Newspaper reporting of suicide cases in Hong Kong

This study addresses the concerns over newspapers' reporting of suicide cases in Hong Kong, SAR (Special Administrative Region), using the WHO guidelines on the reporting of suicide news as a reference for comparison. We compared the official suicide information extracted from the Coroner's Court for the year 2000 with newspaper reports on suicides taken from five major Chinese local newspapers, which accounted for about 80% of the total circulation in Hong Kong. The type of newspaper reporting on suicides was also examined. Newspapers tended to report on those suicide victims who suffered relationship problems, whereas those who had family problems were significantly underreported. Among the suicides reported in the newspapers, 6.2% were found on the front page and the majority of the reports were presented pictorially. The reporting of suicides was selective and the coverage was incomplete, with student suicides reported excessively. The method of reporting for Hong Kong newspapers was not in line with the recommendations of the WHO or international best practices on presenting suicide news. For this reason we recommend a partnership approach with active participation from the media on suicide prevention so that communication professionals can proactively participate in suicide prevention work more effectively.     

Reforms, lobbies and welfare: A common agency approach

Citizens with heterogeneous tastes delegate to policy makers the authority to choose public policies. They may try to influence legislators in various ways. In this paper we assume that monetary lobbying and direct threats are the only instruments private individuals can use to influence the legislator. We model the relationship between the citizens and a single policy maker as a common agency game. Lobbies offer a policy and a payment according to a truthful contribution schedule, and the government takes the policy decision. In the truthful equilibrium, the government implements the social surplus maximizing policy. Introducing also direct threats, we find that, as far as both groups have an instrument to influence the legislator, the efficiency result is robust. We also show that when the lobby groups have asymmetric interests and political power, not all groups necessarily participate in the auction. In particular it turns out that one-lobby or non-lobby equilibria may arise, and those equilibria are also efficient.     

ATTITUDE MEASURES IN EVALUATION RESEARCH: A RESEARCH NOTE

The paper focuses on the use of attitude measures in evaluation research. It is suggested that attitude measures can assist evaluators in surmounting the problems of assessing program effectiveness both in process and impact evaluations. Attitude change can be conceptualized as the intended output of programs, as intervening between program variables and behavior or as proxy measures of behavioral target variables that are not readily measurable. Attitude measures can play avital role in evaluation research if an adequate methodology is employed.     

Memory Work Reconsidered

In this article we discuss the epistemological status of the knowledge and understandings that a specific way of working with women's experiences—memory work—generates. This discussion is held in the light of the last decades' feminist debate on the risks and problems inherent in research taking women's experience as a point of departure. We put forward memory work as a fruitful method of working scientifically with experiences, especially when it comes to understanding deeply naturalized power structures such as gender, nation, and sexuality. We show how different interpretative modes and practices in memory work may help us locate ruptures and ambivalences in the already known, and open up for understandings and interpretations that take us beyond the discursively given. However, several epistemological as well as methodological issues need to be addressed in order for memory work to render possible new forms of understanding that reach beyond established discourses and concepts. To avoid the much‐debated risk of essentialism and reproduction of different power structures, we argue that a great deal of reflection is required when elaborating research techniques. It is thereby necessary to carefully design the different steps in the process of memory work. This article shows how different ways of handling methodological problems in memory work—concerning foremost the choice of theme for the memory project, the textual practices used when writing memory stories, and the modes of interpretation employed—are crucial for what kind of analysis is made possible. We also highlight the importance of displacing the research problem at a certain distance from the theme of the project. The concepts of transferring and dislocating the research problem are introduced as a means to elucidate how different types of displacement generate different research results.     

Downsizing Juvenile Institutions in Ohio: Five Innovations

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, Ohio’s juvenile justice system has undergone important reforms that have led to a significant decline in the number of youthful offenders committed to state correctional facilities. As such, the purpose of this paper is to describe five unique innovations carried out across the state that have led to the downsizing of juvenile confinement in Ohio. These innovations include (1) the creation of Community Corrections Facilities; (2) RECLAIM Ohio; (3) the Ohio Youth Assessment System; (4) Targeted RECLAIM; and (5) the Behavioral Health/Juvenile Justice Initiative. Lessons learned from these efforts will be identified and discussed.     

Mean Streets Revisited: Assessing the Generality of Rival Criminological Theories

The vast majority of tests of major criminological theories have been conducted on youths in school settings. Following Hagan and McCarthy’s (1997) admonition to engage in “street criminology,” the current study surveyed 254 juveniles drawn mainly from impoverished neighborhoods in Uruguay, who were either confined or in an alternative justice program. Due to limited literacy skills, all youths were interviewed regarding theoretical measures and their delinquent involvement. The results revealed that self-control was unrelated to delinquency in this sample. By contrast, social learning factors and stressful life events were found to increase delinquent participation. The results suggest that the effects of the field’s core theories are general, accounting for as much or more variation in the sample of street youths as among youths attending conventional U.S. schools. The policy implications of the findings are explored.     

Subnational governments in a stabilization program: lessons learned in Argentina

Autonomous subnational governments pose a serious challenge to national stabilization strategies. As illustrated by the case of Argentina, fiscal reforms that have been successfuly implemented at the national level have proved to be much harder to induce among subnational governments. Provincial reform is still largely pending and provincial governments continue to generate large public deficits, posing a threat to the success of Argentina's overall reform program in the medium and long term.

This paper provides a retrospective on Argentina's reform program with a focus on subnational governments. It identifies elements within the reform program itself, such as windfall increases of guaranteed central transfers, that systematically undermined early efforts to induce provincial reform. It also examines the government's strategy to neutralize their effects through the decentralization of services and the negotiation of two fiscal pacts, as well as its success in introducing major reforms by capitalizing on the financial pressure that resulted from the Mexican crisis. Finally, it draws lessons of experience that may be useful for policy makers faced with the similar challenge of inducing fiscal reform within autonomous subnational goverments.     

Unifying and Multiplying the People: The Strategy of Ambiguity in National-Populist Discourse within a Cross-Border Area

Abstract

National-populist parties display a discourse based on the defense of the national integrity. However, in the current European context, these parties have to deal with an increasing cultural heterogeneity, new forms of citizenship, and multi-scaling arenas. How does national-populism develop its narratives in these settings? The paper elaborates a framework for understanding the way in which ambiguity is included in the discursive strategies of national-populists. Through the Critical Discourse Analysis approach, the contribution will focus on the analysis of the discourses produced by three parties located at the Swiss-Italian border at the time of the referendum campaign for the 2014 Swiss initiative “Against Mass Immigration.”