A 22-year-old, 30-weeks pregnant woman with history of migraine, anxiety, depression, and PTSD presents to the emergency department after a seizure-like activity. Her boyfriend witnessed it and reports she was in her normal state of health when she left for work this morning, but returned from work early – crying and saying she had been fired. She then developed abdominal pain, felt one of her “typical migraines,” and told him she felt like she might pass out. She lowered herself to the floor, closed her eyes, and “started shaking all over.” He describes the shaking as starting in her bilateral hands, then both her legs, followed by her head turning left and right. He called emergency services, and the event ended after 5 minutes. It took about one more minute for her to “come back,” and she was back to normal by the time the ambulance arrived. She recalls the entire event, remembers feeling lightheaded, and says she could hear her boyfriend talking to her during the event – but could not stop shaking.

Chapter 5 explores the CERIC element of Reasoning, providing a structured approach to analyzing reasoning in research articles. It distinguishes reasoning from evidence, highlights logical flow, and identifies gaps in argumentation. This chapter begins by defining reasoning and its significance, then examines various types and strategies used across disciplines. To build a foundational understanding, it first illustrates reasoning with everyday examples – such as exercising for mental health – before connecting these to the Toulmin et al. (1984) model, demonstrating how Claims, Evidence, Reasons, Support, Uncertainties, and Limitations function together. Through real-world scenarios in fields such as healthcare diagnostics and climate science, this chapter clarifies deductive, inductive, and abductive approaches, emphasizing their roles in different research contexts. Additionally, this chapter discusses how evidence, models, accuracy, precision, and flexibility interact with reasoning, underscoring the importance of transparent and well-structured logic in scientific discourse. It concludes with examples of reasoning styles from diverse research articles, reinforcing logical and analytical thinking in advancing scientific knowledge.

Linear programming is an important class of convex problems with constraints, where the objective function is linear, and the problem is almost entirely determined by the linear inequality constraints. Most real-world problems involve constrained resources, such as time, space, money, materials, and labor. There are real tradeoffs in solving such problems, which we express as inequality constraints. Some of the many applications include: resource allocation, workforce scheduling, factory layout, space usage, production scheduling, inventory management, crop planning and irrigation, portfolio optimization, supply chain logistics, fleet routing, and healthcare resource and staff allocation. These examples are all characterized by a relatively simple objective function that is linearly related (e.g., profit or cost), and constrained resources. There is no closed-form solution to a general linear program. However, there are accurate and efficient algorithms that scale to large problems. In this chapter, we define the mathematical ingredients of a linear program, provide examples to illustrate several applications, and discuss solution techniques and extensions.

Research is another area of social work subject to racial biases. Historically, research was used as a weapon against BIPOC, designed to “prove” their inferiority. While less overtly racist nowadays, research continues to promote a racial divide through several different means: overreliance on a positivist paradigm for researching social questions; holding on to theories based on white normative assumptions, failure to proportionally include people of color in sampling, or include them in defining the research question in cultural and locational contexts.

Discrimination is a commonplace experience for ethnically and racially minoritized youth. In this chapter, we examine the links between ethnic and racial discrimination and adolescents’ mental health, physical health, health behaviors, academics, and civic engagement. In line with developmental theories that highlight not only the role of discrimination in young people’s development but also the factors that can attenuate the impacts of discriminatory experiences, we discuss the protective role of both interpersonal and internal resources for youth experiencing ethnic and racial discrimination. The chapter concludes with a discussion of intersectionality in adolescence and recommendations for future research, including the need to develop new measures of ethnic and racial discrimination, attend to the consequences of structural racism and the cumulative experiences of ethnic and racial discrimination, untangle the mediating and moderating mechanisms that link discrimination and adolescent well-being, and further explore the assets of ethnically and racially minoritized youth that promote well-being in the face of discrimination.

CRT is a plausibility structure that explains why and how racism persists, and society’s disregard for health, educational, and welfare discrepancies between white and minoritized peoples. It explains why a profession like social work has not seriously addressed racial injustice, instead content to treat gross disparities applying whitesplanations and colonized theories to those suffering from socially unjust systems. This chapter provides a history of CRT and five theoretical tenets applicable to social work, each of which will be developed further in the text, and argues that CRT is an appropriate transformational framework for social work.

