Developmental and Validation of The Illustrated Version of The Home Inventory for Dangers and Safety Precautions: Continuing to Address Learning Needs of Parents in Injury Prevention

This paper describes the development and validation of the Home Inventory for Dangers and Safety Precautions – Illustrated Version to be used with parents whose children are at significant risk for home injury. Because illustrations are useful in facilitating learning by parents who have difficulty ensuring child and self home safety, colored illustrations representing 6 home rooms or areas were empirically developed for assessment purposes. The dangers depicted were selected from previous work and represented those associated with the majority of family home injuries. Score-sheets contained dangers and associated precautions administered to 62 referred young parents. Administration and psychometric characteristics were examined; specific hypotheses were tested. Obtained measures of internal consistency for dangers and precautions for all illustrations (except for Stairway) and for totals were satisfactory. Administration was suitable for use with this population. Parents were able to identify approximately half of the depicted dangers while being able to provide a suitable precaution for 40%. Reading comprehension was predictive of danger identification whereas reading recognition was predictive of precautions given. The HIDSP-IV is useful in assessing a parent's knowledge of dangers and precautions from which more individualized home safety instruction can occur.     

Characteristics of court-involved men and non-court-involved men who abuse their wives

The characteristics of court involved (CI) (n=86) and non-court-involved (NCI) men (n=42) who abused their wives and attended a treatment program were investigated. The groups experienced similar childhoods concerning family violence. The NCI men had more years of education, were more likely to be employed full-time, and tended to earn more money than the CI men. The NCI men also had more social support and scored higher on interpersonal problems than the CI men. The CI men were more likely to be separated, more reported drinking during their most recent assaultive occasion. Compared to the norms on the Basic Personality Inventory, both groups scored significantly higher on depression, anxiety, feelings of alienation, hypochondriasis, and impulse expression. CI men had higher denial and social introversion scores and NCI men had higher interpersonal problem scores than the norm. These findings have some implications for the planning of treatment programs.     

An investigation of two methods of DNA recovery from fired and unfired 9 mm ammunition

Cartridge cases are often recovered from crime scenes involving firearms and, in the United Kingdom (where gun possession is strictly controlled), these are commonly from 9 mm calibre ammunition. The ability to obtain informative DNA profiles from touch DNA on recovered cartridges could have a significant impact on the investigation of that type of offence. However, this avenue may not be routinely considered as investigators in the UK have historically had a low expectation of obtaining useful DNA profiles. This stance may not be unreasonable given that (a) only trace amounts of DNA are likely to have been transferred onto the cartridge cases through handling; and (b) when the cartridge is spent, the potential deterioration of that DNA caused by the act of discharging the weapon.We introduce a novel semi-automatable method using direct lysis for the recovery of DNA from ammunition and compare it with a traditional double-swabbing method (using wet and dry swabs). DNA profiling of the DNA recovered using both methods was carried out using the ESI17 FAST STR system (Promega). This demonstrated a significant increase in DNA recovery using the direct lysis approach, and correspondingly improved STR results.We also investigated the effect on the recovery and profiling of DNA from fired, and unfired, 9 mm cartridges using the direct lysis technique. These results demonstrate that DNA suitable for STR analysis can still be recovered from fired ammunition with only slightly reduced yields compared to unfired ammunition. In these experiments, the handler of the ammunition was most commonly either the sole contributor or the major contributor to the recovered DNA profile.     

The Review of the APS: Is gender really on anyone's agenda?

As recently as 2016, the Australian Government stated its commitment to increasing gender equality in the Australian Public Service (APS) workforce. In May 2018, the Prime Minister announced a broad‐ranging Review of the APS, but gender equality was not mentioned in the Review Terms of Reference. An interim Review report was released in March 2019, which was also largely silent on gender issues. We examine the submissions to the Review to assess whether, and how, organisations have considered gender equality. We found an almost universal gender blindness in submissions and conclude that this may have contributed to the Review panel ignoring gender equality issues in their interim report. We further conclude that without a focus on gender equality within the Review and ensuing reforms, the APS gender equality strategy is rendered merely symbolic. We recommend the Review implement gender mainstreaming to ensure gender equality can progress in the APS.     

Development of a Marketing Campaign to Recruit Non-adjudicated and Untreated Abusive Men for a Brief Telephone Intervention

Although voluntary enrollment by abusive men in domestic violence perpetrator treatment programs occurs, most men enter treatment only after they have injured a partner or family member and have been arrested, convicted and sentenced. This leaves a serious gap for those who engage in abusive behavior but who have not been served by the legal or social service systems. To address this gap, the researchers applied social marketing principles to recruit abusive men to a telephone-delivered pre-treatment intervention (the Men’s Domestic Abuse Check-Up—MDACU), designed to motivate non-adjudicated and untreated abusive men who are concurrently using alcohol and drugs to enter treatment voluntarily. This article discusses recruitment efforts in reaching perpetrators of intimate partner violence, an underserved population. Informed by McGuire’s communication and persuasion matrix, the researchers describe three phases of the MDACU’s marketing campaign: (1) planning, (2) early implementation, and (3) revision of marketing strategies based on initial results. The researchers’ “lessons learned” conclude the paper. This project is supported by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1 RO1 DA017873.     

Beyond the Unit Root Question: Uncertainty and Inference

A fundamental challenge facing applied time-series analysts is how to draw inferences about long-run relationships (LRR) when we are uncertain whether the data contain unit roots. Unit root tests are notoriously unreliable and often leave analysts uncertain, but popular extant methods hinge on correct classification. Webb, Linn, and Lebo (WLL; 2019) develop a framework for inference based on critical value bounds for hypothesis tests on the long-run multiplier (LRM) that eschews unit root tests and incorporates the uncertainty inherent in identifying the dynamic properties of the data into inferences about LRRs. We show how the WLL bounds procedure can be applied to any fully specified regression model to solve this fundamental challenge, extend the results of WLL by presenting a general set of critical value bounds to be used in applied work, and demonstrate the empirical relevance of the LRM bounds procedure in two applications.