Assessing the Reliability of Retrospective Reports of Adverse Childhood Experiences among Adolescents with Documented Childhood Maltreatment

The literature suggests that childhood maltreatment is related to a higher probability of developing psychopathology and disease in adulthood. However, some authors have questioned the reliability of self-reports of maltreatment, suggesting that psychopathology at the time of evaluation affects self-reports. We evaluated the reliability of the self-reports of 79 young adults who were identified in childhood by Child Protective Services by comparing two moments of evaluation. Psychological and physical symptoms were tested to evaluate their interference with the reports. We found good to excellent agreement, with no significant correlation between the changes in self-reported experiences and the changes in physical and psychological symptoms, suggesting that the reliability of reports is not related to the health state at the time of the report.     

Disentangling the Role of Ideology and Partisanship in Legislative Voting: Evidence from Argentina

We present a novel approach to disentangle the effects of ideology, partisanship, and constituency pressures on roll‐call voting. First, we place voters and legislators on a common ideological space. Next, we use roll‐call data to identify the partisan influence on legislators' behavior. Finally, we use a structural equation model to account for these separate effects on legislative voting. We rely on public opinion data and a survey of Argentine legislators conducted in 2007–08. Our findings indicate that partisanship is the most important determinant of legislative voting, leaving little room for personal ideological position to affect legislators' behavior.     

Relations with North Africa: a new priority in Portuguese bilateral foreign policy?

Portugal has remained quite distant from coastal North African states for many centuries. Having recently emerged as a prominent player across North Africa, Portugal’s current relationship with the Maghreb countries is unprecedented in its history. Lisbon has invested in building the Maghreb axis as a ‘new priority’ in the architecture of Portugal’s bilateral foreign policy. This policy already took off, and is now beyond the rhetorical plan, where it stood for many years. Portugal and its partner countries across the Mediterranean have reiterated their willingness to keep up with the positive momentum, especially from the past 10 years, deepening bilateral political dialogue and bolstering trade relations. This article puts Portuguese relations with North Africa into context and offers an up-to-date analysis on recent (and ongoing) developments in Luso?Maghreb relations.     

The Infant Injury Database: A Tool for the Study of Injury Patterns in Medicolegal Investigations of Child Abuse

In 2012, the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences began prospectively collecting injury data from pediatric autopsies. These data and associated case information from 635 pediatric cases are archived in the Infant Injury Database (IID). This paper introduces the IID to the forensic community and demonstrates its potential utility for child abuse and infant fatality investigations. The database is intended to be a source of evidence‐based research for coroners/medical examiners and clinicians in the recognition and diagnosis of child abuse. RR estimates were employed to quantify the relationship between individual autopsy findings to trauma‐related and nontrauma‐related causes of death. For example, unsurprisingly, the RR of trauma cases with multiple injury types is significantly greater than other causes of death, but the RR results provide a quantitative representation of the relationship. ROC curve modeling of the presence/absence of various injury types performed well at discriminating trauma from other causes of death (AUC = 0.96).     

Who controls the Naomi Campbell information flow? A practical analysis of the law of privacy

Legal context. The House of Lords held that the medical privacyof the glamorous supermodel Naomi Campbell was violated by publicationof details of her drug addiction treatment and a paparazzi picture.English law is developing under the influence of Article 8 (theright of privacy) and Article 10 (the right of freedom of expression)of the European Convention of Human Rights. The court explainedhow the action for breach of confidence protects privacy. So,who controls the Naomi Campbell information flow? Key points. Primarily, the courts control the flow of privateinformation. They do so through the cause of action of breachof confidence and remedies. In deciding liability, the courtsshould ask whether the benefit of publication is proportionateto the harm done by the invasion of privacy. To answer the question,they must balance the public interest in the right of privacyagainst the public interest in the right of freedom of expression.They may settle on a Reynolds type test by considering a numberof non-exhaustive factors. The article examines seven suggestedfactors and the remedies which can be deployed by the courts.Judgments from the English courts and the European Court ofHuman Rights are considered, including Campbell v MGN (HL),Douglas v Hello! (CA), McKennitt v Ash (HC), Peck v UK (ECtHR),Édition Plon v France (ECtHR), and Von Hannover v Germany(ECtHR). Practical significance. There are an increasing number of privacyclaims against the media. The article includes a checklist ofseven factors to help determine where the balance lies betweenprivacy and freedom of expression.     

Cherry Picking with Synthetic Controls

We evaluate whether a lack of guidance on how to choose the matching variables used in the Synthetic Control (SC) estimator creates specification-searching opportunities. We provide theoretical results showing that specification-searching opportunities are asymptotically irrelevant if we restrict to a subset of SC specifications. However, based on Monte Carlo simulations and simulations with real datasets, we show significant room for specification searching when the number of pre-treatment periods is in line with common SC applications, and when alternative specifications commonly used in SC applications are also considered. This suggests that such lack of guidance generates a substantial level of discretion in the choice of the comparison units in SC applications, undermining one of the advantages of the method. We provide recommendations to limit the possibilities for specification searching in the SC method. Finally, we analyze the possibilities for specification searching and provide our recommendations in a series of empirical applications.     

Novel Classification System of Rib Fractures Observed in Infants

Rib fractures are considered highly suspicious for nonaccidental injury in the pediatric clinical literature; however, a rib fracture classification system has not been developed. As an aid and impetus for rib fracture research, we developed a concise schema for classifying rib fracture types and fracture location that is applicable to infants. The system defined four fracture types (sternal end, buckle, transverse, and oblique) and four regions of the rib (posterior, posterolateral, anterolateral, and anterior). It was applied to all rib fractures observed during 85 consecutive infant autopsies. Rib fractures were found in 24 (28%) of the cases. A total of 158 rib fractures were identified. The proposed schema was adequate to classify 153 (97%) of the observed fractures. The results indicate that the classification system is sufficiently robust to classify rib fractures typically observed in infants and should be used by researchers investigating infant rib fractures.     

Authoritarian legacies,transitional justice and state crisis in Portugal's democratization

The nature of the Portuguese transition to democracy and the consequent state crises created a ‘window of opportunity’ in which the ‘reaction to the past’ was much stronger in Portugal than in the other Southern European transitions. The transition's powerful dynamic in itself served to constitute a legacy for the consolidation of democracy. This article analyses how the nature of the transition affected the legacy of authoritarianism superseding and transmuting that regime's impact on the ‘quality’ of Portugal's democracy, and illustrating how the majority of ‘authoritarian legacies’ were more a result of the nature of the transition than they were of the authoritarian regime.