Rami Benbenishty
Biographic Data
| ID | 250412 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rami Benbenishty |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rami |
| FAMILY NAME | Benbenishty |
| SIGNATURE | BENBENISHTY R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bar-Ilan University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4041-9650 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 107 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 530 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 107 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Family support as a working style in child protection in Italy
Comparative studies on child protection decision‐making highlight the implications and determinants of differences in child welfare systems internationally and reinforce discussions regarding child protection practices and family support when a child is exposed to inadequate parental care. To date, Italian child protection studies have highlighted a system characterised by a strong degree of variability related to the absence of practices shared …
Integrating Policy into School Safety Theory and Research
Multiple fields including social work, public health, psychology, and education have been researching school safety issues for the past 40 years. Findings from research and intervention have been a driving force in school safety policy change. Likewise, policy and funding patterns created have dramatically altered how and what school safety researchers study. Yet school safety policy has not been the focus of empirical studies in social work or o…
Populations trust in the child protection system
In this study, we examine the trust placed by the populations of nine jurisdictions in their child protection systems. These systems protect children’s rights and grant authority for invasive interventions to curtail or even terminate parental rights and responsibilities. We have representative samples of the populations of each jurisdiction. The results show that about 40–50% of respondents express trust in the child protection agencies, social …
Life satisfaction among alumni of youth villages in Israel
Empirical evidence on life satisfaction of care leavers is scant and often based on small and nonrepresentative samples. Based on the life course perspective, this study explored the role of objective and subjective factors in explaining life satisfaction among care leavers, both general and domain-specific (work-financial-housing, social relationships-emotional state). The sample was randomly drawn from the whole population of eight graduating b…
Practice in a Pandemic
In March 2020, as American PreK-12 schools shut down and moved into online learning in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, there was little information about how school social workers (SSWs) were responding to the crisis. This study used a national online survey to understand how SSWs ( N = 1,275) adapted their school practice during the initial 2020 COVID-19 crisis. Findings from this study indicate that SSWs made swift and (relatively) sm…
Covid-Related Functional Difficulties and Concerns Among University Students During Covid-19 Pandemic
Covid-Related Concerns, the Need for Help, and Perceived Microaggression among Young Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Respondents in Israel
Minority groups are especially vulnerable to the negative psychological and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study focused on one prominent minority group in Israel: ultra-Orthodox Jews. It examined the rate of exposure to COVID-19, adherence to COVID-19 mitigation guidelines, difficulties with adherence to COVID-19 guidelines, COVID-related concerns, financial hardships, the need for help, and microaggression during the first…
An exploratory study of the prevalence and correlates of student maltreatment by teachers in Cameroon
Maltreatment of children takes place in many contexts and places around the world. Based on the model of Bullying, School Violence and Climate in Evolving Contexts, this study describes the prevalence and characteristics of maltreatment of students by their teachers in Cameroon. It examined the bivariate and multivariate correlations between victimization by educational staff with victimization by peers, school climate, and the students’ perpetra…
Psychological distress among care leavers during the transition to adulthood
The transition period from care to independent living is a vulnerable time for care leavers who may experience increased mental health problems. This study explored risk and protective factors contributing to and predicting their psychological distress as emerging adults. The study is based on an extensive set of longitudinal administrative records combined with structured phone interviews among a representative sample of 2295 alumni of education…
A Conceptual and Large-Scale Empirical Examination of the Welcoming Empowerment Monitoring Approach (Wema) for School Safety and Substance Use Reduction
Purpose: Research shows that many evidence-based school programs are not sustained after the demonstration period is complete. This article outlines the Welcoming Empowerment Monitoring Approach and builds on data at each school—to address school safety and reduce substance use. Method: The study used California Healthy Kids Survey data across 145 schools in Southern California at five points in time over an 8-year period. Results: From project i…
Parental Involvement and Perceptions of School Climate in California
Parental involvement plays a significant role in students’ social and academic outcomes. Nevertheless, systemic ways of gathering parental views have not been used or highlighted in the policy arena or the literature. Using data from the first major statewide survey of parents in California, drawn from the California School Parent Survey ( N = 15,829), this study examined parental perceptions of school climate, school problems, and school encoura…
