Purpose: This article describes the development and validation of the Undergraduate Perceptions of Poverty Tracking Survey (UPPTS). Method: Data were collected from 301 undergraduates at a small university in the Northeast and analyzed using exploratory factor analysis augmented by random qualitative validation. Results: The resulting survey contains 39 questions and has six factors that meet empirical standards for validity and reliability. The UPPTS provides information regarding undergraduate students' perceptions of those living in poverty in three areas: (1) general attitudes toward those living in poverty, including a sense of the students' underlying explanation for why someone may be poor; (2) understanding of and empathy for those living in poverty; and (3) commitment to addressing poverty via direct action or support for programs/services that aid those in poverty. Discussion: The UPPTS builds upon the concepts of a lack of social empathy and cognitive distancing as principal reasons why people fail to do more to help the poor via either direct action or support for programs that will aid the poor. Further, social work and other educators may use the UPPTS to guide their efforts in poverty education and to track the progress of their efforts with undergraduate students.

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This article presents the results from 77 interviews with kinship caregivers participating in the child-only component of the TANF program. The authors interviewed caregivers using the Strengths and Stressors Tracking device (SSTd). Key findings include: most caregivers and their families possess significant strengths that can be used in a strengths-based approach to case management; environmental stress-an acknowledged ecological correlate with potential for abuse and neglect-is an area of strength; and permanency planning and long-term stability of the kinship care situation should be a major focus of social services and case managers. This research offers a valuable contribution to child welfare and kinship care literature because it provides evidence-based research to demonstrate the significant strengths in a caregiving population.

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This article presents an overview of traditional sociological approaches to the role of social work in society and offers an alternative perspective that draws upon anthropological concepts of culture and specifically the conceptualization of American culture as a form of dialogue between dominant and non-dominant groups in American society. Traditional approaches to the sociology of social work have focused on the concept of social workers as intermediaries. Intermediaries convey messages between groups and seek to resolve conflicts and reach agreements. Incorporating anthropological concepts of cultural dialogue, transmission, and reproduction enables a more in depth analysis and understanding of how this intermediary function plays out. It offers the ability to analyze the content of the messages and to create a better understanding of the tension between social change and social control that are part of social work practice. The intermediary approach to social work’s relations with society results in viewing social work as contradictory and somewhat ambiguous in its relationship to society. This ambiguity, in both theoretical and practical terms, has been difficult for the profession to resolve. By incorporating the concepts of cultural dialogue, transmission, and reproduction, it is argued that the role of social workers in society can be more clearly viewed as that of cultural agents engaged in the processes of dialogue, transmission, and reproduction. From this anthropological perspective, it may be possible to resolve the ambiguity between social work as a form of social control and social work as social change.