Arts Audiences: Establishing a Gateway to Audience Development and Engagement

ABSTRACT

Demand for mainline cultural art forms, including symphonies, opera, and jazz, is diminishing. As the arts face challenges concerning shrinking and aging audiences, reaching new consumer segments has become an imperative. The present research empirically examines how external forces related to an individual's opportunity to participate in the arts and internal variables related to motivation and ability influence audience development initiatives. In addition, the influence that these variables have on important engagement outcomes such as perceived value, loyalty, and advocacy are also evaluated. Findings offer insight for arts administrators into how consumption for live performing arts offerings can be fostered.     

THE COGNITIVE INTERVIEW AND ITS EFFECT ON WITNESSES’ CONFIDENCE

Today there is ample evidence that the Cognitive Interview (CI) enhances witnesses’ memory. However, less is known about how the CI affects eyewitnesses’ confidence. To address this shortcoming we conducted a study analyzing how realism in confidence was affected by the CI. All participants (n=79) were first shown a filmed kidnapping. After 2 weeks we interviewed one-third of the participants according to the guidelines of the CI, one-third according to a Standard Interview (SI), and one-third were not interviewed at all (Control condition). Participants in all three conditions were then asked to answer 45 forced-choice questions, and to give a confidence judgment after each choice. For the 45 questions, no differences in accuracy were found between the three conditions. Confidence was higher in the CI and SI conditions, compared with the Control condition. CI and SI did not differ in metacognitive realism but both showed lower realism compared with the Control condition, although only CI significantly so. The results indicate that the inflation in confidence is more likely to be explained in terms of a reiteration effect, than as a consequence of the particular mnemonics characterizing the CI (e.g. “mental reinstatement of context”). In sum, CI does not seem to impair (or improve) the realism in witnesses’ confidence, and does not inflate confidence in erroneous recall, compared to a SI.     

MDS use with crime scene data replicates poorly: response to Goodwill,Alison, and Humann (this issue) and Davis (this issue)

Abstract

Examinations of treatment attrition form an important – although sometimes neglected – component of evaluating a correctional programme's effectiveness in reducing recidivism. Previous research has identified offender characteristics that predict non-completion. This study investigated non-completion in 138 high-risk, violent male prisoners attending an intensive cognitive–behavioural programme. Almost one-third of men who commenced it did not complete the 7-month programme. Most asked to leave of their own accord, or were removed for ongoing offending. In contrast to previous research, no support was found for the hypothesis that those who terminated treatment prematurely were more in need of intervention than those who completed the programme; non-completers did not differ from completers on static estimates of criminal risk, PCL-R scores, demographic variables or self-report scales measuring dynamic risk factors. It was concluded that successful prediction using variables related to criminal risk and criminogenic need depends both on the characteristics of programme participants, and on contextual factors such as programme policies: when high-risk high needs offenders are a programme's target clientele, variables related to risk and need will have limited predictive utility. From a practice perspective, the programme was successful in retaining through to completion a relatively untreatable group: high-risk offenders with moderate to high PCL-R scores.     

Gender aspects of inheritance strategies and land transmission in rural Scania,Sweden, 1720–1840

This study deals with gender aspects of land transmissions in pre-industrial Sweden. Although not supported by law, a clear mentality of male primogeniture among peasants existed in the Swedish countryside in the 18th century. In many cases, however, this ideal could never be realized, making the idea of the “family farm,” handed down from father to son for generations, more of a myth than a reality. This study uses postmortem inventories linked to tax registers and family reconstitutions for a sample of parishes in southern Sweden to show that various strategies were chosen when transferring the farm after the death of the husband or wife. Although sons were more likely to take over the farms, daughters (or more correctly sons-in-law) also frequently did so, as did, sometimes, more distant kin and non-kin. Moreover, it was not the case, as has sometimes been maintained, that daughters took over the farm only when no able-bodied sons were available. On the contrary, daughters (sons-in-law) quite frequently took over the farm even when sons were present. The decision on land transmission was part of a more general family strategy concerning reproduction (access to marriage and household formation) as well as old-age security.     

