Background: Emerging research on the use of new technology suggests that internet use is generally associated with high levels of efficiency among older adults in the following areas: quality of life, mood, positive psychological well-being, and the individual and societal costs of caring for them. However, there is little empirical evidence specifically concerning the causal effects of older adults’ internet use on their depression level. There is a need for more replication studies to help confirm that the emerging evidence on the impact of internet use is accurate and applicable to different populations and in different situations. Method: Using national data from the China Family Panel Study in 2016, this study helps to fill the above mentioned research gap. This study followed a two-step analytical strategy to empirically examine the association between internet use and reported depression in older adults. In the first step, we estimated a binary logistic regression model with internet use as the dependent variable and 8 demographic and socioeconomic factors as the confounding variables. In the second step, we performed a propensity score analysis to control for potential bias using the confounding variables confirmed in the first step. Results: The results show that older adults who reported internet use have lower depression levels than did those who did not use the internet, with adjustments made for gender, age, urban or rural residence, pension status, educational background, physical health, life satisfaction, and intelligence level. Conclusion: These findings suggest that it is critical to advocate for technology-based policies and programs that promote older adults’ internet use to improve their social well-being, which can also serve as a policy strategy to help alleviate older adults’ depression.

The number of elderly Internet users has increased significantly in the past few years. However, the impact of Internet use on mental health remains unclear. In this study, we performed a difference-in-differences analysis using data from the 2016 and 2018 waves of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) to evaluate the impact of Internet usage on mental health among elderly individuals. A total of 5031 validated respondents were included to explore the relationship between Internet use and reduced levels of depression as well as improved life satisfaction among elderly individuals. The results showed that Internet use significantly reduced depression levels. Unexpectedly, Internet use was not found to improve life satisfaction. Moreover, discontinuing Internet use was not significantly associated with improvements in depression or life satisfaction. More research is needed to fully elucidate the relationship between Internet use and depression levels, as well as life satisfaction among elderly individuals.

Summary: High turnover rate among Chinese social work practitioners is a big challenge facing the nation’s social work profession. Turnover intention, the determinant predictor of actual turnover, has been widely used instead of the actual turnover. Among many predictors, burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy) was recognized as a key predictor of turnover intention. In addition, recently, organizational justice is getting more and more attention by social work scholars in affecting employees’ intention to leave the organization. This article aims to empirically test how different dimensions of organizational justice influence social workers’ turnover intention, regarding burnout as a mediator, and including the development and validation of a new organizational justice scale in Chinese context. Findings: In total, 616 social workers (223 from Beijing for Study 1 and 393 from Jiangmen for Study 2) participated in the study. The results revealed that interpersonal justice is the most important dimension for predicting social workers’ turnover intention, whereas cynicism plays a mediator role in that relationship. Application: Turnover is an organizational behavior. Therefore, it is more important for organization managers and policy makers to consider the factors from organizational conditions that are influencing turnover. This study provides the field of social work in China with solid evidence that more attention should be paid to management issues in solving the challenge of a high turnover rate.

Developing professional discretion of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) is not only an important strategy for bridging the gap between public service rules at policy level and sophisticated individual service needs at practical level, but it also has recently become a hot topic in public management. This study advances the SLB theory by providing empirical evidence that organizational learning capability and organizational type buffered the impact of transformational leadership on professional discretion in a sample of 595 Chinese professional social workers. This research showed that establishing an internal professional learning mechanism in public service agencies was conducive to improving SLBs’ professional discretion.

Committed social workers are significant to organizational performance and service quality; therefore, it is crucial to explore the contributing factors of turnover intention to enhance social workers’ commitment. To reduce social workers’ turnover intention, this study used the first national survey data (N = 5620) of social workers in China to find out the relationship between workplace social capital and turnover intention in public service and explore possible solutions. This study treated workplace social capital as a comprehensive measure that captured employees’ overall perceptions of their interpersonal relations in the public sector. It covered the impact of many other organizational factors on turnover intention, such as job embeddedness, social networks, social relations, communication, and organizational fairness. The results confirmed that workplace social capital had a significant negative impact on employees’ turnover intention. Workplace social capital could be a better predictor of employees’ turnover intention than a single organizational factor or a combination of several factors. These findings not only deepened the theoretical understanding of social capital within the organization and brought insight into how workplace social capital affected employees’ turnover but also promoted a formation of a holistic organizational perspective from the fragmented organizational factors. Results also showed that job burnout and job satisfaction mediated the relation between workplace social capital and turnover intention. Public service agencies should endeavor to foster an organizational climate of cooperation and trust, encourage teamwork and altruistic behaviors among coworkers to reduce emotional exhaustion, and strengthen the professional identity and professional value of social work.