published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

Föreliggande studie har genom kvalitativ forskning med utgång i systemteorin syftat till att kartlägga den enskilda missbrukarens väg till missbruksbehandling. Tre semistrukturerade intervjuer har genomförts och sedermera analyserats. Missbrukare utgör en särskild kategori i socialtjänstlagen. Därtill står det att finna i lagrum 3 kap 1 § (SFS 2001:453) att socialtjänsten genom uppsökande verksamhet ska göra sig väl förtrogen med levnadsförhållandena i kommunen. Därtill även informera om socialtjänsten i kommunen och genom uppsökande verksamhet och på annat sätt främja förutsättningarna för goda levnadsförhållanden. Resultat har påvisat att det i första hand är missbrukarens anhöriga som stöttar dem till kontaktsökande vad gällande behandling. Studien har därtill även påvisat att missbrukaren i första hand inte vänt sig till socialtjänsten utan sökt sig till andra instanser. Respondenterna i studien har samtliga haft enskilda agendor vad gällande uppnådd drogfrihet. Vad som dock förefallit signifikant bland deltagarna har varit en strävan om bättre relationer med sin familj. Ytterligare en av studiens slutsatser är att socialtjänsten bör utöka sin informationsspridning till kommuninvånare om att missbruksbehandling finns att tillgå och hur hjälpen är utformad. / The present study has the qualitative research with the output of systems theory aimed to identify the individual abuser path to addiction treatment. Three semi-structured interviews have been conducted and subsequently analyzed. Addicts constitute a special category in the Social Services Act. In addition, it is to be found in the section of the law Chapter 3, 1 § (SFS 2001: 453) that the social outreach should make themselves familiar with the living conditions in the municipality. In addition, also provide information on social services in the municipality and through outreach activities and other means to promote conditions for good living conditions. Results have demonstrated that it is primarily the abuser's family members who support them to contact applicants as current treatment. The study has also revealed that although the addict in the first place not turned to social services, but turned to other instances. Respondents in the study all had individual agendas as applicable achieved abstinence. What, however, seemed significant among the participants has been a quest for better relationships with their family. Another of the study's conclusions is that social services should expand its dissemination of information to local residents about drug treatment are available and how the aid is designed.

American cities have proliferated in the post-War era. More than 2,000 new cities were founded between 1950 and 2000. While the history of the local government boom has been documented, research into urban fragmentation has explored why there is no consolidation of metropolitan areas rather than exploring why Americans chose fragmentation initially. This dissertation proposes that individuals create new jurisdictions because individuals prefer to have governments which give them the services individuals desire, even if they could have similar (but not perfect) services cheaper in a larger jurisdiction. Individuals, however, must balance the benefit they get from better fitting cities with the price they must pay to live within the small cities. In the first part of the dissertation, I synthesize the literatures on urban governance and fragmentation with the literature on interest groups. This synthesis builds the argument for conceiving cities as interest groups and contributes a theory of urban behavior as the behavior of organized interest groups. I argue that urban fragmentation should exist anywhere there are urban areas –not only metropolises –and that fragmentation is produced by diversity in the population and constrained by the resources available for the formation of cities. In the second part of the dissertation, I analyze the fragmentation of both metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas to determine what drives fragmentation. I use Poisson regression on 2-period panel data from 1992 and 2002 collected from various public sources. I find that there are differences in the forms of fragmentation in the metropolis and the non-metropolis. In both types of urban settlement, fragmentation is driven by political and population diversity and available resources for forming cities. Legal authority and intergovernmental revenue are particularly important. Finally, I turn my attention to cities’ interactions with each other. I use a survey of Kentucky mayors, fielded with the Kentucky League of Cities, to determine why mayors of different cities to communicate with each other. Using specialized network methods I find that mayor-to-mayor contact is not based on goal and interest similarities as expected, but rather depends on sharing an organization which encourages communication –an Area Development District.