La présence turque en Côte d’Ivoire contemporaine: entreprise transnationale au service de l’éducation,l’humanitaire et l’islam en Afrique de l’ouest

Many Tanzanians share a basic understanding of the occult as a moving force in the visible world. But at the same time, notions of the occult are characterised by indeterminacies in meaning, thereby allowing for multiple interpretations of particular events. This article explores various readings of two particular incidents that both occurred within a suburb of the city of Iringa in South-central Tanzania. First a Lutheran pastor started suffering from a paralyzed shoulder and a few weeks later an old woman was found lying naked outside of his home in the middle of the night. While both incidents were widely ascribed to witchcraft the article shows how particular interpretations were embedded in and reflective of a dense social climate, characterised by different kinds of tension, inequalities, suspicions of corruption and by religious and medical pluralism and competition. The article argues that the very opaqueness and uncertainty of witchcraft knowledge enabled a variety of actors with different stakes to make claims to truth, spiritual status and moral identity.     

Oil price shocks and policy responses in the post‐reform Chinese economy

This study analyses the impact of the 1986 oil price shock on China and the policy options for accommodating the shock. A computable general equilibrium model is used to capture the complex interactions in the Chinese economy in response to the shock. Interpreted in the theoretical framework of the ‘Booming Sector’ model, the results of the model provide insights on both the real and monetary effects of the shock, and suggest that a combination of policy instruments such as a cut in real absorption, depreciation of the official exchange rate and tight monetary control are required to facilitate adjustment.     

Agricultural wages in Bangladesh: What do the figures really show?

Using new data and a different model, Palmer‐Jones [1993] has questioned the conclusions of Boyce and Ravallion [1991] concerning the evolution over time of agricultural wages in Bangladesh. I argue that Palmer‐Jones's model is unconvincing and that the main conclusions of Boyce and Ravallion are far more robust than he suggests. Wages respond sluggishly to rice prices. Bangladesh's (limited) agricultural growth has not raised the real wage rate, which was on a downward trend for most of the 1960s and 1970s. The mid‐1980s saw higher real wages, though this cannot yet be deemed a reversal of the previous trend.     

The Dictator's New Clothes: The Relationship Between E-Participation and Quality of Government in Non-Democratic Regimes

It is often assumed that the development of e-participation and e-government initiatives aimed at stimulating citizen participation in the political process and fostering more efficient governmental services harbors a great potential for improved control of corruption and government performance. Thus, it is often argued that e-participation is an efficient instrument for increasing transparency and quality of government in non-democratic and developing countries. However, this article argues that these assumptions should be questioned on theoretical, empirical, and methodological grounds. The results of the empirical time-series cross-section analyses show that positive development in terms of e-participation in non-democratic countries does not lead to corresponding positive effects in terms of control of corruption and quality of government. Rather, in many cases the Internet offers political elites new opportunities in their quest for remaining in power.     

ECONOMIC CRISIS AND RESTRUCTURING IN SOUTH KOREA: Beyond the Free Market-Statist Debate

This paper, which examines the causes of the South Korean crisis in 1997-98 and the nature and consequences of the post-crisis restructuring process, looks critically at the neoliberal position but also at what the authors call the statist position (which celebrated and continues to defend the usefulness of industrial policy and state direction of the economy against neoliberal critics). While there are important differences between these approaches, the authors show that because both ignore the structural causes of South Korea's crisis, neither is able to explain, much less help overcome it. The paper then examines the economic, political, and social effects of the restructuring process, demonstrating how it has left the South Korean economy more dominated by foreign capital and the chaebol, and more dependent on exports and labor exploitation than before the crisis. As a result, South Korea appears headed for a new crisis. The authors conclude by highlighting ongoing worker resistance to the restructuring process and a movement-building strategy for advancing a worker/community-centered recovery and development program.