Needs of Children and Families during Spring 2020 Covid-19 School Closures
Despite extensive reports during the COVID-19 pandemic of the academic challenges facing students, and the effects of online learning on academic achievements, we have little information regarding the needs and difficulties of K-12 students and their families from a social work perspective. The present article shares findings from a nationwide survey of 1,275 school social workers (SSWs) reporting on their clients-schools, children, and families-…
Teachers victimizing students
Although most of the school violence literature is focused on peer victimization, interest is growing in teachers being victimized by their students. However, there is far less interest in students being victimized by their teachers, patterns of mutual victimization, and how they are associated with other school factors. Using the conceptual framework of school violence in evolving contexts, the present study examined teacher-to-student victimiza…
Aspirations toward higher education
This longitudinal study tests a model that predicts aspirations toward higher education (AtHE) among alumni of public care in Israel based on their personal resources (self-esteem, readiness for independent living, and perceptions of their future), the support they receive from their mothers and peers, and their perception of the impact of military service. Using hierarchical regression analyses, we tested the incremental contribution of these va…
Predictors of life satisfaction among care leavers
Between being unique and being like everyone else
Victimization of teachers by students in Israel and in Chile and its relations with teachers’ victimization of students
Although in recent years there has been a growing interest in victimization of teachers by their students (student-to-teacher victimization), it is not discussed in relation to students' victimization by their teachers (teacher-to-student victimization) across cultures. This study used a cross-cultural comparative design to examine the prevalence of students' reports of student-to-teacher and teacher-to-student victimization and the correlations …
Welcoming Parents to Their Child’s School
While researchers acknowledge the importance of parents feeling welcomed and engaged in their child’s school, the school’s welcoming practices to engage parents have been rarely explored. Parents’ qualitative responses provide insight into what impacts their initial and ongoing experience of being welcomed into their child’s new school. In total, 1,020 and 191 parents and/or legal guardians of students enrolled in Grades pre-K through 12 across f…
Helping the helpers
This study examined the associations between exposure to armed conflict, perceived support, work experience, needing help, and post‐traumatic distress among Israeli social workers in foster care agencies based on Conservation of Resources theory. The study used a mixed‐methods design. Six months after the end of an armed conflict, 82 social workers responded to a web‐based questionnaire with closed‐ and open‐ended questions. Results showed that e…
Foster parents exposed to political violence
Social support networks of care leavers
Self-Esteem, Life Satisfaction, and Positive Future Perception among at-Risk and Comparison Group Participants in National Civic Service
This study focuses on a program designed to engage at-risk youth in the National Civic Service (NCS) in Israel with the goal of enabling them to better integrate into normative adult lives. This exploratory study employed a cross-sectional design and compared groups of at-risk female volunteers (N = 426) with comparison groups of not at-risk participants in the NCS (N = 456). For both of them, three sub-groups were examined at different stages of…
School-related experiences of adolescents in foster care
Although adolescents in foster care are known to be more at risk for school-related academic challenges, there is a paucity of research on their school-related experiences, such as victimization and relationships with teachers, compared with their same-age peers not in care. The aim of this article is to compare foster-care adolescents and their schoolmates on data that was drawn from the statewide representative California Healthy Kids survey an…
School Climate, Deployment, and Mental Health Among Students in Military-Connected Schools
Research has found that when compared with civilian students, military-connected students in the United States have more negative mental health outcomes, stemming from the stress of military life events (i.e., deployment). To date, studies on military-connected youth have not examined the role of protective factors within the school environment, such as school climate, in the mental health and well-being of military-connected adolescents. Given t…
A Research Synthesis of the Associations Between Socioeconomic Background, Inequality, School Climate, and Academic Achievement
Educational researchers and practitioners assert that supportive school and classroom climates can positively influence the academic outcomes of students, thus potentially reducing academic achievement gaps between students and schools of different socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Nonetheless, scientific evidence establishing directional links and mechanisms between SES, school climate, and academic performance is inconclusive. This compre…
The Contributions of Community, Family, and School Variables to Student Victimization
An ecological perspective was used to predict school violence from a number of variables describing the students and their families based on nationally representative sample of 10,400 students in grades 7–11 in 162 schools across Israel. Self‐administered anonymous questionnaires that included a scale for reporting victimization by serious and moderate physical violence, threats, and verbal–social victimization were filled out during class. Hiera…
