Rolling Back Transparency in China\u27s Courts

Despite a burgeoning conversation about the centrality of information management to governments, scholars are only just beginning to address the role of legal information in sustaining authoritarian rule. This Essay presents a case study showing how legal information can be manipulated: through the deletion of previously published cases from China’s online public database of court decisions. Using our own dataset of all 42 million cases made public in China between January 1, 2014, and September 2, 2018, we examine the recent deletion of criminal cases from the China Judgements Online website. We find that the deletion of cases likely results from a range of overlapping, often ad hoc, concerns: the international and domestic images of Chinese courts, institutional relationships within the Chinese Party-State, worries about revealing negative social phenomena, and concerns about copycat crimes. Taken together, the decision(s) to remove hundreds of thousands of unconnected cases shape a narrative about the Chinese courts, Chinese society, and the Chinese Party-State. Our findings also provide insight into the interrelated mechanisms of censorship and transparency in an era in which data governance is increasingly central. We highlight how courts seek to curate a narrative that protects the courts from criticism and boosts their standing with the public and within the Party-State. Examining how Chinese courts manage the removal of cases suggests that how courts curate and manage information disclosure may also be central to their legitimacy and influence

Mass Digitization of Chinese Court Decisions: How to Use Text as Data in the Field of Chinese Law

Over the past five years, Chinese courts have placed tens of millions of court judgments online. We analyze the promise and pitfalls of using this remarkable new data source through the construction and examination of a dataset of 1,058,990 documents from Henan province. Courts posted judgments in roughly half of all cases in 2014 and, although the percent of cases posted online has likely risen since then, the single greatest challenge facing researchers remains documenting gaps in the data. We find that missing data varies widely by court, and that intermediate courts disclose significantly more documents than basic level courts. But court level, GDP per capita, population, and mediation rates are insufficient fully to explain variation in disclosure rates. Further work is needed to better understand how resources and incentives might be skewing the data. Despite incomplete information, however, a topic model of 20,321 administrative court judgments demonstrates how mass digitization of court decisions opens a new window into the practice of everyday law in China. Unsupervised machine learning combined with close reading of selected cases reveals surprising trends in administrative disputes as well as important research questions. Taken together, our findings suggest a need for humility and methodological pluralism among scholars seeking to use large-scale data from Chinese courts. The vast amount of incomplete data now available may frustrate attempts to find quick answers to existing questions, but the data excel at opening new pathways for research and at adding nuance to existing assumptions about the role of courts in Chinese society

On Constructing a Knowledge Base of Chinese Criminal Cases

We are developing a knowledge base over Chinese judicial decision documents to facilitate landscape analyses of Chinese Criminal Cases. We view judicial decision documents as a mixed-granularity semi-structured text where different levels of the text carry different semantic constructs and entailments. We use a combination of context-sensitive grammar, dependency parsing and discourse analysis to extract a formal and interpretable representation of these documents. Our knowledge base is developed by constructing associations between different elements of these documents. The interpretability is contributed in part by our formal representation of the Chinese criminal laws, also as semi-structured documents. The landscape analyses utilize these two representations and enable a law researcher to ask legal pattern analysis queries.Comment: submitted to JURIX 201

Consumer involvement in health service research: a cross-sectional survey of staff in an Australian public hospital and health service

Objective: Consumer involvement is when patients (their families, friends, and caregivers) work with researchers on research projects. While health services are expected to support consumer-researcher collaborations, conducive environments still need to be developed, with limited research into how Australian health services support this practice. This study explores current consumer involvement in research activity and staff perceptions at an Australian tertiary hospital and health service. Methods:Research-active employees at a health service were invited to participate in an online cross-sectional survey. It assessed experience with and confidence in involving consumers in research, the perceived value of consumer involvement, and considerations related to challenges, facilitators, and solutions to enhance consumer involvement in health service research.Results:Among 83 respondents, including medical, nursing, and allied health professionals, 54 completed the survey. Approximately half had experience with involving consumers in research. Over 80% recognised that involving consumers enhanced research relevance. Identified barriers included challenges in finding (46.6%) and compensating (59.3%) consumers, as well as deficiencies in researcher skills, knowledge (32.2%), and time constraints (39%). Facilitators comprised access to experienced researchers and educational opportunities. Moreover, 87% advocated for increased support to involve consumers within health services, with the appointment of a designated consumer involvement officer deemed the most beneficial solution by 92.5% of respondents.Conclusions:While individual barriers inhibit consumer involvement in research, more prominent institutional factors such as financial and technical support may determine successful and meaningful collaborations. As health services evolve towards co-design models in research, the outcomes of this study will guide initiatives aimed at enhancing consumer involvement in the research process within Australian health services.</p

