Research
Social Work faculty members at the University of New Hampshire are actively engaged in research that informs their teaching, enhances client services, and contributes valuable knowledge to the profession. Our faculty’s research findings are regularly published in leading social work journals, including Social Work, Administration in Social Work, Children & Schools, and the Journal of Gerontological Social Work. Here are some of our latest research projects:
Mary Banach, DSW, is examining the effectiveness of Follow-up Services for families who receive a diagnosis (autism spectrum or other neurological challenge) from a child development clinic (the Seacoast Clinic specifically). This has been approved by the IRB and is a continuation of research initiated last year. She has also been examining how participation in Follow-up Services affects interdisciplinary training. This is also a continuation of research initiated last year. The results of this research will be presented in a poster at the CSWE annual program meeting.
L. Rene Bergeron, PhD, researches practitioners’ responses to elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation. She has conducted research on the state and national level, and used case files, to examine the multidisciplinary approaches and practice dilemmas of servicing abused elders in community settings. Currently she is collaborating on a survey to examine the abuse reporting practices of group facilitators of caregiver to elderly support groups.
Anne Broussard, PhD, has several research interests, including structural inequities in academic settings, health care inequities for at-risk children, adolescents, and women and the family poverty context. In 2006, she had three articles published in social work journals. “Using Youth Advocates for Mentoring At-Risk Students in Urban Settings,” on which she collaborated with an educational psychologist and a teacher educator. This article appeared in Children and Schools. A paper entitled “School Social Workers’ Perceptions of Graduate Education Preparation” (with Drs. Karen Slovak and Alfred Joseph), also appeared in Children and Schools. “Men’s Adjustment to Their Partner’s Breast Cancer,” completed with Dr. Barry Feldman, appeared in Health and Social Work. Currently she and Dr. Patrick Shannon have a paper out for review and a second underway that address the self-perceived needs of adolescents with chronic and severe health concerns. She is reviewing the literature on life-course transitions in single parent families for a paper in progress and is immersed in a book project entitled Family Poverty in Diverse Contexts, scheduled for publication by Haworth Press in 2007.
Vernon Brooks Carter, PhD, is working on research relevant to the removal of Native American and Alaskan Native (NA/AI) children, which has been a concern for child welfare workers and policy makers for many years. The numbers of NA/AI children in out of home care is significantly greater when compared to Non Indian children. This disproportion of NA/AI children in out-of-home care has persisted almost 30 years after the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA) of which a major objective was to decrease the number of NA/AI being placed into the foster care system(Donald, 2003). There is very little in the literature looking at this issue on the national level. The focus of his current research is to examine this problem by conducting a secondary analysis of a national dataset. dataset (The National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW)).
Dr. Robert Jolley has a longstanding interest in adoption. In particular, he has explored the cognitive, behavioral and emotional adjustment of adopted children and their families. His most recent interest is the impact of adoption on late adolescence and young adulthood as people who are adopted leave families of origin and seek to establish themselves in jobs, homes and families of their own. Dr. Jolley also continues to serve as the principal investigator for a Child Welfare Training Grant in conjunction with, and supported by, the NH Division of Children Youth and Families to provide trained social workers at both the baccalaureate and masters levels for employment in public child welfare offices in the State.
Susan Lord, Ph.D., LICSW, conducts research on trauma, long-term psychotherapy and issues such as practice-based evidence vs. evidence-based practice, and has also focused her research on the culture of philanthropy and issues of social stratification and social justice. In 2007 she had two articles, “Systemic work with clients diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder” and “Meditative Dialogue: A tool for engaging students in collaborative learning processes” published in the Journal of Family Therapy, and recently submitted an article entitled “Trauma, revictimization and perpetration: Bearing witness, offering hope, embracing despair” for publication. She currently is working on research on the use of Meditative Dialogue in the creation of sacred space in psychotherapy. She is also in the process of conducting research on what social workers actually do in private practice, examining populations served, length of treatment, fees charged, and treatment approaches.
