Reducing the pain, healing the wound or breaking the cycle: Organizational approaches to alcoholism prevention.
Item
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Title
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Reducing the pain, healing the wound or breaking the cycle: Organizational approaches to alcoholism prevention.
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Identifier
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AAI9315449
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identifier
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9315449
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Creator
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Bush, Irene Rubenstein.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Irwin Epstein
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Date
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1993
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Social Work | Sociology, Public and Social Welfare | Education, Health
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Abstract
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Prevention has failed to adequately capture the imagination of social workers as an area worthy of theory building, education and practice. This study seeks to identify organizational factors that are key to defining alcoholism prevention in social work and to implementing alcoholism prevention programs. It employs a comparative case study methodology and ideal type analysis to determine how prevention was conceptualized and implemented in three prototypical social agencies. In addition to agency observation and use of available documents, focused interviews were conducted with eighteen administrators, professionals and other agency staff. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed and extensive verbatim quotes were used to generate and report the findings.;The overall analytic framework for this study is systems theory in organizations (contingency modeling) in conjunction with prevention theory from public health and social work. Key organizational dimensions were revealed through the interview process. The variations in these dimensions and in the definitions of prevention were the foundation for creation of a descriptive taxonomy of "ideal type" agencies at three different levels of conceptualization and implementation of prevention technologies and strategies. These are an Ameliorative Prevention Approach, a Reactive Prevention Approach and a Proactive Prevention Approach.;These different approaches to prevention are closely related to differential commitments to social change. Perspectives on work with the disadvantaged, social workers' commitment to such work, and possibilities for social change were also explored. Finally, implications of the study for social work education and practice, policy and research were discussed.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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D.S.W.
