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Social work programs are expected to provide students with the research knowledge, skills, and applications they can use in their practice to develop interventions and evaluate their own practice effectiveness. Based on CSWE's Curriculum Policy Statement and Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards, a rationale for and a model incorporating practice evaluation and research with the field practicum are described here. Several issues concerning implementation, such as alleviating student fears and enlisting agency support as well as the authors' experience incorporating practice research in the field practicum, are presented and discussed.

In January 1987, Kenosha County, Wisconsin implemented its work experience and job training program, a prototype job opportunities and basic skills training (JOBS) program. Kenosha's program requires participation, has broad coverage, and is relatively expensive. This article reports findings on the impacts the program has on aid to families with dependent children (AFDC) spells. The evaluation used administrative welfare data and an event history analysis. Findings suggest that Kenosha's program has no affect on AFDC-Basic spell lengths, has a positive impact on AFDC-Basic cases headed by never-married black teenagers, and has a negative impact on A FDC-Unemployed Parent cases.

One of the major social problems in sub-Saharan Africa today is teenage pregnancy. In this article, the authors test a model based on modernization theories that attempt to explain the widespread prevalence of teenage sexual activity in African countries such as Zambia. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Students were randomly selected from seven secondary schools in two Zambian cities, Lusaka and Kitwe. There were 527 adolescent respondents in the sample. Results of this study do not support modernization theories of teen sexual activity. In addition, the authors find that traditional institutions such as initiation ceremonies continue to influence sexual activity levels. These findings raise interesting questions for future investigations.

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This article presents an overview of how an event history analysis can be used to evaluate social welfare programs' impacts on events and the timing of events. An overview of event history analysis is presented, including a discussion of events and spells, hazards, censoring, duration intervals, longitudinal databases, design issues, and life table and multivariate analysis techniques. The article concludes with an example of how an event history analysis was used to evaluate the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program.A goal of many social welfare programs is to change people's behavior. They attempt to change behaviors such as child and spouse abuse, drunken driving, substance abuse, suicides, moving into poverty, becoming unemployed, and so on. The list of intended changed behaviors is as long and varied as the list of practice areas and programs.Many of the intended impacts have one thing in common, however. They intend to reduce, to eliminate, to increase, or to encourage the occurrence of an event. The purpose of a child abuse prevention program is to eliminate or reduce the incidence of child abuse. Suicide prevention programs attempt to reduce the incidence of suicide. Employment programs attempt to have people obtain employment. All of these programs focus on events and whether the event occurs. An event marks the occurrence of a qualitative change. The timing of such qualitative changes and the duration of time through which they persist have long been of concern to social work practitioners and program evaluators. In fact, enabling and sustaining desirable behaviors over time is a fundamental social work objective. Until recently, social workers have lacked adequate methodological tools to examine qualitative changes or events over time. Within the last few years researchers have begun to use an &dquo;event history&dquo; analysis technique to

In response to the greater need for professionally educated Bachelor of Social Work social workers to work with older adults, a multipronged approach was developed and implemented to infuse gerontology content into the undergraduate social work curriculum at a large state university in Texas. Efforts were made to help ensure that curricular and organizational changes would be sustained for the long term. These initiatives were funded by and were part of the national Hartford Geriatric Enrichment in Social Work Education Program. A quasiexperimental evaluation was conducted involving four cohorts of social work students. Findings demonstrate success in changing students' 1) career aspirations, 2) perceptions of faculty's knowledge of issues concerning older adults, 3) perceptions of their own knowledge of issues concerning older adults, and 4) perceptions of older adults.

Analysts and program evaluators have rightly focused on the impact policies have on participants achieving programs' goals and objectives. Yet a potentially neglected aspect of these analyses is the impact policies themselves have on who is initially eligible to participate in the programs and the impact policy parameters have on the length of time people participate in the program. This article reports the findings of a study on the length of time families receive AFDC (now TANF) benefits in two counties in a high benefit state, Wisconsin, between 1987 and 1989 and a low benefit state, Texas, from mid-1989 through 1992 and the influence the states' maximum benefits have on who is eligible to receive benefits and how families lose eligibility. Results of a life table analysis indicate that families in Texas receive benefits over significantly less time. However, results of a multivariate analysis indicate that when selected personal and familial attributes are held constant, the difference disappears. Copyright 2002 by The Policy Studies Organization.