Jerry Marx, Ph.D. is working on a textbook entitled: Introduction to Social Work and Social Welfare for Pearson Education Publishing. He is also working with Dr. Vernon Brooks Carter on a manuscript entitled: “Hispanic Charitable Giving” for the journal, Nonprofit Management & Leadership.. This manuscript follows another philanthropy article published in 2007 with Dr. Carter entitled: “What motivates African-Americancharitable giving: Findings from a national sample.” This paper appeared in Administration In Social Work, 31 (1), pages 67-85.
Sharon Murphy, Ph.D., LICSW is currently focusing her research on domestic and sexual violence. Titles of current research projects are: Complex Personhood as the Context for Domestic Violence Victimization and Offending: One American Indian Woman’s Story, Sexual Assault Survivors and the Criminal Justice Response, a collaborative project with faculty from the departments of psychology, sociology, women's studies and SHARPP; Human Sex Trafficking: An Exploratory Study, a collaborative project with the NH Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence; and Faces of Fear: A Hermeneutic Analysis of Sexual Assault Survivor Experiences, a collaborative project with faculty from Women's Studies and Psychology. In addition to teaching and research, Dr Murphy provides expert testimony on domestic violence in criminal and civil cases.
Karen Oil, MSW, along with Dr. Sharyn Zunz, is examining the experiences of international students in field internships in U.S. social work schools. Karen is Graduate Social Work Field Director at UNH.
Melissa Wells, Ph.D., LICSW, is interested in understanding adolescent victimization, both within family systems and over the Internet. She is currently working with the New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth and Families on a longitudinal analysis of adolescents’ length of stay in foster care. Additionally, she and Kimberly Mitchell at the UNH Crimes Against Children Research Center are collaborating on a series of papers regarding the problematic Internet issues coming to the attention of mental health professionals. She serves as the program evaluator for the UNH/DCYF Child Welfare Training Project and is the Evaluation Coordinator for the Department of Social Work.
Anita Tucker, PhD, LICSW, continues to pursue her goal of educating and informing the field of social work about the practice of adventure based therapy. She is currently involved in a survey research project with the aim of gathering information from social workers nationwide about the utilization of adventure based practices in clinical settings. In addition, she has been collaborating with other professional social workers in creating a tool for helping clinicians who engage in adventure therapy measure their level of treatment adherence or integrity and is writing a professional paper on this topic which has been accepted to be presented this fall at the Association for Experiential Education’s Annual International Conference in Little Rock, AK.
Dr. Sharyn Zunz just returned from a sabbatical semester during which she researched the post-secondary educational system for foster care youth in the three Northern New England States. Mailed questionnaires were sent to over 200 service providers in Maine, Vermont & New Hampshire and 11 in-person, in-depth interviews were conducted. The results have been analyzed and are in the process of being completing for a 40 page report of the findings. Melissa Wells assisted with the data analysis and they will be presenting the findings from this study at a national conference in October. They are also in the process of writing journal articles from the data and will be presenting the results at other local and national venues in 2008.
She also completed a study in conjunction with Karen Oil on issues surrounding field internships for international students enrolled in MSW programs in non-urban areas. She has also partnered with Mary Banach in resubmitting an article based on their findings from a study comparing traditional MSW programs to ones that are offered in “executive formats” (like the UNHM week-end program). They presented the findings from this study at last year’s CSWE conference.
Melissa Wells, PhD, current research continues to examine issues related to adolescent victimization, both within families and over the Internet. She and Sharyn Zunz are currently writing up the results of their study of post-secondary and vocational challenges for youth aging out of the foster care systems in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. This study focused on utilization of a specific federally-funded source of post-secondary support, Chafee Educational and Training Voucher (ETV) funds. The study involved two primary components, a mail survey of child welfare workers, post-secondary professionals and other providers to assess their understanding and utilization of Chafee ETV, and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders in all three states to obtain more thorough understanding of this topic. She continues her research on older adolescents’ transition from out-of-home care to post-secondary opportunities this academic year. She continues to partner with Kimberly Mitchell at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at UNH on several projects related to online victimization of adolescents.