Preferences,Knowledge, and Citizen Probability Assessments of the Terrorism Risk of Nuclear Power

How does the American public assess risk when it comes to national security issues? This paper addresses this question by analyzing variation in citizen probability assessments of the terrorism risk of nuclear power plants. Drawing on the literature on how motivated reasoning, selective information processing, and domain‐specific knowledge influence public opinion, we argue that heterogeneous issue preferences and knowledge of nuclear energy and homeland security have important explanatory power. Using original data from a unique 2009 national survey in the United States, we show that Americans are divided in their probability assessments of the terrorism risk of nuclear power plants. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, individuals who support using nuclear power to meet rising energy demands, who are generally less concerned with terrorism, or who are more knowledgeable about terrorism and nuclear security tend to provide lower assessments of the likelihood that nuclear power plants increase terrorist attacks, and vice versa. The findings have implications for the literature on public opinion, risk assessment, energy policy and planning, and homeland security.     

The AFSP Standard - a lesson for law enforcement agencies

Compliance with the AFSP (Association of Forensic Science Providers) Standard [1] which concerns the formulation of an evaluative opinion requires consideration of the defence case. This can be problematic for forensic scientists working with or for law enforcement agencies. Among the aims of law enforcement agencies is to secure a conviction while in many jurisdictions the forensic scientist owes an overriding duty to the Court. This casework report demonstrates that early consideration of the defence case by a forensic scientist complying with the AFSP Standard may help rather than hinder the prosecution. The dichotomy as to a conflict of interest for the scientist between supporting the police/prosecutors and being scientifically objective is shown to be a false dichotomy. Compliance with the Standard ensures that science is a better servant of justice.     

An Exploratory Study of the Mental Toughness Psychological Skills Profile Psychometrics,and the Mediating Effect of Social Support Sources on Mental Toughness and Suicidal Ideation Among Military Police

Research suggests that social support and mental toughness (i.e., the ability to effectively cope with stress despite adversity and/or failure) may be associated with decreased suicide risk, although methods for measuring mental toughness remain largely undeveloped. The relationship remains largely unknown. In response to this research gap, the psychometric properties of the Mental Toughness Psychological Skills Profile (MTPSP; Asken 2005), and its association with suicide ideation, were evaluated in a sample of active duty U.S. Air Force Security Forces personnel, a subpopulation especially vulnerable to suicide risk. 273 participants from two Air Force bases completed self-report scales including the MTPSP. Results indicated that the MTPSP is comprised of five subscales: Negative Mindset, Positive Mindset, Confidence, Achievement, and Health Behaviors. All five MTPSP factors were independently correlated with general distress, somatic anxiety, positive affect, presence of meaning in life, search for meaning in life, positive self-bias, social support sources, and suicide ideation. The Confidence factor was the only factor that had a significant association with suicide ideation when all five factors were considered simultaneously (β?=??0.18, p?=?.016), but was fully mediated by social support (β?=??0.17, p?=?.033). Self-confidence may be associated with reduced suicide risk because those individuals tend to report higher social support.     

Crime Theory Evaluation Using Simulation Models of Residential Burglary

This paper provides new insights on the study of crime modeling through the development of a hybrid cellular automaton (CA) and Multi-agent System (MAS) simulation model that is able to combine components of multiple criminological theories to forecast the locations of residential burglary targets: journey to crime (JTC), social disorganization (SD) theory, and routine activity (RA) theory. In order to combine individual factors from each theory into a unified model, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was employed for hierarchical parameter selection. The model is then evaluated using data on offenders obtained from the Dallas Police Department to examine how different crime theories perform in the prediction of residential burglary. Compared to the SD- and RA-weighted models, the JTC-weighted model performed the best when comparisons were made to actual burglary locations. The findings demonstrate that the simulation models of crime provide test beds for research into the explanatory power of various crime theories.