Are Women as Likely to Take Risks and Compete? Behavioural Findings from Central Vietnam

Using controlled experiments to compare the risk attitude and willingness to compete of husbands and wives in 500 couples in rural Vietnam, we find that women are more risk averse than men and that, compared to men, women are less likely to choose to compete, irrespective of how likely they are to succeed. Relevant to development programmes concerned with lifting women out of poverty, our findings suggest that women may be more reluctant to adopt new technologies, take out loans, or engage in economic activities that offer higher expected returns, in order to avoid setups that require them to be more competitive or that have less predictable outcomes.     

The last acceptable prejudice: an overview of LGBT social and criminal injustice issues within the USA

The intolerance of, and discrimination against, gays and lesbians is not a new concept. Yet, as many parts of the world have begun to socially and legally recognize gay rights, in many ways, the USA has lagged behind. An overview of past and present lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender social and criminal justice within the USA are presented. Also, specific recommendations are made for the future in an effort to put an end to this last acceptable prejudice.     

Delays in attentional processing when viewing sexual imagery: The development and comparison of two measures

Purpose. Critically important to effectively treating and managing sexual offending is the identification or validation of an offender's deviant sexual interests as the nature of their sexual interests is what demarcates repetitive sexual offenders from non‐offenders and lower risk offenders. As an alternative or verification to self‐report or phallometric measures, focus has turned to attention‐based measures. These measures assess sexual content‐induced delay (SCID), a specific form of attentional bias associated with preferred sexual content (images or text). Viewing time (VT) and choice reaction time (CRT) were developed and utilized to assess sexual interest via SCID ( Geer & Bellard, 1996 ) and examine the measures’ clinical utility via estimates of sensitivity and specificity. Method. Participants were 44 youth non‐sexual offenders, 60 university students, and 22 adult sexual offenders. Differences between groups were examined on various sub‐scores and receiver operator characteristic curves provided information on clinical utility. Results. The VT and CRT measures produced subtest scores with high reliability in all three samples. There were significant differences in VT between the adult sexual offenders and the youth non‐sexual offenders, but not between the youth non‐sexual offenders and the university students. Some of the VT subtests demonstrated good clinical utility in their ability to differentiate adult heterosexual sexual offenders from non‐sexual offenders (e.g., area under the curve (AUC) = 0.87 female mature images, 0.88 male child images). Interestingly, the VT and CRT measures provided significantly different results. Conclusion. The results of this study provide further evidence that measures of SCID are accurate and are useful as indications of sexual interest. Differences between measures suggest, however, that further work is required.     

Book Reviews

Taylor C. Boas, Presidential Campaigns in Latin America: Electoral Strategies and Success Contagion. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Figures, tables, appendixes, bibliography, index, 276 pp.; hardcover $99.99, ebook. John Gledhill, The New War on the Poor: The Production of Insecurity in Latin America. London: Zed Books, 2015. Map, bibliography, index, 256 pp.; paperback $29.95, ebook $23.96. Ezequiel A. González‐Ocantos, Shifting Legal Visions: Judicial Change and Human Rights Trials in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Figures, tables, bibliography, index, 342 pp.; hardcover $110, paperback $35.99, ebook $88. Merrilee S. Grindle and Erin E. Goodman, eds., Reflections on Memory and Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016. Photograph, 274 pp.; paperback $24.95. David Pion‐Berlin, Military Missions in Democratic Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Figures, tables, bibliography, index, 231 pp.; hardcover $105, ebook $79.99. Robert Gay, Bruno: Conversations with a Brazilian Drug Dealer. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. Illustrations, chronology, notes, bibliography, index, 232 pp.; hardcover $89.95, paperback $14.95. Georgina Waylen, ed., Gender, Institutions, and Change in Bachelet's Chile. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Figure, tables, bibliographies, index, 259 pp.; hardcover $105, ebook $79.99. Dickie Davis, David Kilcullen, Greg Mills, and David Spencer, A Great Perhaps? Colombia: Conflict and Convergence. London: Hurst, 2015. Maps, figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index, 288 pp.; hardcover $39.40. Mary Helen Spooner and Steven Ullmann, Cuban Health Care: Utopian Dreams, Fragile Future. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. Appendixes, figures, tables, bibliography, index, 152 pp.; hardcover $83, ebook $78.50. John M. Kirk, Healthcare Without Borders: Understanding Cuban Medical Internationalism. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015. Tables, bibliography, index, 376 pp.; hardcover $79.95. Christine J. Wade, Captured Peace: Elites and Peacebuilding in El Salvador. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2016. Illustrations, abbreviations, bibliography, index, 304 pp.; hardcover $69.95, paperback $39.95, ebook.     

