Screening for intimate partner violence in orthopedic patients: a comparison of three screening tools

Accurately identifying victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) can be a challenge for clinicians and clinical researchers. Multiple instruments have been developed and validated to identify IPV in patients presenting to health care practitioners, including the Woman Abuse Screening Tool (WAST) and the Partner Violence Screen (PVS). The purpose of the current study is to determine if female patients attending an outpatient orthopaedic fracture clinic who screen positive for IPV using three direct questions (direct questioning) also screen positive on the WAST and PVS. We conducted a prevalence study at two Level I trauma centres to determine the prevalence of IPV in female patients presenting to orthopaedic fracture clinics for treatment of injuries. We used three methods to determine the prevalence of IPV; 1) direct questioning, 2) WAST, and 3) PVS. We compared the prevalence rates across the three screening tools. Ninety-four women screened positive for IPV using any method. The prevalence of IPV was 30.5% when a direct questioning approach was utilized, 12.4% using the WAST, and 9.2% using the PVS. The WAST identified 37.2% (35/94) of the IPV victims detected and the PVS identified 27.7% (53/94) of the IPV victims detected, whereas direct questioning identified 89.4% of the IPV victims. Identification of IPV may be under-estimated by the WAST and PVS screening tools. Our findings suggest direct questioning may increase the frequency of disclosure of IPV among women attending outpatient orthopaedic clinics.     

Adverse mental health outcomes associated with emotional abuse in young rural South African women: a cross-sectional study

There is a lack of data on the prevalence of emotional abuse in youth. The aim of this study was thus to estimate the prevalence of emotional abuse in intimate partnerships among young women in rural South Africa and to measure the association between lifetime experience of emotional abuse (with and without the combined experience of physical and/or sexual abuse) and adverse health outcomes. Between 2002 and 2003, young women from 70 villages were recruited to participate in the cluster randomized controlled trial of an HIV behavioral intervention, Stepping Stones. Data was obtained through the administration of a questionnaire at baseline. Of the 1,293 women who had ever been partnered, 189 (14.6%) had experienced only emotional abuse in their lifetimes. Three hundred sixty-six women (28.3%) experienced emotional abuse with physical and/or sexual abuse in their lifetimes, and one hundred forty-four women (11.1%) experienced physical and/or sexual abuse without emotional abuse. Hazardous drinking was associated with the experience of physical and/or sexual abuse, with (OR 6.0, 95% CI [1.0, 36.6]) and without emotional abuse (OR 5.8, 95% CI [1.1, 29.4]). Illicit drug use (OR 5.6, 95% CI [2.4, 12.6]), having depressive symptoms (OR 2.9, 95% CI [1.2, 4.2]), having psychological distress (OR 1.9, 95% CI [1.4, 2.6]), and suicidality (OR 79.0, 95% CI [17.3, 359.6]) was associated with the experience of emotional abuse with physical and/or sexual abuse. Suicidality was also strongly associated with having experienced emotional abuse alone (OR 79.5, 95% CI [16.7, 377.4]). This study showed that emotionally abused young women had a greater risk of suicidality than those experiencing no abuse and that the combined experience of emotional with physical and/or sexual abuse was strongly associated with poor mental health outcomes.     

China’s Far-Out Fashion

正As a foreigner newly arrived in China’s capital, I find Bejingers’fashion taste among the most striking features of the city. The chaotic dress was overwhelming at first, but soon I began to see distinct patterns and trends. The arrival of hot weather seems to have brought out     

Effectiveness of modified therapeutic community treatment within a medium-secure service for personality-disordered offenders

There is debate as to whether secure hospital treatment for offenders with personality disorder can be effective relative to criminal justice interventions. This study examines the evidence for long-term treatment of such offenders in hospital within in a modified therapeutic community model including accredited offending behaviour programmes. A panel sample of 47 patients were followed up on measures of violence risk (HCR-20, VRS) and symptom severity (SCL90-R). Intention-to-treat analysis with reliability thresholds showed significant positive change between assessment and discharge in both violence risk (VRS) and symptoms (SCL90-R) indicating a positive treatment effect. Threshold effects for treatment effectiveness seemed to occur at 1?year of treatment for risk and 3?years for symptom reduction.     

Socio‐legal Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand

This article reviews the development and impact of the socio‐legal field in New Zealand. It begins by assessing the socio‐legal presence within teaching and research conducted across New Zealand's law faculties before analysing factors likely to inhibit future growth of the sub‐discipline in this remote jurisdiction. Having examined how New Zealand's legal scholars map and influence national legal behaviour, without always recognizing contradictions between these objectives or categorizing their research as ‘socio‐legal’, the article goes on to examine how the next generation of socio‐legal researchers might exert stronger influence over the law curriculum and new areas of legal policy. In conclusion, it argues for a distinctive New Zealand approach toward socio‐legal studies and notes that future prospects appear encouraging, and in certain respects more promising than those in the United Kingdom, particularly when considering research impact.     

