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To date, most researchers concerned with chronic community violence have studied children, and focused on the types, extent, and effects of their violence experiences. In contrast, using a series of in-depth repeated interviews, the current study explored African American women’s methods for coping with chronic community violence. This article describes the variety of ways these women developed to avoid, minimize, or manage their own and their children’s encounters with community violence. It argues for the importance of using these data to inform professional intervention and suggests specific implications for practice, program development, and policy.

Despite the social work profession's strengths orientation, research on its workforce tends to focus on problems (for example, depression, problem drinking, compassion fatigue, burnout). In contrast, this study explored ways in which social workers find joy in their work. The authors used an appreciative inquiry approach, semistructured interviews (N = 26), and a collaborative grounded theory method of analysis. Participants identified interpersonal (making connections and making a difference) and intrapersonal (making meaning and making a life) sources of joy and reflected significant personal initiative in the process of finding joy. The authors present findings regarding these intrapersonal sources of joy.

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Social workers in diverse community practice settings recruit and work with volunteers from religious congregations. This article reports findings from two surveys: 7,405 congregants in 35 Protestant congregations, including 2,570 who were actively volunteering, and a follow-up survey of 946 volunteers. It compares characteristics of congregation volunteers and nonvolunteers.Volunteers tended to be married, older, more highly educated, longer-term congregational members, and to score higher on all measures of faith maturity and faith practice than did nonvolunteers.Volunteers perceived their involvement as meaningful, important, and challenging. A large majority of volunteers (80 percent) reported changes in faith, attitudes and values, and behavior as results of their volunteer work. Findings provide insights into how religious individuals begin and continue to volunteer in service settings and how congregations promote high levels of community service among their members. These findings have implications for effective social work practice with congregation volunteers.

Reciprocity, a core component of social capital, is rarely theorized or measured leaving the relationship between reciprocity and health ambiguous. Historically, reciprocity measures have not been used in the context they were designed causing measurement error. This multi-phased study was designed to develop and validate a reciprocity measure for formal and informal groups within communities and congregations as part of a more comprehensive social capital measure. In-depth interviews (n = 72), cognitive interviews (n = 40), and an expert review panel guided item development and selection for content validity. South Carolina residents (n = 500) completed the 10-item Reciprocity of Social Support (RSS) Scale during 2008-2010. Construct validity was supported through an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) that confirmed a two-factor model for the scale for community-and congregation-based groups. Cronbach's α values indicated items were highly correlated for community groups and church groups. Psychometric analyses of the RSS Scale support convergent and divergent validity for the community-and congregation-based groups. Mean RSS Scale scores were not statistically different between communityand congregation-based groups. This scale has proven psychometric properties for utilization in future research investigating reciprocity of social support in community-and congregation-based groups and will be useful to examine whether reciprocity (by context and type of group) is associated with physical and/or mental health. Keywordsresearch methods, social sciences, data collection, research methodology and design, reliability and validity, measurement and scaling methods, health psychology, applied psychology, psychology, sociology of mental health, sociology of health and illness by guest on June 4, 2016 Downloaded from

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