Police responses to diversity: A social representational study of rural British policing in a changing representational context

In the first decade of the 21st century, British policing faced two new challenges in how it responded to social diversity: As well as instituting reforms in response to a highly publicized report describing the British police as ‘institutionally racist’ (Macpherson, 1999 ), they faced challenges associated with rapid increases in numbers of immigrants into the UK. Studying social representations at such times of change allows access into processes, themes and value systems that may otherwise remain hidden. This paper uses social representations theory to explore interview accounts provided by regular police officers of interactions with members of minority groups. Empirically, we focus on an area of diversity policing that has received relatively little previous attention: Police work in a rural context that has recently played host to large numbers of migrant workers. Our analysis shows that interviews operate as a site of resistance in which respondents attempt to rework hegemonic representations of the police as prejudiced and to re‐present themselves and their work as able to respond appropriately to diversity. Fairness as a defining characteristic of good police practice is a central representational theme that links identity construction processes to police work with minority groups. Recent immigrant groups are represented as both needing and deserving help to assimilate into British culture: Their lack of acculturation and language difficulties provide additional challenges to police work and to how this is judged as ‘fair’. We discuss the broader origins and implications of police officers' understandings of fairness and the use of social representations theory to study representational fields within organizational settings. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“There Is a Lot of Junk on the Web!”: Using Web Site Evaluation in an Introductory Religion Course

This essay describes a web site evaluation project which served as the final assignment for an undergraduate “Introduction to Religion” course. The essay discusses lessons learned from the design and implementation of this web‐based research assignment over three consecutive semesters. It includes insights from an instructor and a reference librarian who collaborated on this project.     

Post Christian pastoral care: the wisdom of not knowing

Emergent religious pluralism leads many of us to reflect on pastoral care practices that have evolved mostly within the Judeo Christian tradition. This article makes public my reflections and offers ideas for a ministry of curiosity that is more conversant with an increasingly Post Christian society.     

Presentation modality and proactive interference in short-term retention using a mixed-morality distractor task

Two experiments investigated the release from PI following a shift in mode of presentation of the study words. In each experiment, the interpolated task required processing of both auditory (A) and visual (V) information. The results were the same with mixed lists (Experiment I) and with independent groups (Experiment II): A release from PI was obtained following an A to V shift but not following a V to A shift. It was concluded that the mixed-modality filler task has functional characteristics very similar to those of an A filler and that the filler task influences the memory code for study items.     

Temporal aspects of passive movement-related corticomotor inhibition

We have previously shown that during rhythmic passive movement of the index finger, the amplitude of the motor evoke potential (MEP) of the first dorsal interosseous muscle (FDI) as the index finger moved through mid-range adduction, is significantly reduced compared to rest [Edwards, D. J., Thickbroom, G. W., Byrnes, M. L., Ghosh, S., & Mastaglia, F. L. (2002). Reduced corticomotor excitability with passive movement: A study using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Human Movement Science 21, 533-540]. In the present study we have investigated the time-course of this phenomenon. We found that MEP amplitude was significantly reduced at the mid-range position in the first cycle of movement (50+/-6% of resting baseline values), and did not vary across subsequent cycles (10 cycles in 50 s), but that MEP amplitude returned to baseline values within 1s of cessation of movement. The results suggest that the pattern of afferent discharge set up by the kinematics of the movement acting at spinal or supraspinal levels underlies the inhibition observed, rather than an effect of central origin or a cumulative effect of ongoing cyclic movement.     

The dimensions of change in therapeutic community treatment instrument

In this article, the authors describe the refinement and preliminary evaluation of the Dimensions of Change in Therapeutic Community Treatment Instrument (DCI), a measure of treatment process. In Study 1, a 99-item DCI, administered to a cross-sectional sample of substance abuse clients (N = 990), was shortened to 54 items on the basis of results from confirmatory factor analyses and item response theory invariance tests. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analyses of the 54-item DCI, completed by a longitudinal cohort of 993 clients, established and validated an 8-factor solution across 2 subpopulations (adults and adolescents) and 2 time points (treatment entry and 30-days postentry). The results of the 2 studies are encouraging and support use of the 54-item DCI as a tool to measure treatment process.