“Comorbidity” of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive problems in adolescence

The purpose of this study was to examine in a sample of 11,516 secondary school students the extent to which different behavioral, emotional and cognitive problems (a) reflected one or more underlying common factors; (b) actually cooccurred; and (c) were single problems. Principal Component Analyses were performed and percentagewise techniques were used. PCA demonstrated that one or more general syndromes could not by far account for all of the variance of the variables. The results suggest the existence of adolescent subgroups with divergent comorbidity patterns: those who primarily report one single symptom; those who report concurrent symptoms either exclusively in the category of behavioral problems or exclusively in the category of emotional and cognitive problems; and those who report concurrent symptoms in both categories. This distinction between different subgroups has important theoretical, diagnostic, and treatment implications.     

Introducing a New Data Set: Budget Support Suspensions as a Sanctioning Device: An Overview from 1999 to 2014

This article presents a new, publicly available data set covering all budget support (BS) suspensions in the period 1999–2014. The data set covers 239 BS suspensions, involving 18 donors and 40 recipient countries. This article shows an aggregate picture of these suspensions, including the reasons why donors suspended, which donors have been active in suspending their BS, and which countries have been undergoing these aid sanctions. From this aggregate picture some patterns drawn out, substantiate a couple of things that have surfaced in the literature already. With 42% of BS suspensions in the Democracy and Human Rights category, it is clear that democratic governance has been a pertinent reason to legitimize BS suspensions. The large number of suspensions in some countries also indicates the unpredictability of budget support. The data set and the user guide can be downloaded at www.uantwerp.be/budget-support-suspensions .     

American Patriotism, National Identity, and Political Involvement

Researchers disagree over the definition, measurement, and expected political consequences of American patriotism, a situation that is fueled by the absence of a strong theoretical research foundation. We develop and evaluate a new measure of national attachment that is grounded in social identity theory ( Tajfel and Turner 1979 ), drawing on data from three distinct sources: two studies of undergraduate students and the 1996 General Social Survey (GSS). Confirmatory factor analyses provide clear evidence that national identity is distinct from other measures of national attachment including symbolic, constructive, and uncritical patriotism, and nationalism. National identity has a number of other good measurement properties when compared to existing measures: it receives equal endorsement from conservatives and liberals (unlike most other measures which exhibit an ideological bias), develops with time spent in the United States among immigrants, and most importantly is the only measure of national attachment to predict political interest and voter turnout in both student and adult samples, consistent with the predictions of social identity theory. In that sense, the national identity measure outperforms all other measures of national attachment and provides unambiguous evidence that a strong American identity promotes civic involvement.     

Coordinating intermediaries: The prospects and limitations of professional associations in decentralized regulation

A key question in understanding regulation through independent intermediaries is the extent to which intermediary actions are either coordinated, thereby supporting consistency in regulatory application, or uncoordinated, leading to monitoring and enforcement disparities. This paper examines professional associations as one mechanism by which policy action may be coordinated in decentralized arrangements. Professional associations provide means and venues for members to interact, offer training and education that develops shared understanding of policy directives, are collective representation bodies for professional members, and may play an important role in establishing and enforcing collective standards for appropriate behavior. We examine these functions in the decentralized administration of United States organic food certification, focusing on two relevant professional associations – the Accredited Certifiers Association and the International Organic Inspectors Association. Drawing on multiple methods, including interviews and survey data, our findings indicate that professional organic certification associations provide valuable education and training, disseminate information, and facilitate knowledge sharing among administrative entities and with regulatory authorities. We conclude with a discussion of the prospects and limitations of professional associations for third‐party regulation, and how accounting for professional association functions can improve our understanding of regulatory intermediary coordination and conduct.     

Child Execution in Iran: Furthering Our Understanding of Child Execution as a Form of Structural Violence

Critical Criminology - This article explores how the concepts of strucutral violence and cultural violence can explain the institutionalization and normalization of violence in children’s...     

Leaving Europe: New Crises,Entrenched Inequalities and Alternative Routes of Social Mobility

Abstract

This article addresses conceptual issues around contemporary forms of out-of-Europe migrations of various European publics. In particular, we ask how such moves contribute to both the decentring of Europe in migration debates, and to the ‘de-migranticization' (Dahinden, 2016 Dahinden, J. (2016). A plea for the ‘de-migranticization’ of research on migration and integration 1. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(13), 2207–2225. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1124129[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) of the social scientific study of migration. This article also serves as the introduction to this special issue entitled “Leaving Europe: Alternative routes of up/outward mobility” that aims to document ethnographically new forms of European emigration and shed light on an imaginary of Europe which is not conceived as a place of prosperity and success but rather as a locus of disempowerment.     

Implementation and Optimization of the Sodium‐Rhodizonate Method for Chemographic Shooting Distance Estimation

In shooting incident investigations where it is important to estimate the shooting distance, the sodium‐rhodizonate coloring method has been used for the visualization of GSR patterns extensively. This publication describes the optimization of this method by the use of a heated press for the transfer of GSR traces on garments, as well as variation of a number of other important process parameters. Our final aim for this project was to prepare a formal validation of the coloring method as prerequisite for its inclusion into the scope of ISO17025‐certified methods in the GSR Laboratory. A number of important factors and process parameters were identified, such as buffer composition and pH, type of textile used as a substrate and resolution of the documentation of the results. Results were tested using a synthetic proficiency test. Our optimized method has been found to be a very effective technique for visualization of macroscopic GSR traces.