Exploring the Application of Actuarial Criminology in Southern Africa

In response to the declared intent of the White Paper on Corrections (Department of Corrections, 2005) to transform prisons into needs-based centers of reform, the Self-appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ) was used to explore its potential as a reliable and valid prediction scale for recidivism in the diverse cultural context of Southern Africa. A total of 269 incarcerated males agreed to be anonymously assessed. Furthermore, 38 offenders with a history of maladjustment and disciplinary problems were identified for comparison. An alpha score of.90 as well as moderate to high or high to excellent coefficient alphas for six out of the seven subscales confirm the SAQ to be a reliable assessment instrument within the Southern African context. All correlation coefficients (criminal tendencies, antisocial personality problems, conduct problems, criminal history, alcohol and drug abuse, antisocial associates and anger) also measured significantly at the 0.01 level while the scores of the 38 isolated cases suggested higher scores in relation to conduct disorder, antisocial personality trends, anger and consequently criminal history.     

Juvenile Sex and Non‐Sex Offenders: A Comparison of Recidivism and Risk

Forty male juvenile sex offenders were compared with 133 male juvenile non‐sex offenders 2 years postrelease from residential treatment to assess recidivism and factors related to recidivism. Juvenile sex offenders had significantly lower recidivism rates than juvenile non‐sex offenders.     

An Evaluation of the Reliability and Validity of the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ) in South African Context

The Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ: Loza, 2005) is a self-report questionnaire designed to assist with the prediction of violent and nonviolent recidivism among correctional populations. Use of scale could help in the assessment of risk and the identification of factors that could be addressed by programming or other intervention to reduce recidivism risk. Evidence for use of the SAQ in South African settings is needed. The SAQ was administered at two separate occasions and a week apart to a total of 125 male offenders in South Africa to evaluate its psychometric properties. Scores from the SAQ were reliable with South African inmates.     

Career Research in South Africa: Challenges for the Future

This paper describes and critically examines aspects of career research in South Africa from 1980 to 1997. The research is grouped into four categories, theory, theoretical constructs, career counseling and education, and career assessment. Suggestions are provided on the directions South African career research should take.     

Portable Digital Devices: Meeting Challenges to Psychotherapeutic Privacy

Portable digital devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and netbooks, now permeate our society. These devices allow substantial efficiencies in access to and communication of information by mental health professionals. They also bring with them risks to psychotherapist–client privacy. This article reviews these threats and offers suggestions as to their mitigation.     

Pathways to violence propensity: Results from a two-wave study of young males in urban South Africa

The aim of this study was to model pathways to violence propensity and violent behaviour among boys and young men in a high-violence community in South Africa. To that end, 284 young males (11 to 23 years old) from Khayelitsha, Cape Town self-reported risk for engagement in interpersonal violence and criminality; including within family, peer, and school domains, over a 12 month period. In Structural Equation Modelling, a pathway emerged through which an unstable home environment, influenced by deprivation and violence, affects the quality of parenting. In turn, early deviant associations and attitudes toward violence and gangs are cultivated and may have a deleterious effect on schooling, resulting in greater future substance abuse, greater violence propensity, and offending. These findings support the life course perspective approach, emphasising turning points and human agency in the aetiology of violence.     

A Psychology of Indigenous Healing in Southern Africa

Converging lines of evidence from various scientific disciplines consistently point to humanity's African roots. In this context, the term “indigenous healing” is used to refer to universal forms of healing that began in Africa and were developed further both locally and internationally. This article examines the notion of a psychology of indigenous healing and suggests that investigations continually reveal essential structures and practices of a perennial psychology underlying modern scientific, academic and professional forms of this discipline. Examination of such structures and practices illuminates an original psychological theme in Southern African indigenous healing involving recognition of Spirit as Source of Self that extends into transpersonal realms. Related themes include ancestral consciousness, familial and communal spirituality, healers and specializations, illness prevention, health promotion and various forms of empathy. The need for future in depth research into such psychological themes and issues is identified and explicated.     

