Improving Partnership Governance: Using a Network Approach to Evaluate Partnerships in Victoria

Partnerships of various kinds are now widespread, but evaluating them is complicated. This article examines the usefulness of a network approach for analysing partnership effectiveness, where the central concern is governance. The approach is based on interviews, and for this evaluation they were conducted with 120 people from 10 different partnerships in Victoria. A detailed examination of network structures uncovers important features of partnerships, yielding crucial information about them as governing entities, and providing feedback to partners on where effort needs to be spent on relationship building. This article adds to the existing knowledge about what makes partnerships effective, and to the toolkit available for evaluating them.     

Correction to: Feminist Judgments Projects at the Intersection

Feminist Legal Studies - In the original publication of the article, errors in the production stages resulted in Vanessa Munro being listed as sole author.     

Urgent issues and prospects at the intersection of culture,memory, and witness interviews: Exploring the challenges for research and practice

The pursuit of justice increasingly relies on productive interactions between witnesses and investigators from diverse cultural backgrounds during investigative interviews. To date, the role of cultural context has largely been ignored by researchers in the field of investigative interviewing, despite repeated requests from practitioners and policymakers for evidence-based guidance for the conduct of interviews with people from different cultures. Through examining cultural differences in human memory and communication and considering specific contextual challenges for investigative interviewing through the lens of culture, this review and associated commentaries highlight the scope for considering culture and human diversity in research on, and the practice of, investigative interviewing with victims, witnesses, and other sources. Across 11 commentaries, contributors highlight the importance of considering the role of culture in different investigative interviewing practices (e.g., rapport building, questioning techniques) and contexts (e.g., gender-based violence, asylum seeking, child abuse), address common areas of cultural mismatch between interviewer–interviewee expectations, and identify critical future routes for research. We call for an increased focus in the investigative interviewing literature on the nature and needs of our global community and encourage constructive and collaborative discussion between researchers and practitioners from around the world to better identify specific challenges and work together towards evidence-based solutions.     

Estimation of the post-mortem interval in beagle dogs

Estimation of the time that has elapsed between death and the post-mortem examination of a body contributes to the investigation of death by defining the period during which death may have occurred. In a veterinary context, investigations involve a range of incidents including out-of-season shooting of game animals, poaching, death during transportation and cases of neglect or non-accidental injury of domestic animals. This study on dogs of the same breed, of similar weights and held under identical conditions, shows that a combination of rectal temperature, environmental temperature, gross pathology and histological changes can provide a scientifically based estimate of the post-mortem interval during the first 10 h following death, of up to one day, one to three days, three to seven days and one to three weeks.     

Surveying support for child and youth political participation in Australia and New Zealand

Recent decades have witnessed increased empirical and policy interest in children’s citizenship, particularly since the ratification of the United Nations Declaration of Children’s Rights. However, support for children’s active citizenship is often hindered by the pervasiveness of discourses that characterise children as innocent, developing, and free from responsibility. Public and governmental decision-making largely excludes children’s consultation and contributions, often determined by age alone. To quantifiably assess the amount of public support for children’s political participation, we commissioned a Likert scale survey question on degrees of support for children and youth (across four age groups between 3 and 18 year olds) having the opportunity to influence government decisions, in the Australian and New Zealand 2016 versions of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). Analysis of responses to this question in relation to demographic survey data indicate variation in preferences for different age groups, and that age, gender, and political party preference of respondents were variables of significance for both nations. These variables point to potential predictors of attitudes toward political participation of children and youth which have relevance for policymakers and educators in relation to provision of programmes that will increase the engagement of children and youth in government decision-making.