Value (ethics)

About: Value (ethics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 21347 publications have been published within this topic receiving 461372 citations.

Putting the Value Framework to Work

Abstract: An increasing number of health care delivery organizations now describe enhancement of value for patients as a fundamental goal and are using the value framework developed by Michael Porter to try to improve outcomes as efficiently as possible.

The value of culture : on the relationship between economics and arts

Abstract: Culture manifests itself in everything human, including the ordinary business of everyday life. Culture and art have their own value, but economic values are also constrained. Art sponsorships and subsidies suggest a value that exceeds market price. So what is the real value of culture? Unlike the usual focus on formal problems, which has 'de-cultured' and 'de-moralized' the practice of economics, this book brings together economists, philosophers, historians, political scientists and artists to try to sort out the value of culture. This is a book not only for economists and social scientists, but also for anybody actively involved in the world of the arts and culture.

Whose Evidence and for What Purpose

Abstract: Evidence-based practice (EBP) is one of the predominant new ways of thinking about what social workers should do in their practice and how they should decide to do it. EBP involves using the "best available" evidence, often interpreted to mean research-based "knowledge," about specific types of practices with particular problems. Although its advocates tout EBP as an imperative for social workers, others have raised questions regarding potential drawbacks of this approach. This editorial is intended neither to advocate nor to oppose EBP, but rather to identify issues that we believe social workers should consider. Origins and Characteristics of EBP Before there was EBP, there was EBM--"evidence-based medicine"--a didactic approach first used with medical students in Canada and later applied to the solution of clinical problems. Widely adopted in the United Kingdom, and increasingly in the United States, EBM is used to determine the most desirable ways to promote health and especially to treat illnesses. Its more general form, EBP, has become a major dimension of professional education in the United Kingdom and a way of attempting to arrive at a consensus about what collective bodies of research findings have to recommend. Gambrill's (1999) thoughtful and informative article advocating EBP in social work documents some of these fundamental and influential British sources. The medical origins of EBP are evident in the value placed on randomized clinical trials, similar to what social workers call experimental designs. Information generated by randomized clinical trials is taken to be the "gold standard" of evidence. Although results from studies using less traditional research controls such as case accounts are used by EBP, they occupy a lower status in the hierarchy of credible evidence. Judgments about evidence also are based on systematic reviews of treatment-outcome studies and meta-analyses that aggregate several research studies statistically. Assessing such evidence is a complex process requiring a high level of research sophistication and knowledge of the subject matter. For example, even with a large group of randomized clinical trials on a topic, small alterations in the definitions of problems or "interventions" can lead to changes in what is considered best practice. A review of readily accessible online reports of EBP or evidence-based medicine studies (see, for e xample, Research Triangle Institute, 2000) shows that various types of "psychosocial" treatments are sometimes aggregated across studies, and that medically precise definitions of "outcomes" may be hard to reconcile with social workers' espoused views of taking into account all relevant aspects of a social situation. Social Work and EBP Today, EBP has become a common term in many professions, including social work. Attempts to deal seriously with systematic evidence as a way to reduce uncertainty and improve practice have a long history in social work, as anyone familiar with the extended and legally oriented presentation concerning evidence as a basis for social work in Mary Richmond's Social Diagnosis (1917) will recall. Similarly, social surveys historically have provided evidence of the existence and effects of structural inequalities in society, often with suggestions for reform and documentation of the social benefits of reforms. The contemporary social work version of EBP (like its predecessor, empirical clinical practice) is focused more on weeding out ineffective therapies and practices and recommending interventions that logically are related to predetermined changes. Social workers' current advocacy or adoption of EBP can be thought of as an expression of the profession's recent attention to research activities and ways of thinking. The idea of systematically basing our practice on scientific evidence is appealing in our "tell me what works" society. Paralleling medicine to a degree not seen in years, recent concerted efforts to place social work in the mainstream of scientifically oriented professions can be considered the enactment of cultural beliefs about what a profession should do and be. …

The Development of Self and Identity in Adolescence: Neural Evidence and Implications for a Value‐Based Choice Perspective on Motivated Behavior

Abstract: Following a key developmental task of childhood-building a foundation of self-knowledge in the form of domain-specific self-concepts-adolescents begin to explore their emerging identities in ways that foster autonomy and connectedness. Neuroimaging studies of self-related processes demonstrate enhanced engagement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in adolescence, which may facilitate and reflect the development of identity by integrating the value of potential actions and choices. Drawing from neuroeconomic and social cognitive accounts, we propose that motivated behavior during adolescence can be modeled by a general value-based decision-making process centered around value accumulation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. This approach advances models of adolescent neurodevelopment that focus on reward sensitivity and cognitive control by considering more diverse value inputs, including contributions of developing self- and identity-related processes. It also considers adolescent decision making and behavior from adolescents' point of view rather than adults' perspectives on what adolescents should value or how they should behave.

Aesthetics and ideology

Abstract: Over the last decade a radical transformation of literary study has taken place, a transformation most distinctly connected to a fundamental change in the conception of what constitutes the "literary." A shift in emphasis from interpretation to theory and from questions about what texts might "mean" to questions about the systems that contain them, along with the movement to replace literary study with cultural studies, have all contributed to this change. In response to this transformation, George Levine has assembled essays by a wide variety of leading scholars in the field of literary study. The contributors to this book rethink the aesthetic, rewrite its history, and reestablish the formal as a necessary element in criticism of literature and of its ideological implications. An early step in the recuperation of the aesthetic, Aesthetics and Ideology works through the discourses of race, gender, class, and politics, using many of the strategies of contemporary theory, to show how the aesthetic vitally and richly opens itself to new politics, and new possibilities of human value. This is an important contribution to the current academic culture wars.