Students’ self‐assessment in law

Abstract

THIS STUDY is about second‐year students’ self‐assessment in law. Its aims were to test how closely the assessment by the students of their own work matched that of their tutor, to give the students an insight into the “marking process” (which research has shown improves learning), to help the students excel in their examination, to find out whether the male students did better than the female students in their assignment and subsequent examination, and to see how far staff time could be saved. The following were found: there was a high level of agreement between the students’ own marks and those of the tutor, there was generally no significant over‐estimation of assignment marks by the students, the participants did better than the non‐participants in the subsequent examination, the female students did much better than the male students in the assignments as well as the examination (although the participants in general did not do better in their examination than they did in their assignment) and considerable staff time was saved. The findings are discussed in the light of previous research.     

Aligning Ethics with Medical Decision-Making: The Quest for Informed Patient Choice

Clinical evidence suggests that many patients undergo surgery that they would decline if fully informed. Failure to communicate the relevant risks, benefits, and alternatives of a procedure violates medical ethics and wastes medical resources. Integrating shared decision-making, a method of communication between provider and patient, into medical decisions can satisfy physicians' ethical obligations and reduce unwanted procedures. This article proposes a three-step process for implementing a nationwide practice of shared decision-making: (1) create model integration programs; (2) provide legal incentives to ease the transition; and (3) incorporate shared decision-making into medical necessity determinations.     

A study on the false positive rate of Stegdetect

In this paper we analyse Stegdetect, one of the well-known image steganalysis tools, to study its false positive rate. In doing so, we process more than 40,000 images randomly downloaded from the Internet using Google images, together with 25,000 images from the ASIRRA (Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access) public corpus. The aim of this study is to help digital forensic analysts, aiming to study a large number of image files during an investigation, to better understand the capabilities and the limitations of steganalysis tools like Stegdetect. The results obtained show that the rate of false positives generated by Stegdetect depends highly on the chosen sensitivity value, and it is generally quite high. This should support the forensic expert to have better interpretation in their results, and taking the false positive rates into consideration. Additionally, we have provided a detailed statistical analysis for the obtained results to study the difference in detection between selected groups, close groups and different groups of images. This method can be applied to any steganalysis tool, which gives the analyst a better understanding of the detection results, especially when he has no prior information about the false positive rate of the tool.     

PARENTAL ALIENATION AND THE DYNAMICS OF THE ENMESHED PARENT–CHILD DYAD: ADULTIFICATION,PARENTIFICATION, AND INFANTILIZATION

When caregivers conflict, systemic alliances shift and healthy parent‐child roles can be corrupted. The present paper describes three forms of role corruption which can occur within the enmeshed dyad and as the common complement of alienation and estrangement. These include the child who is prematurely promoted to serve as a parent's ally and partner, the child who is inducted into service as the parent's caregiver, and the child whose development is inhibited by a parent who needs to be needed. These dynamics—adultification, parentification and infantilization, respectively—are each illustrated with brief case material. Family law professionals and clinicians alike are encouraged to conceptualize these dynamics as they occur within an imbalanced family system and thereby to craft interventions which intend to re‐establish healthy roles. Some such interventions are reviewed and presented as one part of the constellation of services necessary for the triangulated child.     

Short‐Term Effects of Sanctioning Reform on Parole Officers' Revocation Decisions

Parole officials have traditionally been afforded considerable discretion when making sanctioning decisions to be able to tailor sanctions according to substantively rational concerns such as individuals' unique needs and situations. However, the application of substantive rationality in sanctioning can also generate unwanted disparities because sanctioning decisions may be based on extralegal factors that parole officials consider relevant. Concerns regarding disparate treatment of offender groups have prompted a number of states to consider adopting administrative violation response policies that emphasize formal rationality and uniformity by restricting parole officers' discretion and structuring sanctioning decisions according to legally relevant criteria. By emphasizing formal rationality in sanctioning, structured sanction policies present a dilemma for parole officers—uniformity versus individualized treatment. In 2005, the state of Ohio implemented an administrative violation response policy designed to reduce parole officers' reliance on revocation hearings and promote uniformity in sanctioning decisions. This study involved an examination of whether Ohio's shift to structured sanctioning coincided with differences in legal and extralegal effects on parole officers' decisions to pursue revocation hearings. Analyses of data collected before and after the implementation of the policy revealed a reduction in the number of revocation hearings officers pursued. Only modest increases in uniformity were observed, however, because there was little disparity resulting from officers' hearing decisions before the policy was put in place. These findings are discussed within perspectives on justice system actors' decision making.