Michael Wolf-Branigin | George Mason University (original) (raw)

Papers by Michael Wolf-Branigin

Journal of Social Work Education, Jun 15, 2023

Journal of Down Syndrome & Chromosome Abnormalities, 2018

Background: Quality of Life (QOL) has been developing in the field of intellectual development di... more Background: Quality of Life (QOL) has been developing in the field of intellectual development disability since the early 1980s, and ever since there have been research, models, and theoretical constructs along with many recommendations. Ignored in its early development, QOL is now seen as important for support and intervention. Down syndrome is the most common occurring chromosomal condition-one in 700 babies in the USA is born with it. Limited research has been conducted to study quality of life of adults with DS. The present study aims to describe the quality of life of adults with DS in Virginia. Method: Qualitative approach was used to capture the "lived experience" from the perspective of those who live it and create meaning from it. This qualitative study investigated experts' and parents' thoughts and experiences of the adequacy of social service programs in Virginia which included health, rehabilitation, education, employment, and nutrition. Individual face-to-face or telephone interviews were conducted with five experts and five mothers of adult, aged 23 or older with DS. The interviews were analysed using content analysis. Results: Indicated that from a service program perspective (health, rehabilitation, education, employment, nutrition), there is a discrepancy between presented services and unmet needs, namely shelter housing, recreation programs and limitations of City-University Energy-saver (CUE) buses. Conclusion: Adults with DS are considered to have a low quality of life. This study illuminates four new insights yet there remain many challenges into acceptance, marriage, end of life and the present law concerning individuals with DS. The emerging question is: Does quality of life of adults with DS in Virginia depend on their acceptance into society, marriage, solving employment problems or the law on guardianship?

Handbook of Research Methods in Complexity Science

Human services planners and evaluators require an increasing high level of flexibility and adapta... more Human services planners and evaluators require an increasing high level of flexibility and adaptability to remain effective in measuring the effectiveness of social interventions. Understanding the logic and assessing the impact behind the intervention can be difficult because commonly-used evaluative tools are based primarily on linear methods that assume that a set amount of input, throughput, and output will result in a set outcome. This chapter takes a complexity science approach and facilitates the use of agent-based modelling (ABM). It provides the requisite background for evaluators and researchers to frame their efforts as complex adaptive systems. These systems have several components that include agents having options, boundaries, self-organising behaviour, different options from which to choose, feedback to adapt, and an emergent behaviour. Complexity is viewed as a mathematical field where the relations between inputs and are better understood through simulations. Both qualitative and quantitative aspects of complexity are addressed through two applications of ABM that consider related social policy issues.

Prior to a crisis situation, family members often state that they will not have a loved one place... more Prior to a crisis situation, family members often state that they will not have a loved one placed in a long-term care facility (nursing home care); however, when the situation arises, what enables some family members to hold true to this statement and others unable to follow through? This paper explores the complex decision-making process that family members may go through while caring for a loved one with dementia. Decisions may fluctuate as the challenges resulting from behavioral changes characteristic of different stages of dementia (specifically Alzheimer’s disease) occur. This paper combines system dynamic modeling and agent-based modeling to represent a notional model of older adults with dementia and their associated caregivers. A caregiving stress and coping paradigm and current
policy provisions are used to inform the decision-making process family members may experience while making the decision to become caregivers and maintain community-based caregiving responsibilities. Experimentation of different levels of relief showed that certain levels alleviate caregiver stress. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Previous reviews of person-centered planning indicate a need for more comprehensive training to p... more Previous reviews of person-centered planning indicate a need for more comprehensive training to promote skill generalization. A three-phase training intervention was implemented with 22 planning teams for people with a disability in the Detroit metropolitan area. Independent observers rated team meetings posttraining on consumer orientation regarding three components of person-centered planning: meeting structure, interpersonal skills, and planning strategies. Analyses of ratings indicated that structural skills were significantly more readily incorporated than either interpersonal or strategic skills. Exploratory analyses indicated that the number of family members, friends, and advocates at the planning meetings was positively correlated with planning strategies, while living arrangements were negatively correlated with planning strategies. Implications for the acquisition and generalization of more complex planning skills are discussed.

TRANSED 2010: 12th International Conference on Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled PersonsHong Kong Society for RehabilitationS K Yee Medical FoundationTransportation Research Board, 2010

This Conference Paper is brought to you for free and open access by Social Research in Transport ... more This Conference Paper is brought to you for free and open access by Social Research in Transport (SORT) Clearinghouse. It has been accepted for inclusion in Social Research in Transport (SORT) Clearinghouse by an authorized administrator of Social Research in Transport ( ...

