Civic engagement and participation among Ghanaian and Kenyan students and their correlates

This article examines levels of civic engagement among university students in Ghana and Kenya and identifies factors that may account for their civic engagement. Overall, the students reported low civic engagement, with the Kenyans reporting higher engagement. Demographic factors (gender and age) and personal values hardly contributed to the students’ civic engagement. Political interest and attentiveness, barriers and motivation towards participation made a consistent and significant contribution to political participation and future participation. Furthermore, trust, social endorsement and social efficacy showed a consistent and significant contribution to civic engagement. The findings underscore the need to work towards getting the youth more engaged.     

Terrorism and External Audiences: Influencing Foreign Intervention Into Civil Wars

This article evaluates the effects of terrorism on interventions into civil wars. Considering civil wars from 1970–1999, this study analyzes how the use of terrorism as a tactic affects external interventions on behalf of opposition groups, interventions on behalf of governments, and diplomatic interventions. While some authors would suggest that groups might utilize terrorism as a tactic to gain external support, this study finds little evidence that groups are actually successful in gaining such support. In fact, terrorism that targets civilians appears to actually decrease the likelihood of military interventions on behalf of opposition groups. Furthermore, in civil wars with high numbers of terrorist attacks there is a greater likelihood of economic intervention on behalf of governments, further weakening the potential benefit for groups in utilizing terrorism as a tactic. While this is certainly a welcome finding, a consideration of five case studies of suicide terrorism (Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Iraq, India, and Turkey) provides evidence that the use of suicide terrorism within civil wars may have decreased the likelihood of external interventions on behalf of the government and of diplomatic interventions. These results are more troubling and suggest potentially grave consequences for mediating many of these conflicts.     

Self-reported suicidal behavior and attitudes toward suicide and suicide prevention among psychology students in Ghana, Uganda, and Norway

Self-reported suicidal behavior and attitudes toward suicide in psychology students are reported and compared in Ghana, Uganda, and Norway. Small differences only were found in own suicidal behavior. However, experience of suicidal behavior in the surroundings was more common in Uganda than in Ghana and Norway. Although differences were found between the three countries in attitudes toward suicide, which emphasizes the need for culture-sensitive research and prevention, many of the differences were not as big as expected. The most pronounced difference was that the Norwegian students were more reluctant to take a stand on these questions compared to their African counterparts. Some differences were also found between the two African countries. The implications of the results for suicide prevention in Africa are discussed.     

Making and Governing Unstable Territory: Corporate,State and Public Encounters in Johannesburg’s Mining Land, 1909–2013

Abstract

Johannesburg’s mining land has defined the city’s geography, yet remains unevenly developed and liminal in urban policy. Rather than a planning failure, I argue this is a product of state-sanctioned corporate hegemony over mining land. Through the case of Johannesburg’s biggest mining-turned-property company, the paper problematises binaries of ‘state’ and ‘market’ by drawing out the deeply historical, spatialised, political and always-more-than-human vicissitudes of this mining-urban regime. These include the mapping and unmapping that render mining land terra incognita to the state while shoring up corporate power; the multiple visions and contestations over what is to be done with the land, and finally, how different and contingent temporalities shape and limit those visions in practise.     

Adult-perpetrated animal abuse: development of a proclivity scale

There is a clear discrepancy in the reporting of animal cruelty complaints, prosecutions, and convictions suggesting that any prevalence figures of abuse are significant under-representations. Therefore, it can be inferred that there is a large number of animal abusers who are unapprehended. Currently there is no validated tool that assesses the proclivity or propensity to engage in animal abuse amongst members of the general public. Such a tool would enable researchers to study individuals who may think like animal abusers or may be unapprehended offenders themselves. This paper presents the newly developed Animal Abuse Proclivity Scale (AAPS) and some preliminary findings. The results from our two studies show that: (1) the psychometric properties of the AAPS indicate that the scale is a highly reliable measure; (2) the AAPS relates to measures assessing offence-supportive attitudes and reflects the gender differences seen in the literature; and (3) the AAPS demonstrates cross-national validity. These findings support that the AAPS, similar to other offending proclivity measures, is a tool that can be used to examine the factors most related to animal abuse propensity. We discuss how the AAPS can contribute to future developments in theory and practice in the field.     

Law enforcement organizational behavior and the occurrence of post-traumatic stress symptomology in law enforcement personnel follwoing a critical incident

Research by Evans and Coman (1993), Sewell (1984), and Gudjonsson and Adlam (1983) suggests that being shot in the line of duty or the shooting of a partner are often ranked by officers, despite their infrequent occurrence, as the most stressful field events. This study was designed to elucidate factors within the organizational structure of law enforcement, other than the incident itself, which promote ineffective coping and increases in PTSD-like symptomology in police officers. This study found that both police officers, and the organization in which they work, practice predominately ineffective emotion-focused coping strategies following an officer-involved shooting. Possible links between organizational behavior and long-term post-traumatic symptomology were discovered; it appears that officers have readily available models of poor coping responses merely by imitating the behavior of their organization. Author Note: Charity Plaxton-Hennings, Psy.D., M.P.H., is a professor of health psychology, Azusa Pacific University, 901 East Alosta Avenue, Azusa, California 91702. She is also employed by The Counseling Team, Inc., in Southern California, providing organizational, therapeutic, and critical incident debriefing services to a variety of law enforcement and other public service agencies. A special thanks to Dr. Nancy Bohl for assisting in this project.