Barriers to Bystander Interventions for Sexual Assault: Impact of Personal History of Sexual Victimization

Bystander intervention programs have consistently demonstrated a positive change in communitywide norms regarding sexual assault. However, much of the extant research is limited by the failure to measure the prevalence of opportunities to intervene relative to actual intervention behavior and the failure to examine how bystander behaviors may be affected by a personal history of sexual victimization. The current study aims to determine the relationship between a bystander’s previous history of sexual victimization, perceived barriers to intervention, observed opportunities to intervene, and actual intervention behavior in a range of high-risk, low-risk, and post-assault bystander opportunities in undergraduate students. Male and female undergraduate students ( N = 591) completed retrospective measures of their opportunities for and intervention in a range of bystander behaviors and perceived barriers to intervention. They also reported on their personal history of sexual victimization. The results indicated that those with a history of sexual victimization tended to perceive greater barriers to intervention than those without such history. Notably, individuals with a victimization history reported that they were less likely to notice a risky situation and to identify the situation as dangerous. However, noticing or intervening did not vary across different types of bystander intervention situations. In terms of gender differences, although men reported perceiving greater barriers due to the diffusion of responsibility and fewer barriers related to audience inhibition and skill deficits when compared to women, there were no significant gender differences in intervention behavior. Data were situated within current empirical and theoretical models of sexual and intimate partner violence, and implications of these findings for bystander intervention programs and directions for future research are discussed.

Is it all in our head? When subjective beliefs about receiving an intervention are better predictors of experimental results than the intervention itself

In recent years, there has been debate about the effectiveness of interventions from different fields (e.g., non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS), neurofeedback, cognitive training programs) due to contradictory and nuanced experimental findings. Up to date, studies are focused on comparing the effects of an active form of the intervention to a placebo/control condition. However, a neglected question is how to consider individual differences in response to blinding procedures, and their effect on behavioural outcomes, rather than merely compare the efficacy of blinding using a group-based approach. To address this gap in the literature, we here suggest using subjective intervention—the participants’ subjective beliefs about receiving or not receiving an intervention—as a factor. Specifically, we examined whether subjective intervention and subjective dosage (i.e. participants’ subjective beliefs about the intensity of the intervention they received) affected performance scores independently, or interacting with, the active experimental condition. We carried out data analysis on an open-access dataset that has shown the efficacy of active NIBS in altering mind wandering. We show that subjective intervention and subjective dosage successfully explained alteration in mind wandering scores, over and beyond the objective intervention. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for the participants’ beliefs about receiving interventions at the individual level by demonstrating their effect on human behaviour independently of the actual intervention. Altogether, our approach allows more rigorous and improved experimental design and analysis, which will strengthen the conclusions coming from basic and clinical research, for both NIBS and non-NIBS interventions.

Reflection on research methods: The before and after study.

Background Before and after studies allow for the investigation of population-level health interventions and are a valuable study design in situations where randomisation is not feasible. The before and after study design involves measuring an outcome both before and after an intervention and comparing the outcome rates in both time periods to determine the effectiveness of the intervention. These studies do not involve a contemporaneous control group and must therefore take into account any underlying secular trends in order to separate the effect of the intervention from any pre-existing trend. Neglecting this important step can lead to spurious results.Methods To illustrate the importance of accounting for underlying trends, we performed a before and after study assessing 30-day mortality in hip fracture patients without any actual intervention, and instead designated an arbitrarily-chosen time-point as our ‘intervention’. We did this to ensure that we were basing our results exclusively on the underlying trend throughout the studied period and also to enable us to show that even an intervention of nothing may be spuriously interpreted to have an effect if the before and after study is incorrectly analysed. Results We found a secular trend in our data showing improving 30-day mortality in hip fracture patients in our institution. We then demonstrated that disregarding this underlying trend showed that our intervention of nothing ‘resulted’ in a significant decrease in mortality, from 6.7% in the ‘before’ period to 3.1% in the ‘after’ period (p<0.0008). This apparent impact on mortality disappeared when we accounted for the underlying trend in our analysis (IRR of 0.75, 95% CI 0.32 – 1.78; p=0.5). In the context of declining 30-day mortality following hip fracture, failure to consider the existing underlying trend lead us to believe that it was our ‘intervention’ that ‘caused’ the decrease in mortality in the ’after’ period compared to the ‘before’ period when our results clearly show that mortality was decreasing irrespective of any intervention.Conclusion Our study highlights the importance of appropriate measurement and consideration of underlying trends when analysing data from before and after studies and illustrates what can happen should researchers neglect this important step.

