The Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) awarded Maanse Hoe, PhD '07, the 2008 Outstanding Social Work Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation, "Longitudinal Relationships of Cognitive Deficits, Symptoms, and Social Functioning Outcomes in Community-based Psychosocial Rehabilitation Programs: Mechanisms of Longitudinal Change."

The award recognizes dissertations exemplifying high standards in social work research and scholarship. The purpose of the award is to encourage the design and conduct of quality research by doctoral-level social workers, recognize authors of such studies and provide them with a professional conference venue to present findings from their study.

"This is a very competitive nationwide review process, so it is an outstanding recognition of the quality of Maanse's work and a fine acknowledgement of the quality of our PhD program," John Brekke, associate dean for research, said.

Hoe's research, under the guidance of Brekke, investigated longitudinal relationships among changes in neurocognition, psychiatric symptoms and psychosocial functional outcomes in community-based psychosocial rehabilitation programs, as well as explored unobserved heterogeneous sub-groups in psychosocial functioning change.

His findings determined psychosocial functioning can be improved through an increase in neurocognition, and improvement in psychosocial functioning is not related to change in psychiatric symptoms. This suggests clinicians need to differentiate treatment strategies to different sub-groups of individuals to make their intervention more effective. He believes social work researchers need to pay more attention to interactions between persons and treatments rather than those between variables and treatments.

Hoe accepted his award at the 12th Annual SSWR Conference in Washington, D.C. in January. He is an assistant research professor at the USC School of Social Work, where he currently is exploring unobserved treatment response in sub-groups diagnosed with schizophrenia.