A Problem with Double-Blind Photospread Procedures: Photospread Administrators Use One Eyewitness's Confidence to Influence the Identification of Another Eyewitness

In Experiment 1, photospread administrators (PAs, N = 50) showed a target-absent photospread to a confederate eyewitness (CW), who was randomly assigned to identify one photo with either high or low confidence. PAs subsequently administered the same target-absent photospread to participant eyewitnesses (PWs, N = 50), all of whom had viewed a live staged crime 1 week earlier. CWs were rated by the PAs as significantly more confident in the high-confidence condition versus low-confidence condition. More importantly, the confidence of the CW affected the identification decision of the PW. In the low-confidence condition, the photo identified by the CW was identified by the PW significantly more than the other photos; there was no significant difference in photo choice in the high-confidence condition. In spite of the obvious influence exerted in the low-confidence condition, observers were not able to detect bias in the photospread procedures. A second experiment was conducted to test a post-hoc explanation for the results of Experiment 1: PAs exerted influence in the low-confidence condition because they perceived the task as more difficult for the eyewitness than in the high-confidence condition. Independent observers (N = 84) rated the difficulty of the confederate's task as higher in the low-confidence condition compared with the high-confidence condition, suggesting that expectations of task difficulty might be driving the effect observed in Experiment 1. Results support recommendations for double-blind photospreads and emphasize that the same investigator should not administer photo lineups to multiple eyewitnesses in an investigation.     

The unheeded present and the impossible future: temporalities of relocation after Typhoon Haiyan

Recovery plans were developed for both the Philippines and Tacloban City in particular. They framed Haiyan as a climate change emergency, and sought to respond to future risks to the city and country. This focus on future recovery came at the expense of attention to the transitional needs of those worst affected by the Typhoon. International humanitarian organizations were co-opted into the government’s refusal of transitional assistance to Tacloban City shoreline residents. This was because they construed their mandate of apolitical assistance in a particular way. An alternative framing of emergency deployed by a local organization produced a very different result. In order to respond to the range of temporal needs in post-disaster situations, humanitarian actors need to be cognizant of the range of epistemic frameworks available to them.     

Correlates of Behavioral Outcomes in Sexually Abused Children

The present study attempted to identify individual and contextual factors associated with outcomes in a group of 63 latency-aged children disclosing sexual abuse (SA). Children reporting SA were found to display greater internalizing and externalizing behavioral difficulties as well as more sexualized behaviors relative to same-age non-abused peers. Mothers also reported these children as less socially competent than their peers. Family contextual factors appeared to be associated with behavioral difficulties and made a unique contribution to the prediction of externalizing and sexualized behaviors. Of the personal variables, avoidance coping was found to be linked to poorer outcomes. In examining possible factors linked to ‘resilient’ outcomes in a 6-month time-frame, family conflict and avoidance coping were found to be associated to clinical status in children reporting SA.     

Ethel Bright Ashford: more and less than a role model

ABSTRACT

There is a tendency to position the first women lawyers as role models for today’s young women. This article argues, through an exploration of the life and career of Ethel Bright Ashford, that these women are better recognised as pioneers or foremothers than promoted as role models. Ashford was one of the first women barristers, a long-serving borough councillor, and tireless activist for civic causes. Nonetheless, aspects of her career and politics pose problems for purely celebratory accounts. Yet there is real value in considering her biography: she offers both an alternative definition of a successful professional life and the reassurance that imperfection is not equivalent to failure. Ashford therefore illustrates the vital importance of a more nuanced and historically situated consideration of the first women lawyers.     

The transformation of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

Between 2000 and 2005, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, until recently, the Food Stamp Program) caseload increased by half. As the Great Recession unfolded, the SNAP caseload grew even more rapidly. Further, over the past two decades the composition of the caseload has shifted sharply away from families combining food and cash assistance and toward families receiving food assistance in the absence of any other major, means‐tested income support. By analyzing components of the caseload separately, we provide new and more insightful estimates of the effects of food and cash assistance policies and the economy on both the change in the composition of the caseload and the large caseload swings over the 1990s and 2000s. We find that the economy can explain a portion of caseload changes, but not compositional shifts. Food and cash assistance policies help to explain both changes. In total, the combination of SNAP and welfare policy changes account for about half of the sharp increase since 1994 in the share of SNAP households receiving food, but not cash, assistance. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.