TR News, 2012

T ravel training services can offer public transportation agencies an alternative to providing in... more T ravel training services can offer public transportation agencies an alternative to providing increasingly costly paratransit service to customers with disabilities. Research to understand the outcomes and financial implications of travel training services, however, has been scant. To address this issue, a cost-benefit model was tested to measure the value that travel training services can provide to transportation agencies.

Policy and complex systems, 2015

Caregivers providing support to family members with Alzheimer's disease often encounter high leve... more Caregivers providing support to family members with Alzheimer's disease often encounter high levels of stress within the fragmented long-term care system. To address this emerging issue affecting millions of families, we applied agent-based computational modeling methods to better understand the impacts of policy alternatives. Potential options include increased respite care, tax incentives, work place policies, and adult day services as alternatives to reduce caregiver stress. Experiments with our model demonstrate that policy options providing programs, services, and support for caregivers can reduce their stress by providing a minimum of 16 hours per week of respite care.

Child & Family Social Work

CoMSES Computational Model Library, 2015

Each year, older adults and caregivers get a year older and, in the case of the older adults, the... more Each year, older adults and caregivers get a year older and, in the case of the older adults, their health generally declines and there is an increase in the number of activities of daily living (ADLs) that they cannot perform on their own. Caregivers may be family members, professionals, or institutions and the capacity of family members to provide care generally declines with time. Only family members serving as caregivers are modeled as agents. The other caregivers are only represented by counts. When the care recipient’s needs exceed the capacity of their current associated caregiver, changes in the care giving must be made. The focus of this model is coping with the stresses by the caregivers and the decision-making involved in changing the caregiving conditions.

Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 2021

Educators of social justice continually seek new tools to encourage learning. Music recordings an... more Educators of social justice continually seek new tools to encourage learning. Music recordings and their lyrics provide an innovative means for learning about the emergence of social concerns and e...

Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved. Differing Priorities of Counselors and Customers to a Cons... more Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved. Differing Priorities of Counselors and Customers to a Consumer Choice Model in Rehabilitation Michael Wolf-Branigin Michael Daeschlein Wayne State University Barbara Cardinal United Cerebral Palsy of Metropolitan Detroit Mary Twiss Michigan ...

Social Work Christianity, 2010

As social service organizations develop capacity to address human trafficking, the foci remain pr... more As social service organizations develop capacity to address human trafficking, the foci remain preliminarily on linear approaches of prosecuting traffickers, providing emergency shelter, and forging service partnerships. The potential for change vis-a-vis ...

Social Work Research, 2011

Measurement of nonlinearity in social service research and evaluation relies primarily on spatial... more Measurement of nonlinearity in social service research and evaluation relies primarily on spatial analysis and, to a lesser extent, social network analysis. Recent advances in geographic methods and computing power, however, allow for the greater use of simulation methods. These advances now enable evaluators and researchers to simulate complex adaptive systems (CASs) by applying agent-based modeling (ABM). CASs reflect the interactions of competitive and cooperative tendencies found in agents. ABM simulations create and test generated observable patterns using the fewest number of plausible decision rules and agents. This primer presents essential concepts for understanding ABM as social service applications of complexity theory shift from a metaphorical perspective to a formalized evaluation method. Further developments in ABM methods need to focus on concepts emanating from the study of complexity science, including the concepts of the wisdom of groups, strengths found in diverse perspectives, robustness, interconnectedness, sustainability, and conflict and cooperation. Appropriate software programs for developing and testing agent-based models are provided.

A spatial analytic methodology incorporating true locations is demonstrated using Monte Carlo sim... more A spatial analytic methodology incorporating true locations is demonstrated using Monte Carlo simulations as a comple-ment to current psychometric and quality of life indices for measuring community inclusion. Moran 'sl,a measure of spatial autocorrelation, is used to determine spatial dependencies in housing patterns for multiple variables, including family/friends involvement in future planning, home size, and earned income. Simulations revealed no significant spa-tial autocorrelation, which is a socially desirable result for housing locations for people with disabilities. Assessing the absence of clustering provides a promising methodology for measuring community inclusion.

Complexity theory provides a promising approach in social work education as researchers and educa... more Complexity theory provides a promising approach in social work education as researchers and educators begin examining and quantifying the concepts of non-linearity and emergence. This paper introduces several components of complexity theory and discusses various statistical methods to consider when measuring contributions from each of these components. While social work research typically relies on group comparisons, complexity theory provides a broad framework for structuring and investigating social work phenomena. These applications include understanding how social movements emerged to viewing the interdependencies of communities.

Travel training services for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) customers who use paratransit ... more Travel training services for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) customers who use paratransit services is a means of reducing transportation agency costs by equipping and encouraging these customers to travel on the fixed-route system. This article describes a cost-benefit model that was tested to measure the value that travel training services can provide to transportation agencies.