The Prospective Impact of Family Functioning and Parenting Practices on Court-Involved Youth’s Substance Use and Delinquent Behavior

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Court-involved youth exhibit high rates of psychiatric symptoms, substance use, and delinquency, yet little is known about the contributing roles of caregiver and...     

Development of a Validity Scale for the Dissociative Experience Scale-Revised: Atypicality,Structure, and Inconsistency

Psychological Injury and Law - The Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES), the most commonly used scale for assessing dissociation across settings, lacks a validity scale. In this study, six methods...     

Complex Trauma: Missed and Misdiagnosis in Forensic Evaluations

Psychological Injury and Law - Forensic evaluators frequently utilize diagnoses as a way to document the nature and severity of impairment and/or injury in civil and criminal cases despite...     

中西文化对话与新的精神秩序

中美分歧反映出更深层的结构失调,即全球将迎来一个与其他大型经济体奉行不同体制与价值观的最大经济体。中国的独特性挑战了它的自我身份认同,也挑战了世界的原有认知。但这一特性是与中国传统共同发展的,中国文化具有与西方同等的正统性。与西方热衷于建构普世秩序不同,中国文化更为灵活、包容。在后现代,东西方有可能"思想解放",展开富有成果的对话,并能够相互平衡。尽管很少有人精通两大知识传统,尤其欧美对中国和其他亚洲国家了解不够,但我们必须找到交流的方式,寻求新的精神秩序。     

The isolation of spermatozoa from sexual assault swabs using proteinase K

The most common examination in sexual offences is the identification of spermatozoa in aqueous extracts from swabs. Using Proteinase K with sodium dodecyl sulphate, it is possible to digest all the cellular material apart from the spermatozoa, resulting in a quick and effective method of their isolation. Spermatozoa were detected in 18 extracts using this treatment when the normal method had failed to reveal all but one of them.     

Intergovernmental Relations in the UK: Time for a Radical Overhaul?

Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic have put relationships between the UK government and its devolved counterparts under growing strain. Tensions generated by both of these developments have exposed the inadequacies of the existing, under-developed system for bringing governments together in the UK. The limitations of the current system include the ad hoc nature of intergovernmental meetings, and their consultative rather than decision-making character. Drawing upon an analysis of how intergovernmental relationships are structured in five other countries, the authors offer a number of suggestions for the reconfiguration of the UK model. They explore different ways of enabling joint decision making by its governments, and argue against the assumption that England can be represented adequately by the UK administration. Without a serious attempt to address this dysfunctional part of the UK’s territorial constitution, there is every prospect that relations between these different governments will continue to deteriorate.     

Public administration reform for Aboriginal affairs: An institutionalist analysis

Persistent underperformance of public policy and program implementation in Aboriginal affairs is widely recognised. We analysed the results of two case studies of attempted reforms in public administration of Aboriginal primary health care in the Northern Territory, using a framework based on the institutionalist and systemic racism literatures, with the aim of better understanding the sources of implementation failure. Implementation of the agreed reforms was unsuccessful. Contributing factors were as follows: strong recognition of the need for change was not sustained; the seeds of change, present in the form of alternative practices, were not built on; there was a notable absence of sustained political/bureaucratic authorisation; and, interacting with all of these, systemic racism had important consequences and implications. Our framework was useful for making sense of the results. It is clear that reforms in Aboriginal affairs will require government authorities to engage with organisations and communities. We conclude that there are four requirements for improved implementation success: clear recognition of the need for change in ‘business as usual’; sustainable commitment and authorisation; the building of alternative structures and methods to enable effective power sharing (consistent with the requirements of parliamentary democracy); and addressing the impact of systemic racism on decision-making, relationships, and risk management.     

The Role of Intentional Self Regulation,Lower Neighborhood Ecological Assets,and Activity Involvement in Youth Developmental Outcomes

Extracurricular activities provide a key context for youth development, and participation has been linked with positive developmental outcomes. Using data from the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development (PYD), this study explored how the intentional self regulation ability of youth interacted with participation in extracurricular activities to affect PYD among adolescents living in neighborhoods with relatively low ecological assets. In total, 545 youth were included in the study (50.3% female). Most of the youth were European American (41%) or Latino (37%; African American, 10%; Asian American, 7%; Native American, 4%; and other, 1%). In general, youth with the greatest capacity to self regulate benefitted the most, as compared to their peers with less capacity to self regulate, from involvement in extracurricular activities. Consistent with a developmental systems perspective, and specifically with bioecological theory, the findings from this study confirmed that, within lower asset settings, children with the most positive person-level factors (intentional self regulation) benefit the most from proximal processes such as extracurricular activity involvement.