Computer‐Assisted Keyword and Document Set Discovery from Unstructured Text

The (unheralded) first step in many applications of automated text analysis involves selecting keywords to choose documents from a large text corpus for further study. Although all substantive results depend on this choice, researchers usually pick keywords in ad hoc ways that are far from optimal and usually biased. Most seem to think that keyword selection is easy, since they do Google searches every day, but we demonstrate that humans perform exceedingly poorly at this basic task. We offer a better approach, one that also can help with following conversations where participants rapidly innovate language to evade authorities, seek political advantage, or express creativity; generic web searching; eDiscovery; look‐alike modeling; industry and intelligence analysis; and sentiment and topic analysis. We develop a computer‐assisted (as opposed to fully automated or human‐only) statistical approach that suggests keywords from available text without needing structured data as inputs. This framing poses the statistical problem in a new way, which leads to a widely applicable algorithm. Our specific approach is based on training classifiers, extracting information from (rather than correcting) their mistakes, and summarizing results with easy‐to‐understand Boolean search strings. We illustrate how the technique works with analyses of English texts about the Boston Marathon bombings, Chinese social media posts designed to evade censorship, and others.     

Foreign,criminal: a doubly damned modern British folk-devil

An association of strangers with danger and criminality is one of the most enduring social myths. However, in the UK, it was only after a media outcry 10 years ago over the release of foreign nationals from British prisons, that the ‘Foreign Criminal’ exploded into political and popular consciousness. Despite the small numbers of people involved, the location of this folk devil at the intersection of legal and moral assessments of ‘wickedness’ and alterity imbues it with considerable potency and has ensured that its reverberations are still felt strongly a decade later. Drawing on qualitative research with immigration detainees, deportees and irregular migrants, the article considers some of the many faces of the Foreign Criminal and illuminates their racialised, classed and gendered natures. It argues that a twin set of developments – coalescing around Operation Nexus and curtailed Article 8 right protections – work together to taint a growing number of non-citizens with criminality, whilst simultaneously undermining their claim to belong. Case studies are presented to demonstrate the fault lines of this malleable and expanding category, and to argue that the Foreign Criminal is paradigmatic of both social disorder and national boundaries, and is fundamentally shifting the lines of citizenship and belonging.     

Children’s and Adolescents’ Expectations about Challenging Unfair Group Norms

Youth often hold group norms that perpetuate inequality. One way these norms can be changed is by challenging these norms by choosing to include new members into these groups who hold morally just norms. In the current study, children’s and adolescents’ inclusion decisions and social reasoning about challenging group norms through inclusion were investigated. The sample included 9–10 (children) and 13–14 year-olds (adolescents) (N?=?673, 54.4% female). Participants supported including challengers into groups holding norms supporting relational aggression and unequal allocation of resources, but they were less likely to support including a challenger into a physically aggressive group. Age-related differences and gender differences were found: children and female participants were more likely to include challengers than were adolescents and male participants. The findings indicate that youth support including new members who would challenge morally questionable group norms, but that their support depends on the specific norm the group holds.     

Effect of Victimization on Impulse Control and Binge Drinking among Serious Juvenile Offenders from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

A vast literature has found longitudinal effects of early life stress on substance use and self-regulatory processes. These associations may vary by period-specific development among youth involved in the juvenile justice system. The current study used an accelerated longitudinal design and auto-regressive latent trajectory with structure residuals (ALT-SR) model to examine the within-person cross-lagged associations between binge drinking, impulse control, and victimization from 15 to 25 years of age. A large sample (N?=?1100) of justice-involved youth were followed longitudinally for 7 years (M _{age baseline} ?=?15.8, M _{age conclusion} ?=?22.8). In general, the sample was ethnically diverse (41% Black, 34% Hispanic, 21% White, 4.3% Other) and primarily male (87.2%). Participants reported on their frequency of binge drinking, impulse control, and frequency of victimization at each time point. The results indicated that, during adolescence, victimization and binge drinking attenuated impulse control, which resulted in more binge drinking and victimization during young adulthood. The current study highlights the importance of assessing developmental processes and period-specific transitions among at risk youth, especially for youth experiencing early life stress.     