The effects of labelling,expert testimony,and information processing mode on juror decisions in SVP civil commitment trials

Expert witnesses offering testimony in sexually violent predator civil commitment trials may use diagnostic labels that are either familiar (e.g. ‘psychopath’) or unfamiliar (e.g. ‘paraphilia’) to jurors. Using predictions based on cognitive experiential self-theory, we explored the influence of testimony type (clinical versus actuarial) and diagnostic label (psychopath versus paraphilia) on jurors motivated to adopt either an experiential processing mode (PM; in which heuristic cues may be strongly relied upon) or an analytic rational PM. Consistent with previous research, our results indicated that when given a psychopathic diagnostic label, mock jurors motivated to process information experientially were more influenced by clinical testimony, whereas mock jurors induced into a rational mode were more influenced by actuarial testimony. However, experientially oriented jurors given a paraphilia diagnostic label did not show the expected influence of clinical expert testimony, and instead were more persuaded by actuarial testimony. These findings are discussed from a judgement and heuristics cues framework. The implications of several procedural suggestions are examined. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Automated Integrative Complexity: Current Challenges and Future Directions

Automating integrative complexity is fraught with many challenges. To address these challenges, we discuss the tension between a specificity approach and a more flexible multiple‐pass approach, the multifaceted nature of the complexity construct, the gold standard for complexity measurement, the difficulty of human scoring and its consequences for automation, and some ways forward for creating the best complexity measurements. In so doing, we present new data demonstrating (1) initial evidence for the validity of a new automated system for measuring two different forms of complexity (elaborative and dialectical), (2) the danger of constructing measurements in a purely ad hoc fashion that ignores prospective testing, (3) human‐to‐computer correspondence is in part a function of human‐to‐human correspondence, (4) human‐to‐computer correspondence increases systematically as one uses tests with larger units of analysis, and (5) the lack of correspondence of different systems (both human and automated) may occur in part because they were designed for different units of analysis.     

Psychology in sub‐Saharan Africa: Challenges,prospects and promises

The experiences of African communities are significantly underrepresented in the current psychological literature as compared to those of Western European and North American communities. Professional psychology in sub‐Saharan African is either nonexistent or strongly modeled after practices in North America and Western Europe. The modeling of psychology in sub‐Saharan Africa on the North American and Western European experience is a result of the more extensive marketing of the Western cultural heritage around the globe by national governments, education institutions and international aid agencies vis a vis the marketing of alternative cultural heritages. It is also reflective of the historically unequal intercultural exchanges between Western and African cultural heritages and in favour of the former. A greater representation of the African experience in the psychological literature could add to the richness and global relevance of psychology.     

Contextual Challenges in South Africa: The Role of a Research Ethics Committee

This article parallels a debate similar to the one in Canada and elsewhere where researchers whose work involves humans now operate under a single ethics policy, with a strong biomedical emphasis. The institution of research ethics committees for humanities and social sciences in South Africa are relatively recent, posing unique challenges to researchers and academicians. These factors contribute to the complexity of conducting ethically sound research in the humanities and social sciences. The article explores this specific context and how a research ethics committee in the humanities and social sciences can meet the challenge of the unique South African context.     

Children of the Affluent: Challenges to Well-Being

Growing up in the culture of affluence can connote various psychosocial risks. Studies have shown that upper-class children can manifest elevated disturbance in several areas-such as substance use, anxiety, and depression-and that two sets of factors seem to be implicated, that is, excessive pressures to achieve and isolation from parents (both literal and emotional). Whereas stereotypically, affluent youth and poor youth are respectively thought of as being at "low risk" and "high risk," comparative studies have revealed more similarities than differences in their adjustment patterns and socialization processes. In the years ahead, psychologists must correct the long-standing neglect of a group of youngsters treated, thus far, as not needing their attention. Family wealth does not automatically confer either wisdom in parenting or equanimity of spirit; whereas children rendered atypical by virtue of their parents' wealth are undoubtedly privileged in many respects, there is also, clearly, the potential for some nontrivial threats to their psychological well-being.     

