What Makes Parties Trust Mediators?

The relationship of trust between mediators and parties is a key element of the mediation process. This article reviews the trust relationship from the parties' perspectives. A qualitative research methodology was used to identify five key factors explaining why parties trust their mediator: degree of mastery over the process, explanation of the process, warmth and consideration, chemistry with the parties, and lack of bias toward either party. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.     

Modus operandi and situational aspects in adolescent sexual offenses against children: a further examination

The relationship between situational factors and the modus operandi of 103 adolescents involved in sexual offenses against children (12 years old or younger) is analyzed. Situational factors taken into account in this study are the location of the crime, the offender-victim relationship, and the presence of deviant sexual fantasies involving the victim prior to the offense. Modus operandi strategies were measured on the basis of participants' responses to Kaufman's Modus Operandi Questionnaire. Results indicate that modus operandi strategies are influenced by situational factors and that the offender's home, when no one else is home, is likely to be the place and the situation for adolescent offenders to adopt manipulative strategies. Suggestions are made regarding future modus operandi studies.     

Receipt of preventive dental care among special-needs children enrolled in Medicaid: a crisis in need of attention

Although not widely recognized, tooth decay is the most common childhood chronic disease among children ages five to seventeen. Despite higher rates of dental caries and greater needs, low-income minority children enrolled in Medicaid are more likely to go untreated relative to their higher income counterparts. No research has examined this issue for children with special needs. We analyzed Medicaid enrollment and claims data for special-needs children enrolled in the District of Columbia Medicaid program to evaluate receipt of recommended preventive dental care. Use of preventive dental care is abysmally low and has declined over time. Enrollment in managed care rather than fee for service improves the likelihood that special-needs children receive recommended preventive dental services, whereas residing farther from the Metro is an impediment to receipt of dental care.     

Recent human sexual dimorphism study using cephalometric plots on lateral teleradiography and discriminant function analysis

Abstract:  The examination of skull sexual dimorphism has been the subject of numerous morphologic and craniometric studies, but the disadvantage of these studies is that they are dependent on the experience of the operator and involve subjectivity. In 1996, a team from Taiwan refined the methods enabling the sex of an individual to be determined using cephalometric plots made from lateral teleradiography. To validate their work using a European population, 114 dry skulls (59 men and 55 women) were examined. Cephalometric plots were made on lateral teleradiography with an orthodontic software and 18 cephalometric variables were analyzed. Sex was determined with 95.6% accuracy using the 18 variables discriminant function. A subset of eight variables was selected and could predict sex with the same accuracy. In conclusion, it can be said that skull-sexing methods using lateral teleradiography seem always suitable but the most indicative variables could differ relative to the ethnic population concerned.     

Modeling the Deviant Y in Criminology: An Examination of the Assumptions of Censored Normal Regression and Potential Alternatives

Many dependent variables of criminological interest have censored distributions. Investigations that use such variables increasingly have turned to the Tobit model, a censored regression technique that is specified based on a latent dependent variable. When used under suitable circumstances, this model provides appropriate estimates. This paper discusses key assumptions of the Tobit model. It then highlights the risk of violating these assumptions and reviews alternative flexible parametric and semiparametric modeling techniques, currently used sparingly in criminology, which researchers may find helpful when assumptions regarding the error terms are untenable. By using an empirical example focused on sentencing outcomes and comparing estimates across analytic methods, this study illustrates the potential utility of simultaneously estimating the Tobit model along with some alternatives.

Political involvement among Toung women: a qualitative analysis

The depoliticization and non‐participation of young people in city life is often a topic of discussion. Given this context, how and why do young people then become activist? This is the main question addressed by a sociological research project on the way young women in Quebec practise political involvement and on the meaning that involvement has for them. The question of why young women get involved has to do with their biographical history, their life trajectories, and the influence of family and friends. How they get involved has to do with what involvement and activism mean to them. One of the principal findings is that the young female activists who participated in this study all have an active conception of citizenship that is not restricted to political involvement. Some of our respondents said that involvement is a way of being, a lifestyle that requires them to act consistently in all aspects of daily life and thus implies living in accordance with one's ideals. In other words, the involvement practised and conceptualized by these young activists corresponds to what can be called a ‘search for ethical consistency’, which aims ‘to give meaning to the values we hold as individuals and as a collectivity’.     

The imperial moment: A European view This article is based on developments up through June 9, 2003, the date it was submitted for publication

This article will first review the essential characteristics of the old exceptionalism in US foreign policy, then compare it with the specific features of the new strategy of the Bush administration and finally address the challenges and risks that this enterprise entails. The article provides an analysis of realist and liberal critiques of the Bush administration's foreign policy in terms of both objectives and results. It concludes that the war in Iraq constituted a truly imperial moment in US history. Preventive war is a flawed strategy, which runs against US principles in world affairs and against its security interests in the current international environment. For this reason, Bush's imperial policy will not last. The author writes here in a personal capacity, and not in the name of the European Union Institute for Security Studies.