Religious and Ethnonational Identification and Political Violence

Religious and national identification are often elided when describing the Troubles in Northern Ireland: Catholicism with Irishness and Protestantism with Britishness. However, these categories do not coincide completely, and a third national identity label ‘Northern Irish’ has recently been seen to emerge, with some respondents from both major religious groupings claiming this identity. A survey study of residents in Northern Ireland (n = 359) examined religious and national identification using a scale of collective self-esteem. This measure could be described as evaluating the relative strength or thickness of the identities across the various expected (British Protestant; Catholic Irish), unexpected (Protestant Irish; Catholic British) and emerging (Protestant and Catholic Northern Irish) national and religious combinations. Alongside these measures, respondents were sampled in wards that had historically high levels of political violence and in wards matched for socio-economic status and urbanization but with historically low levels of violence. The findings suggest that the relationship between national and religious identification in Northern Ireland is influenced by the sampling based on geographical experience of violence and that unexpected identity combinations and weaker patterns of identification are evident among participants in those areas with the least experience of violence

Psychological Barriers to a Peaceful Resolution: Longitudinal Evidence from the Middle East and Northern Ireland

Does individual-level exposure to political violence prompt conciliatory attitudes? Does the answer vary by phase of conflict? The study uses longitudinal primary datasets to test the hypothesis that conflict-related experiences impact conciliation. Data were collected from Israeli Jews, Palestinians, and Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Across both contexts, and among both parties to each conflict, psychological distress and threat perceptions had a polarizing effect on conciliatory preferences. The study highlights that experiences of political violence are potentially a crucial source of psychological distress, and consequently, a continuing barrier to peace. This has implications in peacemaking, implying that alongside removing the real threat of violence, peacemakers must also work toward the social and political inclusion of those most affected by previous violence

Moving past: probing the agency and affect of recordkeeping in individual and community lives in post-conflict Croatia

Reporting on ongoing research, this paper reviews stories, drawn from recent literature as well as gathered through ethnographic research, that people tell about records and recordkeeping during and since the Yugoslav Wars. It focuses on what these stories reveal of the agency and affect of recordkeeping in individual and community lives, particularly in Croatia. The paper concludes with a contemplation of what might be learned from such an approach for the development of recordkeeping infrastructures that can anticipate, avert or alleviate some of the ways in which records and recordkeeping continue to traumatize or target the vulnerable, and frustrate and prevent the human and societal need to "move forward," if not "move past." © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

Systematic review of methods used in meta-analyses where a primary outcome is an adverse or unintended event

addresses: Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, St Luke's Campus, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK. [email protected]: PMCID: PMC3528446types: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't© 2012 Warren et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Adverse consequences of medical interventions are a source of concern, but clinical trials may lack power to detect elevated rates of such events, while observational studies have inherent limitations. Meta-analysis allows the combination of individual studies, which can increase power and provide stronger evidence relating to adverse events. However, meta-analysis of adverse events has associated methodological challenges. The aim of this study was to systematically identify and review the methodology used in meta-analyses where a primary outcome is an adverse or unintended event, following a therapeutic intervention

Perceived Threat, Social Identification, and Psychological Well-Being: The Effects of Political Conflict Exposure

Using data drawn from the adult population in Northern Ireland (N=1,515), this article examines the relationship between perceived intergroup threat and psychological well-being, taking into consideration the mediating role of social identification and the moderating role of political conflict exposure. Results by and large confirmed our predictions that perceived threat would be directly associated with poorer well-being but would also exert a positive indirect effect on well-being via increased social identification. However, these relationships were dependent on individuals' prior conflict exposure, such that the positive indirect relationship between perceived threat and psychological well-being emerged only for two subpopulations: individuals who had high direct and high indirect exposure to conflict, and individuals who had low direct, but high indirect conflict exposure. No indirect effects emerged for individuals with relatively lower conflict exposure. Results are discussed with regard to their implications for research on the consequences of intergroup threat in political conflict settings and beyond. © 2013 International Society of Political Psychology