The role of workers' attitudes and parent and child wishes in child protection workers' assessments and recommendation regarding removal and reunification
Testing the Causal Links Between School Climate, School Violence, and School Academic Performance
The present study explores the causal link between school climate, school violence, and a school’s general academic performance over time using a school-level, cross-lagged panel autoregressive modeling design. We hypothesized that reductions in school violence and climate improvement would lead to schools’ overall improved academic performance. School-level secondary analysis of the California Healthy Kids Survey was conducted at three points in…
The Effects of School Climate, Socioeconomics, and Cultural Factors on Student Victimization in Israel
The study reported in this article is based on a nationally representative sample of 10,400 students in grades 7 through 11 in 162 schools across Israel. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling to examine the differences between Jewish and Arab schools in the relationships between school-level variables—socioeconomic status (SES) of the school's neighborhood and students' families, school size and class size, school level (junior high and h…
Care Leavers in Israel
The present study examines the adjustment of youth leaving residential treatment in Israel in three core areas: military service, accommodation, and financial status. A sample of 277 adolescents (aged 17–18 years old) in educational and welfare residential placements were interviewed a few months before leaving care, and 236 of them were interviewed 1 year after. It was hypothesized that optimism, higher perceived sense of readiness to leave care…
School Violence and Theoretically Atypical Schools
Theories often assume that schools in communities with high violence also have high rates of school violence, yet there are schools with very low violence in high violence communities. Organizational variables within these schools may buffer community influences. Nine “atypical” schools are selected from a national database in Israel. Three years of intense qualitative and quantitative methods are employed at these schools. The most important var…
Functioning of Israeli group-homes alumni
Rationales Provided for Risk Assessments and for Recommended Interventions in Child Protection
Journal Article Rationales Provided for Risk Assessments and for Recommended Interventions in Child Protection: A Comparison between Canadian and Israeli Professionals Get access Rami Benbenishty, Rami Benbenishty Correspondence to Prof. Rami Benbenishty, School of Social Work, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel 91905. E‐mail [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Rujla Osmo, Rujla Osmo S…
Perceptions of readiness to leave care among adolescents in foster care in Israel
Future expectations of adolescents in residential care in Israel
Perceptions of violence and fear of school attendance among junior high school students in Israel
This article examines an exploratory model of how variables in school settings affect school victimization and the consequences of victimization for junior high school students. The dependent variables are fear of attending school and the students' assessment of the severity of school violence. The model presents the ways in which school context and victimization affect these variables, examining separately male and female students and Jewish, an…
Contribution of child protection workers’ attitudes to their risk assessments and intervention recommendations
The study examines the contributions of workers' attitudes towards issues in child welfare (removal from home of children at risk, the ability of alternative care to foster children's development, optimal duration of alternative care, and parents' and children's participation in the intervention recommendation) with their risk assessments and intervention recommendations. The study participants were 236 out of 240 licensed child protection worker…
Child Welfare Attitudes, Risk Assessments and Intervention Recommendations
The study, carried out in Israel, explores the question of whether professionals' status and experience moderate the relationships between their attitudes and their assessments and decisions on removal. It compares the associations between attitudes towards issues in child welfare, maltreatment, risk assessments and decisions of three groups of respondents: social work students and less and more experienced child protection social workers. The sa…
The subjective well-being of young people aging out of care
An Overview of Methods to Elicit and Model Expert Clinical Judgment and Decision Making
In this article, I analyze a variety of procedures and techniques to elicit and model expert clinical judgment and decision making. I classify these procedures into two basic types-input-output analyses and process-tracing techniques. A number of criteria are offered to assess the strengths and limitations of each technique
Predictors of life satisfaction among care leavers
Children in Educational Residential Care
This article reports preliminary findings from a national cohort study in Israel on the educational outcomes of 82,342 Jewish citizens born in 1981. We compare the educational outcomes of 2002 alumni of youth villages and their peers in the general population with respect to differences among cultural subgroups. The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics generated the database by combining different official data files based on a personal identific…
Readiness for independent living of adolescents in youth villages in Israel
Populations trust in the child protection system
In this study, we examine the trust placed by the populations of nine jurisdictions in their child protection systems. These systems protect children’s rights and grant authority for invasive interventions to curtail or even terminate parental rights and responsibilities. We have representative samples of the populations of each jurisdiction. The results show that about 40–50% of respondents express trust in the child protection agencies, social …