The UK myotonic dystrophy patient registry: facilitating and accelerating clinical research

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is the most frequent muscular dystrophy worldwide with complex, multi-systemic, and progressively worsening symptoms. There is currently no treatment for this inherited disorder and research can be challenging due to the rarity and variability of the disease. The UK Myotonic Dystrophy Patient Registry is a patient self-enrolling online database collecting clinical and genetic information. For this cross-sectional “snapshot” analysis, 556 patients with a confirmed diagnosis of DM1 registered between May 2012 and July 2016 were included. An almost even distribution was seen between genders and a broad range of ages was present from 8 months to 78 years, with the largest proportion between 30 and 59 years. The two most frequent symptoms were fatigue and myotonia, reported by 79 and 78% of patients, respectively. The severity of myotonia correlated with the severity of fatigue as well as mobility impairment, and dysphagia occurred mostly in patients also reporting myotonia. Men reported significantly more frequent severe myotonia, whereas severe fatigue was more frequently reported by women. Cardiac abnormalities were diagnosed in 48% of patients and more than one-third of them needed a cardiac implant. Fifteen percent of patients used a non-invasive ventilation and cataracts were removed in 26% of patients, 65% of which before the age of 50 years. The registry’s primary aim was to facilitate and accelerate clinical research. However, these data also allow us to formulate questions for hypothesis-driven research that may lead to improvements in care and treatment

The role of community and professional engagement in teaching allied health higher education: the academic perspective

This article has been reproduced in accordance with the publisher's copyright transfer policy. Copyright © 2018 Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions, Wash., DC This author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (September 2018) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyCommunity and professional engagement describes a collaborative model of interaction between institutions of higher education and the communities in which they operate. This qualitative study aimed to examine how professional and community engagement is understood and incorporated into the role of staff members within the School of Health Sciences of one university. Twenty-one academic and professional staff were interviewed. Participants identified a range of definitions for both 'community' and 'professional' engagement, as well as the benefits and limitations of such engagement. Ability to conduct engagement was limited by time capacity when competing with other role requirements. Integration of community engagement with research and teaching requires development of a framework that addresses both the common barriers and facilitators to engagement

A methodological systematic review of meta-ethnography conduct to articulate the complex analytical phases

Background: Decision making in health and social care requires robust syntheses of both quantitative and qualitative evidence. Meta-ethnography is a seven-phase methodology for synthesising qualitative studies. Developed in 1988 by sociologists in education Noblit and Hare, meta-ethnography has evolved since its inception; it is now widely used in healthcare research and is gaining popularity in education research. The aim of this article is to provide up-to-date, in-depth guidance on conducting the complex analytic synthesis phases 4 to 6 of meta-ethnography through analysis of the latest methodological evidence. Methods: We report findings from a methodological systematic review conducted from 2015 to 2016. Fourteen databases and five other online resources were searched. Expansive searches were also conducted resulting in inclusion of 57 publications on meta-ethnography conduct and reporting from a range of academic disciplines published from 1988 to 2016. Results: Current guidance on applying meta-ethnography originates from a small group of researchers using the methodology in a health context. We identified that researchers have operationalised the analysis and synthesis methods of meta-ethnography – determining how studies are related (phase 4), translating studies into one another (phase 5), synthesising translations (phase 6) and line of argument synthesis - to suit their own syntheses resulting in variation in methods and their application. Empirical research is required to compare the impact of different methods of translation and synthesis. Some methods are potentially better at preserving links with the context and meaning of primary studies, a key principle of meta-ethnography. A meta-ethnography can and should include reciprocal and refutational translation and line of argument synthesis, rather than only one of these, to maximise the impact of its outputs. Conclusion: The current work is the first to articulate and differentiate the methodological variations and their application for different purposes and represents a significant advance in the understanding of the methodological application of meta-ethnography