1,721,002 research outputs found
Working with people experiencing homelessness
Get PDFThis thesis starts with an analysis of attempts to define and solve the homelessness, with a focus on service delivery in Europe and the widespread transition from the Traditional Services (TS) to the Housing First model (HF) that is changing providers’ work. Few studies are focused on social providers’ prospective and factors affecting their work and there are not standardized instruments to analyze their working context.
Then, Study 1 aimed to understand how social providers, working in HF or TS, describe the goals and the principles of their services, considering the importance of belief system in the implementation of a new working model, such as HF. The data were collected through 29 focus group discussions involving 121 providers in eight European countries. Regardless of the kind of service they worked in, providers indicated that their main goal was to support clients with integration, basic needs (food, shower, health), housing requirements, and well-being.
Results of the Study 1 showed that providers in both types of services had the goal of clients’ integration. Given the unclear meaning of the construct in the literature about it, Study 2 aimed to explore the feelings associated with ‘integration’ from the point of view of people experiencing homelessness. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 26 people in Italian homeless services. Feelings clustered in three spheres: the intrapersonal sphere refers to feelings that exist within a person, such as dignity and freedom; the interpersonal sphere includes feelings that emerge from interactions with other people, such as respect; and the societal sphere involves the sense of usefulness and responsibility.
Moreover, it seems relevant to analyze the working context of the providers to facilitate the achievement of service’s goals. For this reason, Study 3 aimed to explore which services’ characteristics affect the work of social providers by examining differences between workers in HF and TS teams in a cross-national study. Data were collected through Photovoice projects with social providers. Overall, 17 Photovoice projects were conducted, involving 81 participants in eight European countries. The results showed factors influencing providers’ work at three levels: systemic (e.g.: institutional attitude, structural features); organizational (e.g. support among colleagues, vision); individual (e.g.: clients’ problems, balance in relationships with clients). Results for TS and HF providers were similar, however TS providers identified more obtacles.
Finally, in order to compare and measure strengths and weaknesses of homeless services, Study 4 aimed to develop a questionnaire (the SErvice PROviders’ Questionnaire – SE-PRO Q) identifying organizations’ profiles. The questionnaire was created basing on the qualitative results of photovoice projects (Study 3) and it was combined with providers’ stress and well-being dimensions (burnout and work engagement). SE-PRO Q was administered to 569 social providers in 8 European countries. Through a Confirmatory Factor Analysis, SE PRO Q 24 version resulted; showing promising fit indexes and correlations to providers’ burn-out and work engagement.
Overall, this thesis had the opportunity to ‘fill in’ missing pieces in our knowledge on the ecology of homelessness with a cross-national prospective and with an ecological approach. Implications of the results are discussed as suggestions to promote services facilitating work of social providers and integration of people experiencing homelessness
In My New Home: The Daily Lives of People Living in Public Houses after a Long Period of Homelessness
Get PDFHomelessness refers to a loss of social relationships and a condition of isolation and stigma that affects a person's well-being. Although the literature has revealed the crucial role of a home in a person's well-being, few studies have explored the daily lives of people who transition from homeless services to an independent home. People who experience homelessness are at risk of remaining connected to homeless services even after finding a home. This study aimed to explore the daily lives of people who have obtained public housing, focusing on their daily relationships and the places they frequent. Data were collected through interviews with quantitative and qualitative measures involving 14 people with a history of homelessness who had obtained a public house in a medium-sized Italian city. Several themes concerning social relationships and places were identified. Regarding social relationships, people experience loneliness or a connection with the community and homeless services. They spend their time alone at home or around the city. The implications of the results are discussed with respect to practice and research on homelessness
“It is not necessary to organize a trip to the moon”: a mixed method study with mentors in the Italian Mentor-UP program during the COVID-19 pandemic
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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