Adverse Neighborhood Conditions and Sanction Risk Perceptions: Using SEM to Examine Direct and Indirect Effects

Objectives

The present study examines how individuals’ sanction risk perceptions are shaped by neighborhood context.

Methods

Using structural equation modeling on data from waves 6 and 7 of the National Youth Survey, we assess the direct and indirect relationships between adverse neighborhood conditions and two dimensions of sanction risk perceptions: the certainty of punishment and perceived shame. In addition, the role of shame as a mediator between neighborhood context and certainty of punishment is also investigated.

Results

The results indicate that adverse neighborhood conditions indirectly affect both forms of sanction risk perceptions, and additional results show that perceived shame fully mediates the effect of neighborhood conditions on perceptions of the certainty of punishment.

Conclusions

The perceptual deterrence/rational choice perspective will need to be revised to accommodate more explicitly the role of neighborhood context in shaping sanction risk perceptions.     

A closer look at risk factors for public-private partnerships in Singapore: six case studies

ABSTRACT

Despite its global popularity over the past few decades, the public-private partnership (PPP) has not always led to successful outcomes, due largely to a number of risk factors associated with the projects. To explain how and why PPPs sometimes fail, this study considers the success-failure continuum of Singapore’s recent PPP experience from 2000 to 2019. After taking a critical, close look at the six failed cases, we identify the following latent risk factors: unstable financial capacity during the execution period of a project, force majeure unforeseen problems that arise, a lack of technical and/or financial foresight, poor corporate management (e.g. delays in construction and poor-quality service delivery), and an unfavourable investment environment stemming from the lack of a clear and supportive governance framework. In addition, we find that most risk factors tend to appear during the contract management (pre-operation) and project management (operation) phases. Such risks seem to drive the operational failure and subsequent contract termination of multiple unsuccessful PPPs, simultaneously (and sometimes sequentially) rather than in isolated fashion. All in all, this study offers for policymakers that better risk allocation and proper, mutual coordination between the public and private partners represent essential factors for PPP success.     

Street Egohood: An Alternative Perspective of Measuring Neighborhood and Spatial Patterns of Crime

Objectives

The current study proposes an approach that accounts for the importance of streets while at the same time accounting for the overlapping spatial nature of social and physical environments captured by the egohood approach. Our approach utilizes overlapping clusters of streets based on the street network distance, which we term street egohoods.

Methods

We used the street segment as a base unit and employed two strategies in clustering the street segments: (1) based on the First Order Queen Contiguity; and (2) based on the street network distance considering physical barriers. We utilized our approaches for measuring ecological factors and estimated crime rates in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Results

We found that whereas certain socio-demographics, land use, and business employee measures show stronger relationships with crime when measured at the smaller street based unit, a number of them actually exhibited stronger relationships when measured using our larger street egohoods. We compared the results for our three-sized street egohoods to street segments and two sizes of block egohoods proposed by Hipp and Boessen (Criminology 51(2):287–327, 2013) and found that two egohood strategies essentially are not different at the quarter mile egohood level but this similarity appears lower when looking at the half mile egohood level. Also, the street egohood models are a better fit for predicting violent and property crime compared to the block egohood models.

Conclusions

A primary contribution of the current study is to develop and propose a new perspective of measuring neighborhood based on urban streets. We empirically demonstrated that whereas certain socio-demographic measures show the strongest relationship with crime when measured at the micro geographic unit of street segments, a number of them actually exhibited the strongest relationship when measured using our larger street egohoods. We hope future research can use egohoods to expand understanding of neighborhoods and crime.

     

Branding K-REDD+ and its implications for South Korea's middle power diplomacy

ABSTRACT

The need for new and stronger middle power diplomacy is growing as global challenges are increasingly governed by various horizontal inter- and trans-national networks. Climate change is one of the most complex and urgent global challenges that require collective action, and it is an issue for which more middle power leadership is greatly needed. The Republic of Korea (ROK) has been successful in becoming a primary actor in green growth governance, and its success has been attributed to its strategic middlepowermanship, integrating both material and ideational contents. Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) in tropical developing countries has been lauded as an immediate and effective solution to mitigate climate change. ROK's unique history of forest transition before rapid economic growth highlights the fact that improving forest management is possible even with imperfect governance, rapid population growth, and low economic development. The lessons learned from ROK's forest transition can be developed as a distinct contribution to the international effort to address forest-related impacts on climate change, and offer an important opportunity for ROK to play a constructive role and achieve enhanced stature within the international community.