Historical Dialogue: Conceptualizing and Mapping a Field

This Introduction provides an overview of the term historical dialogue, and its relationship to the fields of transitional justice, memory studies, peacebuilding and conflict transformation. In considering the challenges facing post-conflict societies, the author suggests ways in which these different fields respond to a wide range of challenges that the legacy of violence incurs. With a particular focus on historical dialogue, and the ways in which historical dialogue is framed within the issue, Lang proposes considering history itself as a form of advocacy and an integral component of peacebuilding

The promise and pitfalls of differences-in-differences: reflections on '16 and Pregnant' and other applications

We use the exchange between Kearney/Levine and Jaeger/Joyce/Kaestner on `16 and Pregnant' to reexamine the use of DiD as a response to the failure of nature to properly design an experiment for us. We argue that 1) any DiD paper should address why the original levels of the experimental and control groups differed, and why this would not impact trends, 2) the parallel trends argument requires a justification of the chosen functional form and that the use of the interaction coefficients in probit and logit may be justified in some cases, and 3) parallel trends in the period prior to treatment is suggestive of counterfactual parallel trends, but parallel pre-trends is neither necessary nor sufficient for the parallel counterfactual trends condition to hold. Importantly, the purely statistical approach uses pretesting and thus generates the wrong standard errors. Moreover, we underline the dangers of implicitly or explicitly accepting the null hypothesis when failing to reject the absence of a differential pre-trend.Accepted manuscrip

Why Don’t Rape and Sexual Assault Victims Report? A Study of How the Psycho-Social Costs of Reporting Affect a Victim’s Decision to Report

Sexual assault and rape are among the least reported crimes in the United States. This paper hypothesizes that this reflects the psycho-social costs of reporting a rape or sexual assault, which, in turn, reflect the stigma suffered by rape and sexual assault victims. These costs will be highest among those most likely to be rejected by their social and professional circles if they report their victimization, and among those for whom such rejection is likely to be most costly. Using the National Crime Victimization Surveys, I proxy these higher costs by victim’s education and income, relationship to the assailant, and various measures of the nature of attack and attacker. I find that, as hypothesized, victims with higher incomes, more years of education, and a closer relationship with the attacker are less likely to report. These results are either absent or weaker in an identical analysis of the reporting of non-sexual assaults, confirming that the relations I observe are due to the unique nature of rape and sexual assaults

Why Don’t Rape and Sexual Assault Victims Report? A Study of How the Psycho-Social Costs of Reporting Affect a Victim’s Decision to Report

Sexual assault and rape are among the least reported crimes in the United States. This paper hypothesizes that this reflects the psycho-social costs of reporting a rape or sexual assault, which, in turn, reflect the stigma suffered by rape and sexual assault victims. These costs will be highest among those most likely to be rejected by their social and professional circles if they report their victimization, and among those for whom such rejection is likely to be most costly. Using the National Crime Victimization Surveys, I proxy these higher costs by victim’s education and income, relationship to the assailant, and various measures of the nature of attack and attacker. I find that, as hypothesized, victims with higher incomes, more years of education, and a closer relationship with the attacker are less likely to report. These results are either absent or weaker in an identical analysis of the reporting of non-sexual assaults, confirming that the relations I observe are due to the unique nature of rape and sexual assaults

How discrimination and bias shape outcomes

In this article, economists Kevin Lang and Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer take up the expansive issue of discrimination, examining specifically how discrimination and bias shape people’s outcomes. The authors focus primarily on discrimination by race, while acknowledging that discrimination exists along many other dimensions as well, including gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity. They describe evidence of substantial racial disparities in the labor market, education, criminal justice, health, and housing, and they show that in each of these domains, such disparities at least partially reflect discrimination. Lang and Kahn-Lang Spitzer note that the disparities we see are both causes and results of discrimination, and that they reinforce each other. For instance, harsher treatment from the criminal justice system makes it more difficult for black people to get good jobs, which makes it more likely they’ll live in poor neighborhoods and that their children will attend inferior schools. The authors argue that simply prohibiting discrimination isn’t effective, partly because it’s hard to prevent discrimination along dimensions that are correlated with race. Rather, they write, policies are more likely to be successful if they aim to eliminate the statistical association between race and many other social and economic characteristics and to decrease the social distance between people of different races.Accepted manuscrip