Some Current Trends of Christianity in Africa

This article examines three trends in current African Christianity. Its denominational fragmentation is currently marked by the coexistence of three major groups: the “churches that emerged from the apostolic process of Christian antiquity”; the “churches born from Western missionary processes”; and the “African revivalists” (African initiated churches and African Pentecostal churches). The African revivalists are characterized by doctrinal and institutional creativity that largely draws on Africa's historical trajectory, with its challenges of a sociocultural, identity, and economic nature. This “fragmented African Christianity” inevitably has a diverse view of African cultures, ranging from a positive viewpoint on one end of the scale and radical rejection on the other, and including various patterns of taking over Christian heritage with the goal of giving new value to the formally scorned African identity. This diversity of attitudes in turn prompts overall judgments on Christianity in Africa, which range from praise to suspicion regarding the pertinence of this religion on the continent. This complex shape of current African Christianity is not an obstacle to the Ad Gentes mission, whose current dynamism is increasingly marked by the phenomenon of African emigration. All of this represents a great challenge for ecumenism, because a trend toward a “religion market” is taking the lead over collaboration and search for Christian unity. This is why it is important to recognize the quality of this African missionary Christianity, whose fragmentation is quite original.     

当前中国助产土面临的困境与挑战

针对目前助产工作中出现的诸多困惑,透过现象深入思考,认为这些现象发生的原因是有关部门和管理组织对助产士工作认识模糊、内涵理解不深。助产被医疗和护理两极边缘化,简单地从属于普通护理;行业缺乏有力监督,专业缺乏特色,专业体系、继续教育缺失。     

Responsible Authorship in Engineering Fields: An Overview of Current Ethical Challenges

The primary aim of this article is to identify ethical challenges relating to authorship in engineering fields. Professional organizations and journals do provide crucial guidance in this realm, but this cannot replace the need for frequent and diligent discussions in engineering research communities about what constitutes appropriate authorship practice. Engineering researchers should seek to identify and address issues such as who is entitled to be an author and whether publishing their research could potentially harm the public.     

The State,Democracy, and Development in Southern Africa

Development cannot be left to the “magic wand” of market forces alone. This observation has been vindicated by the dismal failure of the IMF/World Bank policies in Africa since the 1970s/80s. That development needs an active state participation and some deliberately dirigiste policies brooks no controversy. Interestingly, even the World Bank has begrudgingly come to accept the centrality of the state in development after peddling policies premised on market fundamentalism for decades. Consensus is now emerging in development discourses in Africa that both states and markets do play an important complimentary role in the development process. The idea that this article canvasses is that both democracy and development need a robust, capable, democratic developmental state. A democratic developmental state operates in such a way that it leaves ample room for other key non-state actors to make their critical input in the development agenda and the democratization process. The article revisits the debate on the post-colonial state; interrogates challenges for democratic governance and sustainable human development; revisits the nexus between democracy and development in the context of Southern Africa. It further investigates the impact of the current process of accelerated globalization on the state, democratization, and development project in the SADC region.     

An exploration of the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire for assessing female recidivism in South Africa

This study profiled incarcerated female offenders’ criminogenic-oriented self-appraisals. Respondents were 77 female offenders between the ages of 20 and 56 years, serving custodial sentences within the South African Department of Correctional Services ranging from under a year to 25 years, and of whom 7 per cent were reoffenders. They completed the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ: Loza, 2005 Loza, W. (2005). Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQTM). Technical manual. Toronto: Multi-Health Systems. [Google Scholar]), which is a self-report measure for assessing violent and non-violent recidivism. Findings suggest offenders with a history of violence to be at risk for reoffending compared to non-violent offenders.     

Family Policy in South Korea: Development, Current Status, and Challenges

We provide a comprehensive review of family policy in South Korea (Korea hereafter) for international readers. Alarmed by recent social and demographic changes, the Korean government has started to establish explicit family policies from the mid 2000s. These policies have signified a symbolic attention shift to family matters in the history of social policy in Korea. In this paper, we focus on three areas of family policy: (a) work-family policies, (b) a healthy family policy, and (c) a policy for multi-cultural families. Work-family policies aim to help working families with young children balance work responsibilities and family caregiving through multiple leave options and child care support. The Framework Act on Healthy Families, the first explicit family policy in Korea, requires local governments to provide family services through Healthy Family Support Centers. The Multi-Cultural Family Support Act also established a formal support system for multi-cultural families with immigrant spouses, a population group that has recently increased in Korea. We further discuss the domestic and comparative contexts of Korean family policy and provide suggestions for the remaining challenges.