To better understand the effect of emotions on formal and informal interactions in the workplace, I focus on emotional dynamics, the exchange and experience of emotions occurring within repeated interpersonal interactions. Emotional Ability (EA; how individuals perceive, use, understand, and manage their own or others’ emotions) is a key component in emotional dynamics. Specifically, I focus on the role of EA on individuals’ choices of coworkers for gaining emotional support (the receipt of empathy, caring, trust, and concern), and in turn, their occupational well-being and task performance. In addition, I investigate the “ripple effects” of EA, how the EA of focal actors may benefit others in the network. The value of Emotional Ability is thus in reaching beyond the individual’s(ego’s) benefit to extend to others (alters) who are tied to ego, in turn benefiting the entire social network (group of actors) and ultimately contributing to the organization’s emotional health. I further investigate possible moderators of the EA-benefits relationship: relationship perceived emotional competence (as assessed by others), emotional self-efficacy (individuals’ beliefs in their own EA) and empathic concern (propensity to experience feelings of warmth, compassion and concern for others). This study is part of a larger research agenda to develop an affective relational theory (ART) to examine how emotional dynamics affect relational dynamics in organizations.

The field of heritage language maintenance lacks an in-depth look at the social networks that make-up the linguistic interaction of heritage speakers of Spanish. Moreover, the social network studies that have focused on language maintenance have all investigated the maintenance of a first language spoken by immigrants or the use of a dialect. Undoubtedly, there is a lacuna of research with regard to heritage speakers of a language, which is the focus of the proposed study. There is an even greater deficit in the study of linguistic insecurity among heritage language speakers and the correlation that there may be with regard to social networks. The present research fills this gap by examining these issues within a population of heritage speakers of Spanish at the University of Arizona.This study examines correlations between linguistic insecurity, social networks and language use in heritage speakers of Spanish. The population investigated are college aged students registered in the beginning and intermediate courses of the Heritage Language Program at the University of Arizona, Tucson (SPAN 103, 203, and 253). Linguistic insecurity is measured using an adapted version of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope, 1986) and language use is measured through an online questionnaire. The subjects' social networks are identified using an adapted on-line version of the Cochran, Larner, Riley, Gunnarson, & Henderson's (1990) social network questionnaire. This study details the social networks of heritage language speakers of Spanish and presents the correlation between these networks, the participants' use of Spanish and their linguistic insecurity in a discussion regarding the speakers' prospects of maintaining the heritage language. Secondly, it presents correlations between the linguistic insecurity of heritage language speakers of Spanish, Spanish language use, oral proficiency and social network structure. The information provided by this study will help in the understanding of the function of social networks in the maintenance of a heritage language. It will further assist in the understanding of linguistic insecurity and provide a foundation for further research into how to address linguistic insecurity in the heritage language classroom.

This study examined the college student experience from a student perspective. The conceptual framework of Strauss' negotiated order was used to examine the relationship between structure and process in organizational settings. The ways in which students linked their immediate and larger social worlds were examined as an element in the adjustive processes of the organization. The data consisted of time activity reports, unstructured interviews, and a shadowing experience with a small sample of middle-class Mexican-American students at the University of Arizona. Content analysis of the data was conducted across three dimensions of "Making It On Campus"; Making the Grade, Making It With Others, and Making Money. Findings indicated that students perceived their experience from a generalized goal of becoming "On Your Own." Student coping strategies across the three areas of Making It became shared patterns of activities centered around attempts to organize their world, assert some control, and develop independence and autonomy.

This research applied the social network approach to unveil the social structure underlying the members of two traditional irrigation systems (TISs) in Sonora. This research used two TIS case studies representing rural communities located in arid and semiarid lands in the Sonoran Desert region, in the northwestern part of Mexico. The irrigators represented a subset of rural villages where everyone knew everyone else. The theoretical framework in this study suggested that social embeddedness of the economic activities of TIS irrigators is an important factor supporting their local institutions. Irrigators who are socially embedded posses more social capital that help them in overcoming social dilemmas. Evidence of social embeddedness is theoretically incomplete when not related to a tangible dimension of the TIS's performance. This research also dealt with the difficulty of assessing the sustainability or successfulness of a TIS. The results showed that the irrigators sharing a rural village are entangled in a mesh of social ties developed in different social settings. The most salient variable was family; cooperative ties within the irrigation system tend to overlap more than the expected by chance with kinship relationships. Likewise, irrigators had a strong preference for peers geographically close or those within the same irrigation subsector. Finally, the qualitative part of the study did not reveal the presence of severe social dilemmas. Irrigators in each community have developed successful forms of local arrangements to overcome the provision and appropriation issues typical of common pool resources. Nevertheless, the qualitative analysis revealed that there are other socioeconomic variables undermining the sustainability of the systems, such as migration, water shortages and social capacity of the systems.