Sex differences in the experience of child sexual victimization

This study analyzed 390 (303 girls and 87 boys) cases of child sexual abuse to understand sex differences in child sexual victimization. Analyses focused on three domains that have received considerable empirical attention: victims' relationships with the offender, type and extent of abuse, and disclosure. Findings largely replicated previous efforts that reported sex differences in terms of victims' relationships with offenders. Although results also replicated previous findings about sex differences in disclosure patterns, these sex differences were minor in comparison with similarities in the way most instances of abuse were eventually identified. In terms of type and extent of abuse, results were the opposite of previous findings: girls, not boys, were the victims of more physical injury, violent threats, and use of force; and girls, not boys, were more likely to have physically resisted abuse. Divergences in findings were interpreted in terms of memory biases and social forces operating differently on the sexes.     

Birth spacing as a family strategy: evidence from 19th century Leuven, Belgium

This article investigates the hypothesis that 19th-century working class families in Leuven, Belgium, were controlling their fertility by means of birth spacing for household economic reasons. Detailed life-course data were collected in order to construct, on one hand, a set of covariates that represent the influences of natural fertility on birth intervals and, on the other, a number of family variables that represent the hypothetical, household economic motivation to space births. The findings strongly suggest that birth intervals were not merely a function of natural fertility differences and that family strategic spacing behavior also played a role.     

Household dissolution, child care and divorce law

This paper sets up a model of household dissolution in which one party decides to leave a household that contains children. We study the effects of divorce law on this decision and, in particular, the role of legal provisions governing the post-dissolution care of the household’s children. In particular, we show that there is an inevitable tension between achieving efficiency in marriage and at the same time achieving efficiency in divorce.     

State Spaceport Initiatives: Economic and Political Innovation in an Intergovernmental Context

State spaceports are an interesting example of intergovernmentalrelations because activities conducted at such facilities spanthe state, federal, and international realms. Five states—Alaska,California, Florida, New Mexico, and Virginia—are themost visible participants in the process. In this study, thesupporting rationales for such endeavors are discussed withinthe context of the broader contours of intergovernmental relations.The field is a product of the post-Cold War period during whichopportunities for state space activities arose due to changesin the national security environment. Three distinct but interrelatedexplanations are suggested for why the field has developed slowly,although during the past two years, progress in achieving goalshas begun to occur.     

Margaret M. deGuzman and Valerie Oosterveld (eds.), The Elgar Companion to the International Criminal Court,Elgar, Cheltenham/Northampton, 2020, 431 pp

Criminal Law Forum -     

Evaluating Transformational Leaders: The Challenging Case of Eric Shinseki and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

Evaluating less than fully successful transformational leaders is difficult. One common method of assessing leadership is to focus on a single temporal narrative. A second approach uses a particular theory, such as transformational leadership, to frame the analysis. The latter, less common strategy is used with the example of Eric Shinseki, who served as both chief of staff of the U.S. Army and as secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The analytic framework used here has six major elements that are specified by 22 factors. Using those factors to evaluate Shinseki's tenure at the VA, he is found to be very poor in only 2 factors but poor in 11, adequate in 6, good in 1, and excellent in only 2. While using a list of factors does not eliminate subjectivity or the challenges of reaching a single assessment, it does clarify the elements of judgment and weighting.     

Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React

Legislators claim that how they explain their votes matters as much as or more than the roll calls themselves. However, few studies have systematically examined legislators’ explanations and citizen attitudes in response to these explanations. We theorize that legislators strategically tailor explanations to constituents in order to compensate for policy choices that are incongruent with constituent preferences, and to reinforce policy choices that are congruent. We conduct a within‐subjects field experiment using U.S. senators as subjects to test this hypothesis. We then conduct a between‐subjects survey experiment of ordinary people to see how they react to the explanatory strategies used by senators in the field experiment. We find that most senators tailor their explanations to their audiences, and that these tailored explanations are effective at currying support—especially among people who disagree with the legislators’ roll‐call positions.     

THE CURRENTS BENEATH THE “RISING TIDE” OF SCHOOL CHOICE: AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENT ENROLLMENT FLOWS IN THE CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Existing research highlights that families face geographic, social, and psychological constraints that may limit the extent to which competition can take hold in school choice programs. In this paper, we address the implications of such findings by creating a network of student flows from 11 cohorts of eighth‐grade students in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). We applied a custom algorithm to group together schools with similar sending and receiving patterns, and calculated the difference in mean achievement between a student's attended and assigned high schools. For all identified school groupings, we found that the students were on average moving to higher achieving schools. We also found that the movement toward higher achieving schools of the top achievement quartile of students was over twice as large as that of the bottom quartile, but that the flows of both the highest and lowest achieving student quartiles were toward higher achieving destinations. Our results suggest that student movements in CPS between the years of 2001 to 2005 were consistent with creating market pressure for improvement as well as increasing segregation by achievement. However, further research into how schools responded to those movements is required to make inferences about the level or consequences of competition generated by choice‐related reforms during that time.