Attitudes and beliefs about domestic violence: results of a public opinion survey: I. Definitions of domestic violence, criminal domestic violence, and prevalence

This study reports analyses and findings from a public opinion survey designed to explore beliefs about domestic violence (DV)-what it is, when it is against the law, and how prevalent it is. The project interviewed 1,200 residents from six New York communities. The analyses reveal substantial firsthand and secondhand experience with DV and strong consensus that acts of physical aggression should be labeled as DV, but substantially less certainty about the illegality of the abusive behaviors. Overall, the respondents were less inclined to define women's aggressive behavior in pejorative or unlawful terms than men's. Respondents believed that DV was common in their communities, and that it affected a significant minority of couples. Multivariate analyses provide little support for conventional wisdom about the impact of socioeconomic background on tolerance for or knowledge about DV, although gender, generation, and secondhand familiarity with DV incidents play a role in opinions and beliefs.     

A concept study on identification and attribution profiling of chemical threat agents using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry applied to Amanita toxins in food

Accidental or deliberate poisoning of food is of great national and international concern. Detecting and identifying potentially toxic agents in food is challenging due to their large chemical diversity and the complexity range of food matrices. A methodology is presented whereby toxic agents are identified and further characterized using a two-step approach. First, generic screening is performed by LC/MS/MS to detect toxins based on a list of selected potential chemical threat agents (CTAs). After identifying the CTAs, a second LC/MS analysis is performed applying accurate mass determination and the generation of an attribution profile. To demonstrate the potential of the methodology, toxins from the mushrooms Amanita phalloides and Amanita virosa were analyzed. These mushrooms are known to produce cyclic peptide toxins, which can be grouped into amatoxins, phallotoxins and virotoxins, where α-amanitin and β-amanitin are regarded as the most potent. To represent a typical complex food sample, mushroom stews containing either A. phalloides or A. virosa were prepared. By combining the screening method with accurate mass analysis, the attribution profile for the identified toxins and related components in each stew was established and used to identify the mushroom species in question. In addition, the analytical data was consistent with the fact that the A. virosa specimens used in this study were of European origin. This adds an important piece of information that enables geographic attribution and strengthens the attribution profile.     

Equity and cost-effectiveness of multilateral adaptation finance: are they friends or foes?

This paper analyzes potential criteria to allocate international funding for adaptation to climate change, as a response to one of the main governance challenges of international adaptation funding—the prioritization of project proposals given scarce funding. Based on the review of the equity and cost-effectiveness literature and relevant policy documents, we identify three potential indicators for equity (vulnerability level, poverty, equal funding per capita), and three indicators for cost-effectiveness (economic savings in absolute and relative terms, human lives saved). Applying these simple indicators to information provided in all 39 project documents considered by the Adaptation Fund Board (AFB) in 2011, we find that projects approved or endorsed by the AFB rank high according to one cost-effectiveness indicator (absolute economic savings), while they rather rank low according to all equity and further cost-effectiveness indicators. Furthermore, we analyze whether equity and cost-effectiveness are two contradicting goals, or whether ways can be found to reconcile both goals in multilateral adaptation finance. We conclude from both the theory and the 39 analyzed project documents that a pure economic definition of cost-effectiveness tends to be in contradiction with equity but that trade-offs between equity and cost-effectiveness can be limited if relative economic savings or human live savings are used as indicator for cost-effectiveness.     

Partner Violence Entrapment Scale: Development and Psychometric Testing

This article describes the development and testing of the psychometric properties of the Partner Violence Entrapment Scale (PVES), an instrument that evaluates the women’s perceived reasons for staying in violent partner relationships. After initial pilot testing, the scale was administered to 213 Spanish women who were victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). An exploratory factor analysis identified six factors: Socio-Economic Problems, Attachment and Fear of Loneliness, Blaming Oneself and Resignation, Impact on Children, Fear of Harm and Worry for the Partner, and Feelings of Confusion. Discriminant validity was established by demonstrating associations between PVES factors and socio-demographic, clinical and abuse variables. The scale appears to be a useful assessment tool for social and clinical settings. Its factor structure, reliability, and validity need to be replicated in other populations and samples.     