A Community-Level Comparison of Terrorism Movements in the United States

The aim of this article is to identify characteristics of communities where persons indicted under terrorism charges lived, planned, and prepared prior to carrying out a terrorist act. Guided by a model of community deterioration and using data from the Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States database, findings indicate: (1) half of all census tracts where terrorists planned and prepared for attacks were located in the western United States; nearly one fourth were in the Northeast; (2) nationally, terrorist pre-incident activity is more likely to occur in census tracts with lower percentages of high school graduates for Al Qaeda and associated movements (AQAM) terrorism but not for far-right terrorism, higher percentages of households living below the poverty level, more urban places, and more unemployed; and (3) communities with terrorist pre-incident activity are different types of places compared to those where there was no pre-incident activity, generally between different regions of the country, and specifically in terms of differences across far-right and AQAM terrorist movements.     

Blast Suppression Foam,Aqueous Gel Blocks,and their Effect on Subsequent Analysis of Forensic Evidence*

In addition to having blast mitigation properties, aqueous foam concentrate AFC-380 blast suppression foam is designed to capture aerosolized chemical, biological, and radioactive particles during render-safe procedures of explosive devices. Exposure to aqueous environments and surfactants may negatively affect forensic evidence found at the scene, but the effects of AFC-380 foam and aqueous gel on the preservation and subsequent analysis of forensic evidence have not previously been investigated. Sebaceous finger and palm prints and DNA samples on paper, cardboard, tape, and various metal and plastic items, along with hairs, carpet and yarn fibers, and inks and documents, were exposed to AFC-380 foam. Similar mock evidence was also exposed to a superabsorbent gel of the type found in aqueous gel blocks used for shrapnel containment. Exposure to foam or aqueous gel was associated with a dilution effect for recovered DNA samples, but quality of the samples was not substantially affected. In contrast, exposure to AFC-380 foam or gel was detrimental to development of latent finger and palm prints on any substrate. Neither the hair nor the fiber samples were affected by exposure to either the foam or gel. Indented writing on the document samples was detrimentally affected by foam or gel exposure, but not inks and toners. The results from this study indicate that most types of forensic evidence recovered after being exposed to aqueous gel or blast suppression foam can be reliably analyzed, but latent finger and palm prints may be adversely affected.     

When Do Low Roll Rates Indicate Party Influence? Evidence from Counterfactual Roll Rates

A simulation-based counterfactual is one way to solve the observational equivalence challenge that seemingly “partisan” majority-party roll rates can be observed in the absence of any actual party influence. We simulate no-partisan-agenda-control counterfactual roll rates and apply them across sessions of the US House of Representatives and 86 state legislative chambers to evaluate the extent to which observed roll rates provide evidence for party influence on the legislative agenda. After assessing and controlling for the baseline risk of majority-party rolls, there is significant evidence of party influence on roll rates in some state legislatures, particularly those with rules that grant parties more agenda power, and in the post-Reed’s-rules House of Representatives. Institutional rules interact with the (simulated) risk of a majority roll to shape observed roll rates across chambers and across time.     

Experts and evidence in deliberation: scrutinising the role of witnesses and evidence in mini-publics,a case study

Policy Sciences - Experts hold a prominent position in guiding and shaping policy-making; however, the nature of expert input to decision-making is a topic of public debate. A key aspect of...     

The Daily Social and Emotional Worlds of Adolescents Who Are Psychologically Maltreated by Their Romantic Partners

The purpose of this study was to examine how partner psychological maltreatment is associated with depression, daily interpersonal experiences, and affect. Participants were 67 late adolescents (17- to 22-years-old). Each participant completed a survey followed by reporting affect, and interpersonal hassles and uplifts for seven consecutive days. Compared to those low in maltreatment, participants in the high maltreatment group reported more hassles with partners and friends, less uplifts with family, and more depressive symptoms. Multilevel modeling showed that adolescents in the high as compared to the low maltreatment group were more interpersonally sensitive (defined as greater affective reactions to day-to-day interpersonal hassles). Results reveal that psychological maltreatment by partners is an especially potent experience that occurs along with greater romantic hassles and more interpersonal sensitivity. The effects of maltreatment were also found to spill over into relationships with friends and families by either being associated with more hassles and greater reaction to hassles or fewer uplifts and less reaction to uplifts.