The development and pilot testing of a family treatment court best practices assessment: The model standards implementation scale

In 2019, the family treatment court (FTC) best practice standards (the Standards) were published to clarify attributes of FTC programs associated with superior child, parent, and family outcomes. The Standards cover the breadth of FTC operations including program structure and leadership, substance use treatment and complementary services, and behavioral responses to participants. This study aimed to develop an instrument (the Model Standards Implementation Scale; “MSIS”) that stakeholders can use to assess implementation of the Standards by individual FTCs. The MSIS balances usability with scientific validity. Interrater reliability (IRR), internal consistency, and several types of validity were assessed. Results indicated moderate to strong IRR, high internal consistency, mixed known groups validity depending on Standard, and high convergent and divergent validity. Initial findings suggest good validity and usability of the MSIS for evaluating FTC Standards' implementation. Notably, the process of using the tool functioned to educate FTC team members on the Standards. Although implementation of the MSIS is a resource-intensive process, the opportunity to receive constructive feedback proved to be an effective incentive for initial and subsequent participation in the evaluation among FTCs. Future research is needed to examine predictive validity, including association between Standards' implementation and family outcomes in FTCs.     

我国生态系统服务价值研究进展及现实问题探析

生态系统有价和有偿使用已成共识。通过对生态系统服务价值研究方法和主要几类生态系统的服务价值研究结果进行梳理,发现生态系统服务价值相关评估方法的科学性、数据选取的可信度和研究结果的准确性以及研究结果应用的可行性等几个方面面临一些现实问题,影响到评估结果的采纳和应用。随着可持续发展战略的深入实施,迫切需要对生态系统服务价值评估方法和现实问题进行深入探讨,重新定位生态系统的价值和价格。     

Pathways of democratisation to human development in post‐communist countries

The article investigates the consequences of post‐Cold War regime transitions on human development in the former Soviet bloc. Relying on a mixed‐methods research strategy that combines econometric and qualitative comparative analysis, it proceeds through three consecutive steps. First, there is a discussion of how democratic institutions may solicit governments’ attention toward social issues. Second, the relationship between democratisation and human development in 21 post‐communist countries is tested. Third, democracy in its core attributes is unpacked, and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is used to identify a few alternative institutional configurations favouring human development. The analysis reveals that not only full democracies, but also some hybrid regimes, have been successful in this task.     

The Development of College Students’ Willpower and its Impact on Career

Recently, Non-intelligence factors of students'ability, especially transferable ability as willpower receives wide attention from the academic circles. Psychological means , represented by Five Adult Personality Scale and Grit Scale, has been able to carry out scientific subjective evaluation of the level of personal willpower. Using a simplified Grit Scale, we made a measurement and research on college students' Willpower level in Beijing. Our research found (1) college students'willpower play an important role in various stages of university life. The developmet of college students' willpower has a significant impact on adaptation of freshmen, turning of sophemores and career maturity of juniors. (2)College factors, represented by types of colleges and universities, types of majors and interpersonal interaction have significant impact on the development of college students' willpower. (3)As transferable ability, willpower not only will affect the students' academic achievement, but also affect the career development after graduation.     

Financial Development,Entrepreneurship and Urban-rural Inequality

Based on the panel data of prefecture-level city over 2000—2012, this article shows that financial development can reduce urban-rural inequality through entrepreneurship. Furthermore, the above relationship is related to the degree of marketization. Among the three major regions of China, it is the most remarkable in the east area where degree of marketization is the highest, the least remarkable in the western area where degree of marketization is the lowest.     

Globalization and Divergent Paths of Industrial Development: Mobile Phone Manufacturing in China,Japan, South Korea and Taiwan

Globalisation has challenged the way industrial development takes place. Fragmented and decentralised global production and the rapid growth of consumer markets in emerging economies demand a more sophisticated framework to analyse development paths than does the dichotomy of export orientation and import substitution. This article proposes a typology based on (a) specialisation in the global value chain and (b) market orientation to distinguish different development trajectories and then applies the typology to mobile phone manufacturing in four East Asian countries. This study finds that globalisation does not lead to the convergence of development paths, but promotes cross-national divergence depending on countries’ positions in the value chain and market niches. Both Korea and Taiwan emerge as key players in global markets, yet in different parts of the global value chain. Their common orientation toward global markets strikingly contrasts the inability of Japanese firms to translate their domestic success overseas. Finally, Chinese firms concurrently engage in different development paths, making the country’s multi-path approach unique. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of industrial development in East Asia in an era of globalisation.     

The role of African universities in the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples: A development agenda

Before the emergence of the United Nations at the end of the Second World War, human rights were generally scantily recognised in international law and, even under the UN Charter of 1945, indigenous peoples received merely tacit reference. Since the 1970s, however, several normative instruments have been adopted to give recognition to the rights of indigenous peoples as a distinct component of international human rights law. With the further adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the UN General Assembly in 2007, the subject has assumed new dimensions with the possibilities of new vistas. What, for instance, is the role of African universities in the promotion and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples as critical agents in the global human rights and development agenda? The purpose of this article, among others, is to synthesise the strategic approaches to the rights of indigenous peoples and to accentuate a more informed conceptualisation of what the role of African universities on this subject ought to be, and must be, in the light of the dynamic opportunities of the post-2007 era.     

The role of the IFI and the EU Peace III Fund in creating sustainable peace in Northern Ireland and the border counties

NGOs aided by external economic aid can play a critical part in post-accord peacebuilding situations. This article explores the impact of the International Fund for Ireland and the European Union Peace III Fund in nurturing sustainable peace through development in Northern Ireland and the border counties of the Republic of Ireland by examining the perceptions and experiences of 107 local NGO leaders and 13 funding agency development officers. During the summer of 2010, 120 people were interviewed using semi-structured interviews in Derry city and nine border counties. The article explores the role of external economic international assistance aids in building sustainable development, reconciliation, and peace in Northern Ireland and the border counties.     

The relationship between urbanisation and cross-national homicide rates: robustness across multiple estimation methods

Urbanisation has generally been found to be a non-significant predictor of homicide rates in cross-national studies. Despite this, there is strong theoretical support for the presence of a positive association between the two. The present study analyses data for up to 57 nations for the period 1993–2005 and examines the relationship between urbanisation and homicide using pooled ordinary least squares, feasible generalised least squares, panel-corrected standard errors, fixed-effects, and random-effects estimation. The results show that urbanisation is one of the strongest predictors of homicide in the cross-national context. This is consistent with the expected relationship according to modernisation theory and suggests that rapidly urbanising nations should be concerned with the unintended consequences of urbanisation.     

命案发案特点与侦破对策

提高命案侦破能力,实现“命案必破”的奋斗目标,是摆在公安机关当前的一项重大任务。目前,在故意杀人等严重刑事案件中,犯罪分子作案手段和方法出现了新特点、新趋势。公安机关应根据新变化．把握新特点,有针对性地采取相应措施,不断提高侦破命案能力,努力实现“命案必破”的目标。