Parent–Child Interaction Therapy with Domestic Violence Populations

Domestic violence continues to be a significant social problem impacting our society. Battered women and their children experience a myriad of negative consequences as a result of domestic violence. Of the possible negative sequelae that mothers and children experience, the disrupted parent–child relationship has received relatively little attention in the literature. Though psychosocial interventions are available to treat women who experience violence and children who witness violence, few interventions focus on the parent–child relationship. This article describes parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT), a relationship-based intervention. Although not initially developed to treat domestic violence, PCIT has unique characteristics that make it a promising intervention with this population. A rationale for the use of PCIT with battered women and their children is presented.     

Police Empathy and Victim PTSD as Potential Factors in Rape Case Attrition

This exploratory study investigated whether rape victims’ subjective perceptions of whether to proceed with legal action were associated with their experience of disclosing to the police during their initial interview. Specifically, the study investigated associations between symptoms of PTSD, shame and self-blame post-rape, subjective perceptions of police empathy and subjective perception of victims’ intentions to take the case to court. Participants (N = 22) were found to have elevated levels of PTSD severity, shame and self-blame. Police empathy was positively correlated with victims’ ratings of likelihood of taking the case to court, and negatively correlated with PTSD severity and shame. These preliminary findings suggest that training police officers how to respond more empathically to psychologically distressed rape victims may potentially help reduce victim attrition rates.     

The upturned stone: Political scandals and their investigation processes in twenty democracies

This article considers the very considerable research problems facing any attempt at the logical definition, systematic classification and coding of the many varieties of political scandal. Examples of these difficulties are drawn from a new classification scheme devised by the author. This scheme is used to analyze a major new source:Political Scandals and Causes CélèbresSince 1945: An International Reference Compendium (Longmans, UK 1990). From it 146 narrative case histories from twenty democratic systems have been taken for analysis. More detailed notes on problems of processing scandal cases into such simple statistical form follow on. The cases themselves are listed in very brief coded form in the Appendix, and four tables set up the analytical scheme and its statistical product. The article concludes with a number of suggestions for future research, if academic analysis of this always-interesting, but horribly slippery, aspect of politics, government and social mores is to be pursued.     

Homo machinus versus Homo sapiens: A knowledge management perspective of virtual communities in cyberspace

Abstract

Amidst debates on whether virtual communities can exist as a solution to technological developments, evidence suggests that knowledge creation and sharing are symptomatic of Home sapiens which may develop into idiosyncratic Homo machinus in cyberspace. According to Geyer (1996, 60), the communication revolution, backed up by accelerating technological development, has created a substructure for the emergence of virtual communities. Recent writings on virtual communities acknowledge Knowledge management as the most often used strategy to bring the human side into the equation. Enabled by online interactive communication technologies, this strategy allows virtual communities to create and share knowledge across the globe, thereby creating a global knowledge-based virtual reality in cyberspace. This article is essentially a theoretical discussion of virtual communities in cyberspace from a knowledge management perspective.     

Qiagen's Investigator™ Quantiplex Kit as a Predictor of STR Amplification Success from Low‐Yield DNA Samples,

Qiagen's Investigator? Quantiplex kit, a total human DNA quantitation kit, has a 200‐base pair internal control, fast cycling time, and scorpion molecules containing a covalently linked primer, probe, fluorophore, and quencher. The Investigator? Quantiplex kit was evaluated to investigate a value under which complete short tandem repeat (STR) failure was consistently obtained. Buccal swabs were extracted using the Qiagen QIAamp^® DNA Blood Mini Kit, quantified with the Investigator? Quantiplex kit using a tested half‐volume reaction, amplified with the ABI AmpFlSTR^® Identifiler kit, separated on the 3100Avant Genetic Analyzer, and data analyzed with GeneMapper^® ID v.3.2. While undetected samples were unlikely to produce sufficient data for statistical calculations or CODIS upload (2.00 alleles and 0.82 complete loci on average), data may be useful for exclusionary purposes. Thus, the Investigator? Quantiplex kit may be useful for predicting STR success. These findings are comparable with previously reported data from the Quantifiler? Human kit.     

A model of cross-cultural training in the transfer of technology

During the past few decades, many aspects of the transfer of technology from developed to less-developed countries have been examined in detail. Although much of the transfer has been done by transnational corporations (TNCs), one area that has received scant attention in the literature is the cross-cultural training of workers in the host country. A model is developed to show how critical training the worker is to the success of the TNC in the host country. This model emphasizes the need for workers to be trained to understand and use the new (foreign) technology and to understand the culture of the foreign corporation. Thomas S. Barker is a Ph.D. student in higher education with a concentration in management and economics at the University of North Texas.