Still a poster child for social investment? Changing regulatory dynamics of early childhood education and care in Denmark and Sweden

This paper investigates the regulation of publicly organized early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Denmark and Sweden, through the regulatory welfare state (RWS) framework. The analysis focuses on how alterations in funding and quality of care are shaped by governmental and nongovernmental actors at national and local levels of government. Through focused structured analysis, we examine how various actors have shaped the funding and quality of childcare in Denmark and Sweden, from the early 2000s to 2020, with special attention to the period during and after the 2008 financial crisis. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, concerns about quality in care were raised on the political agenda by various actors in both countries, leading to decisions to improve the quality of care. Yet, the regulatory dynamics differ: In Denmark, the debate led to a decision in 2019, to implement a minimum statutory requirement of regulatory quality standards. From an RWS perspective, this outcome can be qualified as “double expansion,” because regulatory quality standards, and public funding for childcare increased. In Sweden, the debates about quality of ECEC led, in 2016, to political guidelines about quality standard, but with no additional national funds, and no mandatory regulatory quality requirements. Analytically, this can be qualified as “regulatory-led expansion,” that is requirements for quality standards, although the lack of additional national funds suggests that it will be difficult to improve ECEC quality substantially. The RWS perspective, which focuses on national and municipal levels of governance, also gives insights into hidden inequalities between municipalities regarding funding and quality of ECEC, which are more pronounced in Sweden than in Denmark.     

The Europeanization of social movements in the Czech Republic: The EU and local women’s groups

The goal of this paper is to analyze the impact the EU has had on Czech women’s groups since the 1990s. Drawing on both Europeanization and social movement theories, the first section defines the theoretical framework of the paper. The second section is focused on the impact of changes in the funding of women’s groups which, since the end of the 1990s, have relied more than before on European funding. The third section analyzes the shift in the political context and the domestic political opportunity structure in the Czech Republic that has occurred in connection with the accession process. The fourth section analyzes transnational cooperation for which new opportunities have appeared with the EU’s eastward expansion. The paper concludes by summarizing its main findings.     

Lawfulness of a randomised trial of the new community treatment order regime for England and Wales

This article debates and defends the lawfulness of a randomised controlled trial of compulsory outpatient treatment under the mental health legislation for England and Wales. The trial is designed to compare the outcomes for patients of their treatment under the new Community Treatment Order (CTO) regime with their treatment under the older leave scheme - the two main forms of compulsory care in the community now authorised by the revised Mental Health Act 1983. The methods for the trial involve the random allocation of some patients between the two schemes, when they are considered by their Responsible Clinicians to be eligible for some form of compulsory outpatient care. The main question we consider is the lawfulness of that aspect of the methods. Can a carefully selected group of patients be allocated at random between the two regimes to permit an evaluation to proceed? Or would that involve some departure from the decision-making criteria specified by law? We argue that a group of patients can be identified who meet - simultaneously - the tests for treatment under both the CTO and the leave schemes. Those patients could then be allocated lawfully to treatment under either scheme. This opens the door, we argue, to their random allocation between the two schemes for the purposes of the research. In reaching this conclusion, we explain the methods and aims of the trial and closely compare the respective features of the leave and CTO regimes.     

Exploring the Sequential Lineup Advantage Using WITNESS

Advocates claim that the sequential lineup is an improvement over simultaneous lineup procedures, but no formal (quantitatively specified) explanation exists for why it is better. The computational model WITNESS (Clark, Appl Cogn Psychol 17:629–654, 2003) was used to develop theoretical explanations for the sequential lineup advantage. In its current form, WITNESS produced a sequential advantage only by pairing conservative sequential choosing with liberal simultaneous choosing. However, this combination failed to approximate four extant experiments that exhibited large sequential advantages. Two of these experiments became the focus of our efforts because the data were uncontaminated by likely suspect position effects. Decision-based and memory-based modifications to WITNESS approximated the data and produced a sequential advantage. The next step is to evaluate the proposed explanations and modify public policy recommendations accordingly.     

Half the Spectrum: A Title IX Approach to Broadcast Ownership Regulation

In theory, the electromagnetic spectrum belongs to everyone. In practice, stations owned by men hold approximately 90% of the licenses to broadcast on the public spectrum in the United States. In order to address this problem, federal legislation should be adopted that mimics the framework of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 by prohibiting broadcast media companies from discriminating based on gender. Instead of the federal funds received by colleges and universities, the federal benefits here are the potentially lucrative broadcast licenses select radio and television stations receive. Under the proposed legislation, broadcasters would be required to establish gender parity within their organizations or risk losing their license to operate on the public spectrum.