Psychological factors influencing religious congregation members’ reporting of alleged sexual abuse

ABSTRACT

The sexual abuse of children within religious institutions has become a topic of increasing public concern in recent decades. However, to date there has been little in the way of psychological analyses of the processes by which congregation members judge the credibility of alleged abuses, or whether they would intend to report such allegations to the police. In this study, we examined the roles of ingroup identity, moral foundations, and social dominance orientation on reporting intentions and allegation credibility assessments among Church of England congregation members (n?=?454) and non-religious controls (n?=?457). While there were few predictors of reporting intentions, we found that churchgoers were consistently more sceptical of allegations of abuse, with these trends being differentially moderated by ingroup identification, the endorsement of various moral impulses, and anti-egalitarianism. We discuss our data in light of ongoing attempts to improve reporting procedures within the Church.     

社区工作者能力量表开发与检验：以上海为例

建立社区工作者能力量表能够填补当前社区工作者能力界定研究的不足，同时为探索我国社区工作者能力的内涵和未来提升的方向提供参考。社会工作的专业化发展和政府行政力量共同形塑了社区工作者能力的界定，构成了我国社区工作者能力发展的背景。量表的开发借助社会工作专业能力模型，分别从政策、文献和实践角度，梳理了与社区工作者相关的能力条目，在此基础上，通过探索性因子分析筛选出30个条目，共分五个维度，包括：分析判断的能力、维护关系的能力、依法治理的能力、建立项目的能力和服务群众的能力。心理测量学检验结果显示，该量表具有较为良好的信效度，可以为开展社区工作者能力内涵研究、促进社区工作者能力发展提供参考。     

美好生活的社会保护水准:社会政策体系中基本生活需要标准的建构

基本生活需要保障是我国不断满足人民美好生活需要的基础。构建基本生活需要标准,关键在于瞄准相对贫困目标、构建福利认证标准和消除社会排斥状态。基于人类需要理论和国外基本需要战略等相关研究,应以民生保障、适度普惠、多维满足和防止伤害等为具体目标,建构起具有中国特色的基本生活需要标准。这一标准分为最低标准和适当标准两个层次,包括收入、医疗、教育、住房和照料五个维度的货币指标和非货币指标。以"美好生活"为核心的新时代社会政策体系要在全面性与协调性、主动性与精准性、适度性与发展性三个方向着力保障人民基本生活需要,从消除绝对贫困走向解决相对贫困。     

When are experiments corrupt?

ABSTRACT

Between 2010 and 2011, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) funded a large-scale experiment on Kenyan schools. The policy experiment tested the effects of cutting teachers’ salaries and hiring them on short-term contracts, but the intervention failed after sustained opposition from teacher unions and parent associations. This article critically revisits the narrative of how this experiment was designed, implemented and interpreted, finding evidence that the experiment violated empirical logic. It examines whether the theory of neopatrimonialism can explain the ways in which vested interests may have undermined the empirical logic of the experiment. By doing so, the analysis tests the explanatory utility of neopatrimonialism, and casts light on the conditions under which policy experiments in Africa may be anti-empirical.     

Transnational cooperation: a network analysis of town twinning in the Baltic Sea region

The patterns of cooperation between regions and urban spaces are no longer influenced, to the same extent, by national borders. Political integrative events changed the extent of transborder urban cooperation in the Baltic borderlands, a region that has undergone extensive changes. A social network analysis of cooperative ties in the form of town twinning indicates that the end of the Cold War strongly changed the network of town twinning in this region, whereas the effect of the various EU enlargement rounds seems to be more nuanced.     

Changing contexts: A quasi-experiment examining adolescent delinquency and the transition to high school

In a quasi-experiment, we examine whether changing schools during the transition from 8th to 9th grade influences adolescent delinquency, using a sample of more than 14,000 students in 26 public school districts (PROSPER study). The dataset follows students for eight waves from 6th through 12th grade and facilitates a unique, direct comparison of students who change schools with those who remain in the same school during this period. Results show that students who transition between schools report significantly less delinquency after the shift than those who do not, and that this difference persists through 10th grade. This decline is most pronounced when adolescents from multiple middle schools move to a single high school (i.e., multifeeder transitions). Students who transition between schools have fewer delinquent friends and participate in less unstructured socializing following the change in school environment, which partially mediates their reduced delinquency. Results provide some support for theories of differential association and routine activities. Our findings highlight the role of a crucial, yet understudied, life transition in shaping adolescent delinquency. The results from this quasi-experiment underscore the potential of alterations in social context to significantly dampen juvenile delinquency throughout high school.     

