A comprehensive approach to providing services to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Democratic Republic of Congo: addressing more than physical trauma

ABSTRACT

The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is impacted by a prolonged conflict and humanitarian crisis. Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) affects an estimated 39.7% of women and 23.6% of men in the region, and is associated with serious medical, psychological, and socio-economic outcomes for survivors and communities. IMA World Health, a faith-based non-profit organisation, implements a USAID-funded project, Ushindi, which is a collaborative effort with three national NGOs and one technical partner in response to SGBV in eastern DRC. The consortium provides a comprehensive package of services to SGBV survivors, focusing on medical, emotional, psychological, legal, and socio-economic needs.     

US police officers’ knowledge regarding behaviors indicative of deception: Implications for eradicating erroneous beliefs through training

Abstract

The current study surveyed a random sample of Texas law enforcement officers (n?=?109) about their knowledge regarding behaviors indicative of deception. The officers were not highly knowledgeable about this topic, overall performing at a chance level in assessing how various behavioral cues relate to deception. Confidence in one's skill was unrelated to accuracy, and officers who reported receiving the most training and utilizing these skills more often were more confident but no more accurate in their knowledge of the behaviors that typically betray deception. The authors compare these results to previous studies that have examined officers’ beliefs in other countries and discuss the implication of these results in terms of developing future training programs that may debunk the common misconceptions that officers possess.     

TrueAllele® Genotype Identification on DNA Mixtures Containing up to Five Unknown Contributors

Computer methods have been developed for mathematically interpreting mixed and low‐template DNA. The genotype modeling approach computationally separates out the contributors to a mixture, with uncertainty represented through probability. Comparison of inferred genotypes calculates a likelihood ratio (LR), which measures identification information. This study statistically examined the genotype modeling performance of Cybergenetics TrueAllele^® computer system. High‐ and low‐template DNA mixtures of known randomized composition containing 2, 3, 4, and 5 contributors were tested. Sensitivity, specificity, and reproducibility were established through LR quantification in each of these eight groups. Covariance analysis found LR behavior to be relatively invariant to DNA amount or contributor number. Analysis of variance found that consistent solutions were produced, once a sufficient number of contributors were considered. This study demonstrates the reliability of TrueAllele interpretation on complex DNA mixtures of representative casework composition. The results can help predict an information outcome for a DNA mixture analysis.     

Were Bosnian policy research organisations more effective in 2006 than in 2003? Did technical assistance play a role?

In 2003 the policy development process in Bosnia and Herzegovina was characterised by international community (IC) dominance. The IC provided the vast majority of the analysis of problems facing the country and drafted many of the laws. This article documents developments from fall 2003 to fall 2006 in the use of evidence and analysis in the policy development process and the role of local policy research organisations (PROs—often called think tanks) in it. The likely relation between these changes and the activities of a PRO mentoring project that operated over the same period is also assessed. Evidence comes as a series of interviews in both years with government officials and members of parliament, on the one hand, and leaders of PROs and advocacy NGOs on the other. The broad picture that emerges from the above review is of a substantial positive development in the policy development process in Bosnia and Herzegovina over the period. Factual evidence and analysis are playing a much greater role, and PROs have been a major provider of this information. The evidence indicates that PROs have been successful in convincing the policy community that they are purveyors of objective, disinterested advice and analysis. The improvements occurred in a conducive environment that steadily placed greater responsibility for policy formation on Bosnian officials. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cycle avoiding trajectories,strategic agendas,and the duality of memory and foresight: An informal exposition

This paper considers the notion of cycle avoiding trajectories in majority voting tournaments and shows that they underlie and guide several apparently disparate voting processes. The set of alternatives that are maximal with respect to such trajectories constitutes a new solution set of considerable significance. It may be dubbed the Banks set, in recognition of the important paper by Banks (1985) that first made use of this set. The purpose of this paper is to informally demonstrate that the Banks set is a solution set of broad relevance for understanding group decision making in both cooperative and non-cooperative settings and under both sincere and sophisticated voting. In addition, we show how sincere and sophisticated voting processes can be viewed as mirror images of one another — embodying respectively, “dmemory” and “foresight.” We also show how to develop the idea of a “sophisticated agenda,” one in which the choice of what alternatives to propose is itself a matter of strategic calculation.     

Ideology and Political Alienation

A substantial literature over the years has focused on the relationship between political alienation and ideology. Much of this research contends that conservatives are more alienated than liberals because philosophically they believe that the best government is that which governs least. A close reading of the literature, however, reveals little consistency in the empirical findings. Survey data from Norway, Sweden, and the United States are used to provide a more extensive and consistent test of the hypothesis. Ideology is defined as both left/right self-identification and policy preference on economic and "new political" issues. The evidence reveals that in Scandinavia higher levels of alienation are found among conservatives, whereas in the US the left has been consistently more alienated, except on "new politics" issues. The discrepancy between the citizen's preferred ideological orientation and that which the public perceives the government to take, is used to explain the different findings for the three countries and the shifts in the relationship between ideology and alienation across time.