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The need for a variety of practice approaches and practice activities for social workers in the schools is a priority. The purpose of the current exploratory-descriptive study was to examine the roles of school social workers (N = 378) and the ways these roles change in different school employment settings and with different caseload sizes. Predictors of the types of practice approaches and practice activities used in different school employment settings and with different caseload sizes were identified. The population of Louisiana school social workers who participated in the study completed an online or mailed survey regarding their practice of school social work. Ordered logit analyses were conducted to determine which variables predicted the use of certain practice approaches and practice activities. Findings show that caseload size had the most significant impact on practice approaches and practice activities. Additional findings regarding specific employment setting and demographic variables also showed significance. Implications for social work practice, education, and research will be discussed.

Why has the relationship between partisan identification and Americans' trade attitudes shifted in recent years? We suggest that recent shifts in trade attitudes among partisans are driven by Donald Trump, who staked out a position on trade that is at odds with the position on trade traditionally held by Republicans. Using panel data from the Voter Study Group (VSG) surveys from 2011, 2016, and 2017, we conduct cross‐sectional analyses showing that the relationship between partisanship and trade attitudes has shifted dramatically from 2011 to 2016/2017; in 2011, Republicans were significantly more supportive of expanded trade, but by 2016/2017 the relationship had reversed, with Democrats significantly more supportive of trade. We link changes over time in trade attitudes with how Americans evaluate Trump: individuals with favorable attitudes toward Donald Trump are significantly more likely to shift their attitudes in an antitrade direction from 2011 to 2016. Because so many more Republicans have favorable attitudes toward Trump, the aggregate effect of Trump favorability is to shift Republicans as a group to be less favorable toward trade than Democrats. We suggest that Donald Trump has had a transformative effect on Americans' trade attitudes, with previous supporters (opponents) of expanded trade now expressing opposing (supporting) attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has documented how political scientists evaluate and rank scholarly journals, but the evaluation and ranking of scholarly book publishers has drawn less attention. In this article, we use data from a survey of 603 American political scientists to generate a ranking of scholarly publishers in political science. We used open-ended questions to ask respondents to identify those scholarly publishers (1) to which they would submit "a very strong book manuscript" in their area of expertise, and (2) that they "read regularly or otherwise rely for the best research" in their area of expertise. Based on these results, we created rankings of scholarly presses based on publication and reading preferences. We find that certain high-profile university presses constitute a clear first tier in American political scientists' preference orderings, followed by a mix of university and commercial presses that represent the second tier and beyond. Moreover, we confirm the validity of our approach by comparing the results of our rankings (based on open-ended questions) with results from previous research based on respondents' evaluations and derived from close-ended lists of scholarly presses. Our results demonstrate that the rankings of scholarly publishers are similar for both approaches. These rankings can be used to guide political scientists as they decide where to send their best book-length work.

In this article we report the results from a new survey of political scientists regarding their evaluations of journals in the political science discipline. Unlike previous research that has focused on data from the United States, we conducted an Internet survey of political scientists in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. We present data on journal evaluations, journal familiarity, and journal impact, both for our entire sample (N = 1,695) and separately for respondents from each of the three countries. We document the overall hierarchy of scholarly journals among political scientists, though we find important similarities and differences in how political scientists from these three countries evaluate the scholarly journals in the discipline. Our results suggest that there is a strong basis for cross-national integration in scholarly journal communication, though methodological differences among the three countries may be an impediment.

Developed and tested a model of roll-call voting by U.S. senators on a cloture motion relating to the Parental and Medical Leave Act of 1988. Senate roll-call voting was found to be dominated by policy liberalism and party, whereas the impact of contextual demand variables was relatively minor and indirect, and votes could be accurately predicted. (LLL)

Zimmerman may be correct in asserting that welfare spending and divorce rates are either unrelated or inversely related. However, future research efforts should take advantage of methodological innovations such as pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis, and develop a more comprehensive indicator of states' social integration levels. (LLL)