Situational factors and police use of force across micro-time intervals: A video systematic social observation and panel regression analysis

The current study analyzes police use of force as a series of time-bound transactions between officers, civilians, and bystanders. The research begins with a systematic social observation of use-of-force events recorded on police body-worn cameras in Newark, New Jersey. Researchers measure the occurrence and time stamps for numerous participant physical and verbal behaviors. Data are converted into a longitudinal panel format measuring all observed behaviors in 5-second intervals. Panel logistic regression models estimate the effect of each behavior on use of force in immediate and subsequent temporal periods. Findings indicate certain variables influence use of force at a distinct point in time, whereas others exert influence on use of force across multiple time periods. The most influential variables relate to authority maintenance theoretical constructs. This finding supports prior perspectives arguing that police use of force largely results from officer attempts to maintain constant authority over civilians during face-to-face encounters. Nonetheless, a range of additional variables reflecting procedural justice, civilian resistance, and bystander presence significantly affect when police use force during civilian encounters. Results provide nuance to theoretical frameworks considering use of force as resulting from the interplay between officer and civilian actions and reactions.     

Who Represents the Constituency? Online Political Communication by Members of Parliament in the German Mixed-Member Electoral System

Members of parliament (MPs) are elected via two different tiers in mixed-member electoral systems—as winners of a seat in a constituency or as party candidates under proportional rules. While previous research has identified important consequences of this “mandate divide” in parliaments, questions remain how this institutional setup affects MPs' political behavior in other arenas. Analyzing more than one million social media posts, this article investigates regional representation in the online communication of German MPs. The results show that MPs elected under a direct mandate refer approximately twice as often to their constituencies by using regionalized wording and geographic references than MPs elected under the proportional tier. The substantive findings provide new evidence for the benefits of mixed-member electoral systems for political representation while the methodological approach demonstrates the added value of social media data for analyzing the political behavior of elites.     

网络治理理论视角下我国社会泄愤类极端事件的治理对策--以公交车纵火案为例

随着社会转型的深化,社会泄愤类极端事件在我国不断发生。社会泄愤类极端事件的产生既有制度不完善、机制不健全、法治弱化、道德下滑等规则缺陷的原因,也有涉案者在心理方面的个人原因。社会泄愤类极端事件的发生造成严重社会危害,必须高度重视。为了更好地治理这类社会问题,政府、企业和社会等多元主体要协同建立治理网络,重建良好的信任基础和沟通协调机制,重建民主、法治、道德等规则,更好地维护社会公平正义,降低社会伤害事件的频次及危害。     

From book to stage to screen: semiotic transformations of Gothic horror genre conventions

ABSTRACT

This paper adopts a multimodal social semiotic approach for exploring the semiotic changes involved in the transformation of a novel into stage and screen productions. It examines how semiotic resources are deployed in each medium through elements of mise-en-scène, such as speech, music, sound, lighting, props, staging, and cinematographic techniques, and the viewing perspectives that are thus established for audiences. The genre of Gothic horror is selected for this purpose, given how this form of performance has transfixed audiences for centuries and has been adapted for both the stage and the screen. In order to demonstrate how each performance medium has produced its own unique set of foregrounding devices to enthral and captivate audiences, a comparative analysis of excerpts from the novel The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, a videotaped theatrical performance, and the 1989 British television film of the same name is undertaken. The paper discusses the implications of the multimodal semiotic approach for developing a better understanding of the semiotic transformations that horror genre conventions undergo in different media and the viewership positions that are thus re-drawn for audiences. The paper concludes with a view of multimodal recontextualisation processes which form the underlying basis of human sociocultural life.