The Dynamics of Staying and Leaving: Implications for Battered Women’s Emotional Well-Being and Experiences of Violence at the End of a Year

Much of the discourse on intimate partner violence assumes that women must end their relationship with their abusive partner to increase their safety and emotional well-being. Few studies, however, exist to support this assumption. Equally problematic, those studies that do exist have failed to distinguish women who leave and stay out from those who leave only to later return. Comparing emotional well-being and experiences of violence for 206 low-income, primarily Black battered women following different relationship trajectories, this longitudinal study found that women both separated from and together with their partner for the entire year of the study fared best at the end of that year compared to women “in” and “out” of the relationship over time. Beyond challenging common assumptions, these findings highlight the importance of considering the larger context within which an individual instance of leaving occurs.

Realized Publicness at Public and Private Research Universities

Although research‐extensive universities in the United States produce similar outcomes—research, teaching, and service—they vary substantially in terms of the publicness of their environments. In this article, the authors adopt a public values framework to examine how regulative, normative/associative, and cultural cognitive components affect realized public outcomes by faculty. Using survey data from a random sample of faculty scientists in six fields of science and engineering at Carnegie Research I universities, findings show that organizational and individual public values components are associated predictably with different realized individual public outcomes. For example, individual support from federal resources and affiliation with a federal lab (associative) are related to increased research outcomes, while tuition and fee levels (regulative) explain teaching outcomes, and perceived level of influence in the workplace (cultural cognitive) explains teaching and service outcomes.     

Contesting power, trust and legitimacy in the South African e-waste transition

Socio-technical transition theory is increasingly being used in research and practice to explain and guide transitions toward sustainability. Although recognizing the coevolution of technology and society, multi-scalar influences, and complex social processes, transition theory has thus far inadequately accounted for the role of power and in shaping transitions. This study uses the example of the transition-in-progress toward more sustainable e-waste practices in South Africa as one illustration of how power shapes the successes, failures, and direction of transitions. I look specifically at three transition arenas that are competing for legitimacy to guide the South African e-waste transition and show how their history, membership, and rules of participation shape the different pathways promoted by these organizations. In the South African case, vested interests and constraints on participation resulted in the splintering of original transition arena. While socio-technical transition theory suggests the importance of different competing niche experiments, in this case, different pathways are being promoted by different coalitions of actors through different arenas. The presence of multiple arenas and pathways has divided resources, created confusion, and arguably delayed the transition. Further, the scope for participation in these organizations differs, and this has implications for the redistribution of power. I suggest the need to more carefully consider the role of power, trust, and legitimacy within socio-technical transition theory and specifically within the transition arena. Importantly, analyzing the transition arena as a site of contestation over the distribution of costs and benefits of the particular pathway will enhance socio-technical transition theory’s explanatory power regarding how and why particular outcomes emerge.     

Family‐Centered Practice in Florida: Family Court Actions and Perceptions

Family and dependency courts can become valuable partners in efforts to stem the tide of child maltreatment using a family‐centered strategy. Florida's response to a 2008 federal Child and Family Services Review included a commitment to implement family‐centered practice in child protection services and the courts that hear these cases. Evidence of this implementation was documented in a formative evaluation conducted in 2010 and 2011. Findings based on interviews with dependency judges, Children's Legal Services attorneys, and Guardian ad Litem volunteers provide useful insights on how these practices were perceived and implemented.     

Latent fingermark development on a range of porous substrates using ninhydrin analogs--a comparison with ninhydrin and 1,8-diazofluoren

Three relatively new reagents for developing latent fingermarks on porous substrates, 1,2-indandione (IND), 5-methylthioninhydrin (5-MTN), and lawsone, are compared with the more widely used ninhydrin and 1,8-diazofluoren (DFO). Developed latent fingermark visualization on 10 different substrates comprising colored papers, cardboard, and cellophane rather than conventional printer and writing/notepad paper is assessed using latent fingermark deposits from 48 donors. Results show improved fluorescent fingermark visualization using IND compared with DFO on a range of colored cardboards and thick white paper, thus extending the range of substrates known to yield improved visualization with IND. Adding zinc chloride to IND failed to yield any further improvement in fluorescent fingermark visualization. 5-MTN (with and without zinc chloride posttreatment) showed no improvement in visualization compared with ninhydrin and DFO although visible fingermarks were developed. Lawsone produced fluorescent visible fingermarks only with white substrates, which were inferior to those produced with DFO.     

Reporting violence to the police: Predictors through the life course

Scholarship focused on factors that influence police reporting has a long history in the literature. Yet we lack a complete understanding of how these factors differentially influence reporting by age.

Purpose

This paper aims to enhance our understanding of underreporting by investigating the relationship between reporting and age, and how this relationship differs by crime type. The study further investigates whether a variety of characteristics differentially influence reporting across the life course. Finally, the study asks how the nature of reporting varies by the victim's age.

Methods

National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data were used to assess whether there are age-related differences in the factors influencing the rate and nature of police reporting.

Results

The findings suggest that the rate of reporting differs by crime type but that it generally increases throughout the life course. The influence of incident, victim, and offender characteristics on police reporting varies, not simply between juveniles and adults, but also between young and older adults. The proportion of incidents reported to police by the victim his/herself also continues to increase with age.

Conclusions

This suggests that disparities in police reporting cannot be reduced to juvenile-adult comparisons and should be studied across the full life course.     

Combined target factor analysis and Bayesian soft-classification of interference-contaminated samples: Forensic Fire Debris Analysis

A Bayesian soft classification method combined with target factor analysis (TFA) is described and tested for the analysis of fire debris data. The method relies on analysis of the average mass spectrum across the chromatographic profile (i.e., the total ion spectrum, TIS) from multiple samples taken from a single fire scene. A library of TIS from reference ignitable liquids with assigned ASTM classification is used as the target factors in TFA. The class-conditional distributions of correlations between the target and predicted factors for each ASTM class are represented by kernel functions and analyzed by Bayesian decision theory. The soft classification approach assists in assessing the probability that ignitable liquid residue from a specific ASTM E1618 class, is present in a set of samples from a single fire scene, even in the presence of unspecified background contributions from pyrolysis products. The method is demonstrated with sample data sets and then tested on laboratory-scale burn data and large-scale field test burns. The overall performance achieved in laboratory and field test of the method is approximately 80% correct classification of fire debris samples.