System dynamics education: becoming part of anticipatory systems

Purpose – This paper aims to present an overview of deep issues flanking the ideas of system and complexity, and an overview of the mentioned course as a proposal for systems thinking. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a discursive overview of systems and philosophical concepts related to the described course. Findings – The review offers a perspective of a super-system that includes the students, the lecturers and the context of their interaction, in which one may recognize a relational framework for social learning of a systemic sustainability. Research limitations/implications – The overview concerns only the actual intervention in the University of Trento. Practical implications – The described concepts and related philosophical discussion may contribute to the integration of system thinking in the future studies. Originality/value – The described intervention is a new Italian context and the integration of systems concepts with futures studies seems not to be commonly established.

Post-Cold War Interventions and International Development: Discourses, Practices and Policies

This term paper intend to analyze how interventions had changed and the reasons why it happened, it also tries to answer why the Western states are actually avoiding political responsibility in actual intervention for the international governance issues. In the introduction there are some explanations about the traditional sovereignty and shared sovereignty, followed by topics like responsibility and the denial of responsibility. It tries to show the consequences of the avoidance of accountability bring to the intervened states.

CARACTERIZAÇÃO E ENTRAVES DO SISTEMA DE PRODUÇÃOCOM BRACATINGA NA REGIÃO METROPOLITANA DE CURITIBA

ResumoO cultivo da bracatinga (Mimosa scabrella Bentham) com finalidade energética existe há mais de 100 anos. Atividade típica da pequena propriedade rural, é cultivada com base na regeneração natural desde a segunda rotação. A madeira é valiosa, com características para uso em várias alternativas industriais, especialmente pela movelaria. Após expansão da área cultivada durante muitos anos, atualmente ocorre redução gradual dessa área plantada. Este estudo buscou identificar as causas de redução dos plantios e outros entraves para o produtor de bracatinga. Em paralelo, procurou definir uma proposta de incremento do manejo dos plantios de bracatinga, enfatizando o uso da madeira pela indústria de móveis. Faz-se análise do produtor, da posse das terras e da disponibilidade de mão de obra, do manejo dos plantios e a remuneração da madeira, aliada ao confronto com as restrições pelos órgãos ambientais, carências organizacionais dos produtores e impedimentos para a atividade estabelecida pela sociedade urbana. Os dados do estudo apontam para uma realidade em que a cadeia produtiva da bracatinga será extinta a curto prazo caso seja mantida a atual intervenção do serviço de fiscalização com rígido enfoque ambientalista, aliado ao desconhecimento da realidade rural na atual ótica da sociedade urbana. AbstractCaracterization and impediments for bracatinga production system in Curitiba’s Metropolitan Region. Bracatinga (Mimosa scabrella Bentham) cultivation for energetic purposes subsists to more than one hundred years. Typical activity in small rural properties, it is cultivated based on natural regeneration after second rotation. The wood is valuable, and it has characteristics for many alternatives of industrials uses, especially in furniture industry. After many years of expansion of the cultivated area, presently there is a gradual reduction on bracatinga’s cultivation area. This research aims to identify causes of such plantings reduction and other impediments to bracatinga’s producers, it also aims to define one proposal to bracatinga plantation development focusingits wood use in furniture industry. Therefore, it analyses bracatinga’s producers, land ownerships and manual work accessibility, plantation managements and wood remuneration, associated to their confront against environmental public services obstructions, organizational needs of bracatinga`s producers and opposition to the rural activity that is established by urban society. The data analyzed points to a reality in which bracatinga’s cultivation chain will be extinguished in short time whether it is maintained the actual intervention of inspection services with rigid environmental limitations, associated to the acknowledge of rural reality by the urban society.Keywords: Bracatinga’s silviculture; land ownership; medium space; environmental limitations; production organization.

Supporting Family Carers of Community-Dwelling Elder with Cognitive Decline: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Objective. Caring for a patient with cognitive decline has an important impact on the general well-being of family caregivers. Although highly appreciated, interventions in dementia home care remain mainly ineffective in terms of well-being. Consequently, in spite of an extensive support system, abrupt ending of home care remains more rule than exception. Method. The hypothesis was that the intervention of a care counselor, coordinating care in quasi-unstructured way during one year, will alleviate caregivers' feelings of depression. The study population was composed of community-dwelling patients with cognitive decline. A care counselor was at the exclusive disposal of the intervention group. Primary outcome measure was caregiver depression. Results. Finally, depression was 6.25 times less frequent in the intervention group. The actual intervention appeared minimal with only ten applications for more support followed by only three interventions effectively carried out. Although caregivers felt burdened and depressed, formal support remained stable. On the other hand, the availability of the care counselor made caregivers feel less depressed with the same amount of support. Conclusion. Carers do not always need to be surrounded with more professionals, but they want to feel more supported. In terms of policy, this could have some important implications.