A Statewide Study of Gang Membership in California Secondary Schools
To date, there is a paucity of empirical evidence that examines gang membership in schools. Using statewide data of 7th-, 9th-, and 11th-grade students from California, this study focuses on the prevalence of gang membership by county, region, ethnicity, and grade level. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were employed with gang membership as the outcome of interest. Approximately 8.4% of the student sample reported that they…
High school students' posttraumatic symptoms, substance abuse and involvement in violence in the aftermath of war
Public attitudes toward child maltreatment in Israel
The contribution of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to understanding and promoting the interests of young people making the transition from care to adulthood
Parental Involvement and Perceptions of School Climate in California
Parental involvement plays a significant role in students’ social and academic outcomes. Nevertheless, systemic ways of gathering parental views have not been used or highlighted in the policy arena or the literature. Using data from the first major statewide survey of parents in California, drawn from the California School Parent Survey ( N = 15,829), this study examined parental perceptions of school climate, school problems, and school encoura…
Youth aging out of residential care in Israel
Predictors of Success in a Social Work Doctoral Program
A study was conducted to determine the preentry data predictive of academic success for 232 students who entered a doctoral program in social work and social science between 1957 and 1973. Predictions were better for females and students entering without an M.S.W. degree, for whom one-third of the variance in school performance was explained, than for males and those entering with an M.S.W. System variables influenced the predictions but scores o…
Preferences, expectations, and behaviours in interpersonal interaction
This study is concerned with the relationship between expectations and preferences prior to an interaction, and their effects on behaviours enacted during the interaction. Expectations and preferences of therapists regarding several specific therapist's and client's behaviours were assessed prior to a therapy meeting. After that meeting, the therapists described the behaviours that had occurred during the meeting. It was found that the correspond…
Assessment of Task-Centered Interventions with Families in Israel
The study describes and evaluates the effectiveness of task-centered interventions performed with families in two new neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Israel. Thirty-five low-income nondelinquent families experiencing financial, personal and family problems were treated by 11 social work trainees. Each worker performed a single-case time-series design to evaluate 2 to 4 families, using the Clinical Rating Scale and a Goal Attainment Scale. The familie…
Combining the Single-System and Group Approaches to Evaluate Treatment Effectiveness on the Agency Level
This paper suggests the integration of single-system and group comparison approaches in evaluating treatment effectiveness of service agencies. The basic building blocks of the advocated methodology are single-case evaluations which are intentionally designed, selected and aggregated to form an assessment on the agency level. For each intervention, data on the characteristics of treatment, therapist, problem and client are collected and correlate…
Monitoring Practice on the Agency Level
This article reports on one element of a monitoring system designed to respond to the information needs of practitioners in a residential care facility for children. The aim was to assess the children's situation regularly, to document the information, and to share it with other practitioners in the agency and with outside systems. The Child Behavior Checklist was used to describe the children's behavior each month. The data were processed by a c…
Characteristics of children and their families at entry into foster care
An Overview of Methods to Elicit and Model Expert Clinical Judgment and Decision Making
In this article, I analyze a variety of procedures and techniques to elicit and model expert clinical judgment and decision making. I classify these procedures into two basic types-input-output analyses and process-tracing techniques. A number of criteria are offered to assess the strengths and limitations of each technique
Compensation and psychic trauma
The precursors and outcomes of compensation-seeking in Israeli war psychiatric casualties were examined. Findings suggest that compensation was sought by veterans who had experienced the most severe traumas and had subsequently developed the most severe symptoms and functional limitations. Reported range and severity of symptoms and functional limitations did not diminish with compensation
Children in foster care
Integrating Research and Practice
The author agrees that single-case evaluation should be reexamined. He suggests that the conclusion drawn from the limitations of single-case design, as performed today, should be to redefine issues and strategies so that more emphasis is placed on integration of research and practice. The article (re)defines empirical practice as being continuously informed and guided by empirical evidence that is gathered and processed systematically. The focus…
The development and evaluation of a hybrid decision support system for clinical decision making
This article reports on the development, implementation, and evaluation of a decision support system (DSS), a hybrid of a statistical model (regression equation) and expert rules, to support this decision. The study focused on the decisions made by social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists serving as military mental health officers to recommend discharge from compulsory duty in the Israeli army because of mental or emotional difficulties. …