The Institutional Design Frontiers of Publicness and University Performance

This introduction to the symposium on the institutional design frontiers of publicness and university performance summarizes the range of diverse intellectual and practical perspectives converging on the idea that issues of design and publicness are important for thinking about the future of higher education. Collectively, the articles featured in this symposium demonstrate that the challenges facing higher education exhibit assorted social, economic, and political complexities. Public administration perspectives can play a key role in understanding and reshaping our higher education system into a more responsive social enterprise.     

The 2016 Scottish Parliament election: a nationalist minority,a Conservative comeback and a Labour collapse

This article examines the political context, campaign, election results and outcomes of the 2016 Scottish Parliament election. The Scottish National Party (SNP) secured its third electoral victory, yet failed to achieve a widely predicted majority. With just two MSPs short of a majority, the SNP has ruled out any formal coalition with the opposition and will instead govern as a minority administration. The composition of the parliament’s opposition also changed significantly. The Scottish Conservatives increased their share of the constituency and regional votes, and became, for the first time, the largest opposition party in the chamber. Scottish Labour suffered a severe electoral drubbing, losing 13 of its seats. The election was also important for the Scottish Liberal Democrats and Scottish Green Party. The latter increased its vote share and number of seats, leapfrogging the Lib Dems to become the fourth largest party in the chamber.     

Sleep and Delinquency: Does the Amount of Sleep Matter?

Sleep, a key indicator of health, has been linked to a variety of indicators of well-being such that people who get an adequate amount generally experience greater well-being. Further, a lack of sleep has been linked to a wide range of negative developmental outcomes, yet sleep has been largely overlooked among researchers interested in adolescent delinquency. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between hours of sleep and delinquent behavior among adolescents by using data from Wave 1 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 14,382; 50.2% female, 63.5% white). A series of negative binomial regressions showed that youth who typically sleep seven or fewer hours per night reported significantly more property delinquency than youth who sleep the recommended 8–10 h. Further, youth who reported sleeping 5 or fewer hours per night reported significantly more violent delinquency than youth who reported sleeping the recommended number of hours per night. The findings suggest that sleep is an important, and overlooked, dimension of delinquent behavior and studies that focus on adolescent health should further investigate the effects of insufficient sleep. Finally, the authors recommend that sleep and other relevant health behaviors be considered in the context of more comprehensive approaches to delinquency prevention and intervention.     

Virtual casting of stab wounds in cartilage using micro-computed tomography

In homicidal stabbings using a serrated knife, stab wounds involving costal cartilage leave striations on the cut surface of the cartilage from the serration points on the blade edge. Class characteristics of the serrated blade can be determined from the striation marks, and individualizing characteristics may be seen also. The traditional method for recording the striation marks involves the pernickety technique of casting with dental impression material. We assessed the potential utility of micro-computed tomography scanning of the stab track as a technique for nondestructive recording of striation patterns and virtual casting of them. Stab tracks in porcine cartilage, produced with a coarsely serrated blade, were scanned with a bench-top micro-computed tomography scanner. The typical irregularly regular striation pattern could be demonstrated, and the images manipulated, using proprietary software to produce a virtual cast. Whether the technology will have sufficient resolution to image not only class characteristic tool marks but also the much finer individualizing tool marks remains to be evaluated, but the technology shows considerable promise.     

The impact of the control function on the effectiveness of policy implementation

This contribution concerns a study that aims to trace factors that determine the effectiveness of policy implementation. To this end, a case study was conducted in two municipalities. In both municipalities, a random sample was drawn of 100 activities in the cultural field carried out in the year 2021. Based on this, the effectiveness of the implementation of subsidy provision was examined for both municipalities. This effectiveness has been operationalised to the percentage of correct non-applications, the percentage of rightly approved subsidy applications and the percentage of rightly rejected subsidy applications. A comparison between these municipalities, based on an analysis of the documents and 22 interviews, then provided an opportunity to explain differences in effectiveness. It turns out, that the control function provides the decisive explanation for the difference in effectiveness. This control function is not only about monitoring and controlling the implementation, but also about facilitating and optimising the process of providing subsidies. Although previous research highlights the importance of an adequate monitoring and control for implementation, the control function can be defined in a broader way. Besides overseeing proper implementation, the control function in this broader view also plays a facilitating role towards the implementers. This broader control function specifically has not often been the explicit object of implementation research. It should be noted, however, that this study is based on only two municipalities, which only examined the subsidisation of cultural activities. Therefore, no general conclusions can be drawn on this basis.