The Importance of Establishing Reliability and Validity of Assessment Instruments for Mental Health Problems: an Example from Somali Children and Adolescents Living in Three Refugee Camps in Ethiopia

Assessing mental health problems cross-culturally for children exposed to war and violence presents a number of unique challenges. One of the most important issues is the lack of validated symptom measures to assess these problems. The present study sought to evaluate the psychometric properties of two measures to assess mental health problems: the Achenbach Youth Self-Report and the Child Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Scale. We conducted a validity study in three refugee camps in Eastern Ethiopia in the outskirts of Jijiga, the capital of the Somali region. A total of 147 child and caregiver pairs were assessed, and scores obtained were submitted to rigorous psychometric evaluation. Excellent internal consistency reliability was obtained for symptom measures for children and their caregivers. Validation of study instruments based on local case definitions was obtained for the caregivers but not consistently for the children. Sensitivity and specificity of study measures were generally low, indicating that these scales would not perform adequately as screening instruments. Combined test–retest and inter-rater reliability was low for all scales. This study illustrates the need for validation and testing of existing measures cross-culturally. Methodological implications for future cross-cultural research studies in low- and middle-income countries are discussed.     

Factors for Integration? Transnational Party Cooperation in the European Parliament, 1952–79

The idea that supranational institutions of the European Union (EU) such as the European Parliament (EP) actively promote integration has been manifest in discourses of the European Community (EC) since the 1950s. There is less evidence that parties in the EP do so, partly because their existence at the European level is a relatively new phenomenon. It is also problematic, as these parties do not constitute a European party system above the state. The article traces the development of transnational cooperative links among the parties of the European Parliament from 1952 to 1979, and illustrates that, from the earliest stages of European Integration, party representatives participating in the newly established Assembly chose to adopt political stances, organisational structures and norms that were transnational and supranational in style and representation.     

Denial, minimization, partner blaming, and intimate aggression in dating partners

Although countering denial, minimization, and externalization of blame is a key component of most interventions for individuals who have been abusive in their intimate relationships, these attributions have only seldom been the focus of empirical investigation. Using a sample of 139 male and female university students, this study examined the associations between self-reported minimizing and blaming attributions and the perpetration of physical, sexual, and psychological aggression against an intimate partner. For men, minimization of conflict and partner blame were associated with self-reported perpetration of intimate partner aggression, even after controlling for socially desirable responding and relationship satisfaction. In contrast, women's aggression was associated only with partner blame. Discussion focuses on overlap with similar areas of research, gender differences in minimization and blaming, and on potential directions for further empirical work on the associations of intimate aggression, relationship dissatisfaction, and attribution.     

The Human Rights Act and Legal Culture: The Judiciary and the Legal Profession

The purpose of this article is to consider the effect the United Kingdom’s currently prevailing legal culture is likely to have on the realization of cultural change presaged by the Human Rights Act. The article is in five parts. The first two address the preliminary questions: what is meant by ‘legal culture’ for these purposes, and what type of ‘human rights culture’ does the Human Rights Act envisage? The answers define the scope of the remainder of the article’s inquiry into the ways in which the Act itself and the culture of the United Kingdom legal profession and judiciary are likely to interact. The third part of the article identifies some examples of the sorts of culturally specific aspects of current legal practice which are likely to operate as serious practical constraints on the emergence of a human rights culture worthy of the name, before the fourth part considers what sorts of cultural changes will be required of judges and lawyers for the presaged cultural transformation to come about. Finally, the article asks whether there is any reason to believe that courts and lawyers can find from within their present culture the resources to bring about the necessary shift.     

Regulation and Rights in Networked Space

The Internet is often described as inherently free from regulation; a space where freedoms and liberties are guaranteed by the design of the network environment. The naivety of this view has, however, been exposed by commentators such as Shapiro, Reidenberg, and Lessig who have clearly demonstrated the inherent regulability of networked space. The question no longer is: can networked space be regulated? but rather, how and by whom is it regulated? This paper examines the regulation of rights in networked space. Property rights and rights to free speech, or free expression, are examined in relation to a number of issues that have emerged in the networked environment, or cyberspace. Its aim is to examine whether the embryonic regulatory structure of cyberspace, which has the advantage of starting with a completely clean slate, is sufficiently sympathetic to the unique qualities of this fledgling jurisdiction.