Perceptions of violence and fear of school attendance among junior high school students in Israel
This article examines an exploratory model of how variables in school settings affect school victimization and the consequences of victimization for junior high school students. The dependent variables are fear of attending school and the students' assessment of the severity of school violence. The model presents the ways in which school context and victimization affect these variables, examining separately male and female students and Jewish, an…
Information-Search and Decision-Making by Professionals and Nonprofessionals in Cases of Alleged Child-Abuse and Maltreatment
The aim of this study is to identify the ways in which decision-makers search for information and use it to reach their risk-assessments and their recommendations of whether to remove children from home. We compare the decision-making process of social work professionals, social work trainees and nonprofessionals, and we assess how they are influenced by information on physical abuse to the child. We used three convenience samples of 100 responde…
Rationales Provided for Risk Assessments and for Recommended Interventions in Child Protection
Journal Article Rationales Provided for Risk Assessments and for Recommended Interventions in Child Protection: A Comparison between Canadian and Israeli Professionals Get access Rami Benbenishty, Rami Benbenishty Correspondence to Prof. Rami Benbenishty, School of Social Work, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel 91905. E‐mail [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Rujla Osmo, Rujla Osmo S…
School Violence in Israel
The authors report preliminary findings of a national survey on school violence in Israel. The national representative sample was stratified on school type--elementary, middle, and high schools--and ethnicity--Jewish and Arab students. A total of 15,916 students from 603 classes and 232 schools participated in the study, resulting in a 91 percent response rate. Findings revealed high rates of violence in all areas and among all age groups, but re…
Children at risk
The Contributions of Community, Family, and School Variables to Student Victimization
An ecological perspective was used to predict school violence from a number of variables describing the students and their families based on nationally representative sample of 10,400 students in grades 7–11 in 162 schools across Israel. Self‐administered anonymous questionnaires that included a scale for reporting victimization by serious and moderate physical violence, threats, and verbal–social victimization were filled out during class. Hiera…
Monitoring and Mapping Student Victimization in Schools
International data suggests that the most successful violence prevention programs are adapted to fit a specific school site and involve all of the constituents in a school setting. In contrast to many of the popular skills-based programs that are commonly implemented in schools across the United States, the authors explore the utility of combining monitoring and mapping techniques to prevent specific forms of school violence and aggression in spe…
School Violence in Context
The book explores and differentiates the many manifestations of school violence, such as verbal, social, threats, bullying, physical, sexual harassment, and weapons possession, as well as staff-initiated violence against students. It presents a socio-ecological model of school violence in context, and explores the role of culture, religion, neighborhood, family, school characteristics (such as size), age, and gender. The model outlines how aspect…
The Effects of School Climate, Socioeconomics, and Cultural Factors on Student Victimization in Israel
The study reported in this article is based on a nationally representative sample of 10,400 students in grades 7 through 11 in 162 schools across Israel. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling to examine the differences between Jewish and Arab schools in the relationships between school-level variables—socioeconomic status (SES) of the school's neighborhood and students' families, school size and class size, school level (junior high and h…
Functioning of Israeli group-homes alumni
Arab and Jewish elementary school students' perceptions of fear and school violence
This inquiry explores variables that predict elementary school stsudents' fear of attending school due to school violence and their overall judgments of school violence as a problem. Using a nationally representative sample (Israel) of 5,472 elementary-school-aged children, this study tested the hypotheses that: (a) young students' personal fear of attending school due to violence, and (b) students' assessment of a school violence problem, are be…
Exposure to Terrorism and Israeli Youths’ Cigarette, Alcohol, and Cannabis Use
Objectives. We investigated the consequences of exposure to acts of terrorism among Israeli adolescents. We examined whether exposure to terrorism predicted adolescents’ use of cigarettes, alcohol (including binge drinking), and cannabis after we controlled for posttraumatic stress and depressive symptoms and background variables. Methods. Anonymous self-administered questionnaires were given to a random sample of 960 10th and 11th grade students…
Effects of Student Participation and Teacher Support on Victimization in Israeli Schools
Monitoring Indicators of Children's Victimization in School
Psychology (96 works) · Medicine (69 works) · Social Psychology (49 works) · Political science (42 works) · Developmental psychology (32 works) · Social Psychology (32 works) · Psychiatry (27 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Child Welfare and Adoption (26 works) · Clinical Psychology (26 works)