Mixed Messages: Parental Responsibilities, Public Opinion and the Reforms of Family Law

This article explores some issues arising when updating familylaw to keep pace with changes in family practices and values,in particular with changing patterns of parenting. It considersthe extension of parental rights and responsibilities beyondthe conventional boundaries of family law – to unmarriedfathers, step-parents and grandparents – with referenceto four different roles of family law. These roles are: protectingchildren, resolving disputes, regulating family life and promotingfamily norms. The article takes as an example of legal reformthe recently enacted Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006, which extendsparental rights and responsibilities to unmarried fathers whojointly register the child’s birth; but not to step-parentsor grandparents. The mixed messages that this reform conveysare considered in relation to the latest evidence of publicopinion in Scotland about parental obligations and the extentto which they align with public opinion on these issues.     

Violence in relationships: A seventh grade inventory of knowledge and attitudes

The purpose of this research was to contribute to existing efforts of battered women's advocates, schools, and researchers by developing a valid and reliable inventory to evaluate educational interventions regarding violence in relationships. Content validity was established by national experts (N=32)solicited to complete an inventory rating scale and comment on the statements' ability to elicit early adolescents' knowledge and attitudes about violence in relation-ships. The revised inventory was tested with seventh grade health education students (N=99).The test-retest reliability criterion was .50. Spearman's rho correlations were .566 for the knowledge section and .669 for the attitude section. Knowledge and attitude sections were measured for internal con- sistency with Cronbach's alpha, with respective values of .3178 and .7207. Item analyses with Wilcoxon Rank Sum tests identified 11 knowledge statements and one attitude statement as significantly discriminating at both test and retest. Gender differences were noted and additional findings were reported. Recommendations for the further establishment of a valid and reliable inventory were made.     

Discovering Collaborative Advantage: The Contributions of Goal Categories and Visual Strategy Mapping

Collaboration can make sense when there is some sort of “collaborative advantage” to be gained, meaning organizations can achieve something together that they cannot easily achieve by themselves. However, the literature is essentially silent on how to identify collaborative advantage. This article addresses this shortcoming in the theory of collaborative advantage for public purposes by proposing a set of goal categories that may be used to help articulate collaborative advantage and introducing the use of visual strategy mapping as part of a facilitated group process to figure out what the collaborative advantage might be. Collaborative advantage, as it is normally understood, consists of shared core goals. Collaborative advantage for public purposes should take into account public values beyond shared core goals.     

Integrating Growth Variability of the Ilium,Fifth Lumbar Vertebra,and Clavicle with Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines Models for Subadult Age Estimation

Subadult age estimation should rely on sampling and statistical protocols capturing development variability for more accurate age estimates. In this perspective, measurements were taken on the fifth lumbar vertebrae and/or clavicles of 534 French males and females aged 0–19 years and the ilia of 244 males and females aged 0–12 years. These variables were fitted in nonparametric multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) models with 95% prediction intervals (PIs) of age. The models were tested on two independent samples from Marseille and the Luis Lopes reference collection from Lisbon. Models using ilium width and module, maximum clavicle length, and lateral vertebral body heights were more than 92% accurate. Precision was lower for postpubertal individuals. Integrating punctual nonlinearities of the relationship between age and the variables and dynamic prediction intervals incorporated the normal increase in interindividual growth variability (heteroscedasticity of variance) with age for more biologically accurate predictions.     

Place of registration and place of residence: the non-linear detrimental impact of transportation cost on electoral participation

The French case offers a very valuable opportunity for testing the impact of transportation costs on the individual decision of turnout, because in France, voters can be registered in a municipality other than their residential municipality. Voters with a non-residential registration have to travel great distances in order to cast their ballots compared to voters with a residential registration. Our empirical analysis, based on a unique dataset extracted from the French Census database, uses a selection model to estimate the probability of voting of an individual voter with a non-residential electoral registration and assesses the impact of the distance to the voting municipality on this probability. The analysis shows that distance and in fine the cost of voting have a highly significant impact on electoral turnout: at the median distance (22 km), a 1% increase in distance induces a reduction of 0.01% in turnout in the first round of the 2012 French presidential election and 0.007% in the second round. Moreover, the impact of distance is non-linear: an increase in distance for voters with a short distance to travel is more detrimental to turnout than the same increase for voters who travel great distances. The results are robust to several checks, ranging from analyzing other elections to changes in the estimation method. This analysis provides new insights in the issue of voting cost and its impact on electoral turnout.     

Is the Left-Right Scale a Valid Measure of Ideology?

In order to measure ideology, political scientists heavily rely on the so-called left-right scale. Left and right are, however, abstract political concepts and may trigger different associations among respondents. If these associations vary systematically with other variables this may induce bias in the empirical study of ideology. We illustrate this problem using a unique survey that asked respondents open-ended questions regarding the meanings they attribute to the concepts “left” and “right”. We assess and categorize this textual data using topic modeling techniques. Our analysis shows that variation in respondents’ associations is systematically related to their self-placement on the left-right scale and also to variables such as education and respondents’ cultural background (East vs. West Germany). Our findings indicate that the interpersonal comparability of the left-right scale across individuals is impaired. More generally, our study suggests that we need more research on how respondents interpret various abstract concepts that we regularly use in survey questions.