Liberalism and interest convergence influence all aspects of our socio-political world, and, in turn, social work practice, including social welfare policy, practice, and pedagogy. This chapter first defines the critical race tenets critique of liberalism and interest convergence, then examines how the entanglement of settler colonialism, racism, and capitalism are mutually constructed with racism and intersectional oppression. A global system of white supremacy created a racial hierarchy through notions of inferiority in order to maintain the dominant power structure, such that when white interests do not align with the interests of non-whites, it is nearly impossible for systems change to occur. Turning specifically to social work, the author outlines how social welfare policies and belief systems allow racism to flourish despite ideas of equality, freedom, and rights, and uncovers how social work conceptions of social welfare and social justice have aligned with the interests of the dominant group, rather than liberation and communal support, by supporting incrementalist reform rather than transformative change. Finally, the chapter envisions social worker roles that dismantle liberal notions of justice and create practices that support expansive views of merit, communal values over individual success, and equitable outcomes over equal rights.

Chapter 8 provides a framework for conducting CERIC Reviews of research articles, synthesizing previous chapters’ approaches to identifying and analyzing Claims, Evidence, Reasoning, Implications, and Context. It discusses the purpose and scope of the CERIC Review and presents a basic review template to scaffold the organization and evaluation of these elements, with suggestions on how to capture information efficiently through ethically paraphrased notes. This chapter then describes ways of improving CERIC reviews, including identifying CERIC elements, dealing with articles with confusing terminology or structure, tailoring reviews to specific article types, and knowing when reviews are sufficient. This chapter also describes how to build on individual CERIC Reviews to generate narrative summaries of individual articles and construct personal libraries of CERIC Reviews for reference. A worked example using the CERIC Review Basic Template is provided, as well as guidance for instructors in creating evaluation rubrics and giving feedback on CERIC Reviews in the classroom environment.

Chapter 7 focuses on the last CERIC element, the Context, which defines a research study’s relevance, motivation, and scope. This chapter begins by defining Context as the existing body of past work that contextualizes the present study. A significant focus is on identifying the driving question or problem of research (i.e., “the gap” or rationale) and illustrating how it shapes the overall Context of the current study. Context is generally found in the introduction section of a research article but may also appear in various locations to motivate aspects of evidence, reasoning, and implications. This chapter discusses the challenge of determining the appropriate amount of context, dealing with the jargon trap common to Context, and showcases examples of well-contextualized research. This chapter also explores how to distinguish Context from Evidence and provides techniques for detecting and addressing missing Context.

Racism compromises health across the life course, including early in development for children across racial groups. Fostering anti-racism early during this period when racial attitudes are more malleable holds promise to reduce victimization and the development of racial bias. This chapter synthesizes extant findings on the health implications of racism during this formative stage, delineates key mechanisms amenable to intervention, and proposes evidence-based elements of a ColorBRAVE framework for family-centered discussions to promote anti-racism in early childhood. ColorBRAVE conversations in these contexts include honest, equity-focused discussions with children about what race is, the historical origins of racial inequities, and racial discrimination and White privilege, including themes of accountability and agency. ColorBRAVE family-based interventions should be considered part of a comprehensive societal effort to promote racial justice and public health.

This chapter provides an overview of research on ethnic and racial discrimination (ERD) among young adults in higher education. We examine how the university context shapes experiences of ERD and how it moderates targets, downstream consequences, and coping responses. We do so from the vantage point of a structural-psychological perspective, which examines ERD not solely as a result of interpersonal actions but rather as a product of broader systemic inequities and historical legacies of oppression. The chapter describes which ethnic and racial groups and their intersections with other relevant social categories are most affected by ERD. It also describes the contexts and moderators of ERD and the downstream consequences of experiencing ERD. Finally, the chapter describes active and passive coping and resistance strategies that racialized students employ to deal with ERD and how effective they are for students’ academic and health adjustment.