Safety in home care: A research protocol for studying medication management

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Patient safety is an ongoing global priority, with medication safety considered a prevalent, high-risk area of concern. Yet, we have little understanding of the supports and barriers to safe medication management in the Canadian home care environment. There is a clear need to engage the providers and recipients of care in studying and improving medication safety with collaborative approaches to exploring the nature and safety of medication management in home care.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A socio-ecological perspective on health and health systems drives our iterative qualitative study on medication safety with elderly home care clients, family members and other informal caregivers, and home care providers. As we purposively sample across four Canadian provinces: Alberta (AB), Ontario (ON), Quebec (QC) and Nova Scotia (NS), we will collect textual and visual data through home-based interviews, participant-led photo walkabouts of the home, and photo elicitation sessions at clients' kitchen tables. Using successive rounds of interpretive description and human factors engineering analyses, we will generate robust descriptions of managing medication at home within each provincial sample and across the four-province group. We will validate our initial interpretations through photo elicitation focus groups with home care providers in each province to develop a refined description of the phenomenon that can inform future decision-making, quality improvement efforts, and research.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The application of interpretive and human factors lenses to the visual and textual data is expected to yield findings that advance our understanding of the issues, challenges, and risk-mitigating strategies related to medication safety in home care. The images are powerful knowledge translation tools for sharing what we learn with participants, decision makers, other healthcare audiences, and the public. In addition, participants engage in knowledge exchange throughout the study with the use of participatory data collection methods.</p

Interprofessional collaborative practice within cancer teams: Translating evidence into action. A mixed methods study protocol

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A regional integrated cancer network has implemented a program (educational workshops, reflective and mentoring activities) designed to support the uptake of evidence-informed interprofessional collaborative practices (referred to in this text as EIPCP) within cancer teams. This research project, which relates to the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario (RNAO) Best Practice Guidelines and other sources of research evidence, represents a unique opportunity to learn more about the factors and processes involved in the translation of evidence-based recommendations into professional practices. The planned study seeks to address context-specific challenges and the concerns of nurses and other stakeholders regarding the uptake of evidence-based recommendations to effectively promote and support interprofessional collaborative practices.</p> <p>Aim</p> <p>This study aims to examine the uptake of evidence-based recommendations from best practice guidelines intended to enhance interprofessional collaborative practices within cancer teams.</p> <p>Design</p> <p>The planned study constitutes a practical trial, defined as a trial designed to provide comprehensive information that is grounded in real-world healthcare dynamics. An exploratory mixed methods study design will be used. It will involve collecting quantitative data to assess professionals' knowledge and attitudes, as well as practice environment factors associated with effective uptake of evidence-based recommendations. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted concurrently with care providers to gather qualitative data for describing the processes involved in the translation of evidence into action from both the users' (n = 12) and providers' (n = 24) perspectives. The Graham <it>et al. </it>Ottawa Model of Research Use will serve to construct operational definitions of concepts, and to establish the initial coding labels to be used in the thematic analysis of the qualitative data. Quantitative and qualitative results will be merged during interpretation to provide complementary perspectives of interrelated contextual factors that enhance the uptake of EIPCP and changes in professional practices.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The information obtained from the study will produce new knowledge on the interventions and sources of support most conducive to the uptake of evidence and building of capacity to sustain new interprofessional collaborative practice patterns. It will provide new information on strategies for overcoming barriers to evidence-informed interventions. The findings will also pinpoint critical determinants of 'what works and why' taking into account the interplay between evidence, operational, relational micro-processes of care, uniqueness of patients' needs and preferences, and the local context.</p

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements