path length of 400 -500 pc within the 1.0 -1.8 kpc scale height of the layer. The WIM gas has a lognormal distribution of densities with a most probable electron density n pk ≈ 0.03 cm -3 . We also discuss the implications of these results for interpreting the filling factor, the power requirement, and the magnetic field of the WIM.
Provision of antipoverty and other social services by nonstate organizations is growing in import... more Provision of antipoverty and other social services by nonstate organizations is growing in importance in both the United States and the Russian Federation. Th e history of such provision in the United States may off er insights for the emerging system of nonstate provision in Russia. To illuminate these points, we provide historical overviews of both contexts and then we examine data from two surveys of social service organizations in the United States: the Multi-City Survey of Social Service Providers and the Rural Survey of Social Service Providers. We fi nd that nonstate actors strengthen social capital in poor neighborhoods and oft en link poor persons to public agencies. Nonstate actors strengthen other local institutions through programmatic partnerships and collaboration. However, fi nancing arrangements of nonstate welfare provision may favor effi ciency over concerns about equity, sustainability, and predictability. In addition, the primacy of nonstate provision leads to a welfare state that is more varied geographically than might be anticipated otherwise. Such variability appears to disadvantage highpoverty and predominately minority communities the most. Finally, politically, nonstate welfare provision may occur with little public discussion, debate, or refl ection as it evolves over time. Th ese fi ndings invoke important questions for Russian policy-makers as they seek to develop an equitable and effi cient means of providing assistance to their population.
Objective. We examine how low-income households have drawn upon public and charitable nonprofit s... more Objective. We examine how low-income households have drawn upon public and charitable nonprofit sources of social assistance during and after the Great Recession. Methods. Using panel survey data collected in the Detroit Metropolitan Area in 2008 and 2010, we explore the relationships between household characteristics, program use, and bundling of assistance. Results. Roughly twothirds of Detroit households within 300 percent of poverty received a public safety net benefit in the previous year; about 40 percent received assistance from more than one public program. More than one in six households received help from a nonprofit charity. Low educational attainment, unemployment, and health limitations are positively related to receipt of multiple public assistance programs. Conclusions. Our findings point to persistent needs among poor and near-poor households after the Great Recession, as well as to the reality that many low-income households draw upon multiple sources of public assistance even when working. Many low-income households remain detached from public and charitable sources of support even as the safety net has expanded in response to the downturn.
Economic shocks produced by the Great Recession have contributed to rising food insecurity, with ... more Economic shocks produced by the Great Recession have contributed to rising food insecurity, with 14.7 percent of U.S. households being food insecure in 2009, compared to 11.1 percent in 2007. At the same time, SNAP caseloads increased by nearly 60 percent since 2007 and the program now reaches more than 40 million persons. Using data from the first two waves of the Michigan Recession and Recovery Survey (MRRS), a unique panel survey of a representative sample of working-age adults in the Detroit Metropolitan Area, this project explores three research questions related to the receipt of SNAP among low-income households: How have low-income families in the Detroit Metropolitan Area bundled SNAP with other types of public assistance and help from charitable nonprofits in the wake of the Great Recession? When controlling for economic shocks and respondent characteristics, to what extent is access to local food assistance resources related to receipt of SNAP and charitable nonprofit food...
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Papers by Maria V Wathen
and how does political confidence mediate those relationships?
To answer this question, data were collected in 2020
through an original online survey of members of the U.S.-based
National Association of Social Workers (NASW). Informed by selfefficacy
theory, researchers conducted a structural equation modeling
(SEM) path model with political participation as the outcome
variable, and political confidence as a mediating variable.
Exogenous variables included: one’s self-reported political orientation,
belief that social work has a political mandate, gender, and
knowledge about how to effectively participate in politics. Results
indicate that high political confidence is associated with political
participation. Similarly, the belief that ‘the social work profession
has a political mandate’ is positively related to political participation,
both directly and indirectly through its positive association
with confidence. This study suggests that political knowledgebuilding
in curriculum and programming, while necessary, does
not sufficiently influence political participation. Instead, to support
a politically engaged social work profession, social work educators
and professional bodies ought to couple content about political
knowledge with political practice in ways that realistically increase
students’ political confidence and commitment to the idea that
social workers are mandated to engage in politics.