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The purpose of this study is to gain a broad understanding of public perceptions of the police and violence.

This study uses survey data collected from a nationally representative sample (N = 1,223) by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago. Descriptive, bivariate correlational and multivariate regression analyses of the data were conducted.

Descriptive analyses show the populace is equally concerned about the police use of violence and violence against the police, but bivariate analyses indicate the two types of concern are unrelated, and multivariate regression analyses show that few variables impact both types of concern. Consistent with prior research, young people and racial/ethnic minorities reported greater concerns about police violence than did older adults and Whites, yet neither age nor race/ethnicity impacted concerns about violence against the police. Perceived mistreatment by the police was the only variable which impacted perceptions of police violence and violence against the police in a consistent and cogent manner.

This study is the first to examine public perceptions of the police as both the agents and victims of violence. The results indicate public perceptions of the police are more complex than was previously believed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine public perceptions of police efforts to control crime in South Korea.

The data were gathered from surveys administered to college students in the Seoul-Gyeonggi Province metropolitan area. Logistic regression analyses were performed to assess the impact of gender, fear of crime and perceived risk of victimization on diffuse and specific perceptions of police performance.

The respondents did not view the police favorably. Fewer than half the respondents reported that the police do a good job of controlling drunk driving, approximately a quarter reported that the police do a good job of controlling burglary and investigating homicide and roughly a fifth reported believing that the police effectively control crime. Violent victimization and fear of violent victimization had a significant negative impact on confidence in the police.

The data suggest that informing the public about the low risk of violent victimization and other publicity campaigns designed to reduce fear of violence may foster confidence in the police.

This study identifies subtle similarities and differences in the structure of public perceptions of the police between Eastern and Western nations. Additionally, the data indicate there is a need for greater specificity in measures of public perceptions of the police.

In the development of powder bed additive manufacturing (AM) process parameters, the characterization of mechanical properties is generally performed through relatively large mechanical test samples that represent a bulk response. This provides an accurate representation of mechanical properties for equivalently sized or larger parts. However, as feature size is reduced, mechanical properties transition from a standard bulk response to a thin wall response where lower power border scans and surface roughness have a larger effect.

For this study, samples of wall thickness varying between 4.0 and 0.25 mm were built in 304L on the selective laser melting (SLM) platform and Ti-6Al-4V on the electron beam melting (EBM) platform. Samples were then mechanically tested, and fractography was performed for analysis.

This study experimentally identifies the threshold between bulk and thin wall mechanical properties for 304L SS on the SLM platform and Ti-6Al-4V on the EBM platform. A possible method for improving those properties and shifting the transition from bulk to thin wall response to smaller wall thicknesses by manipulation of scan pattern was investigated.

This study is a novel investigation into the effect of reduced wall thickness on the mechanical properties of a part produced by powder bed AM.

This research updates and expands upon Decker’s article “Citizen attitudes toward the police: a review of past findings and suggestions for future policy” by summarizing the findings from more than 100 articles on perceptions of and attitudes toward the police. Initially, the value of research on attitudes toward the police is discussed. Then the research pertaining to the impact of individual level variables (e.g. race) and contextual level variables (e.g. neighborhood) on perceptions of the police is reviewed. Studies of juveniles’ attitudes toward the police, perceptions of police policies and practices, methodological issues and conceptual issues are also discussed. This review of the literature indicates that only four variables (age, contact with police, neighborhood, and race) have consistently been proven to affect attitudes toward the police. However, there are interactive effects between these and other variables which are not yet understood; a finding which indicates that theoretical generalizations about attitudes toward police should be made with caution.

The purpose of this research was to assess public perceptions of the police in Mexico.

Surveys were administered to more than 300 law school students in Tampico, Tamaulipas.

Analyses of the data show that the majority of respondents view the municipal, state, and federal police forces negatively. The analyses also indicate that the federal police are viewed less negatively than the state police and the state police are viewed less negatively than the municipal police. Finally, the analyses show that there is a difference in diffuse and specific support for the police agencies, but there was not a consistent pattern of diffuse support being greater than specific support.

Because the sample was composed of law school students, the results cannot be generalized to the Mexican populace. And the unusual findings pertaining to diffuse and specific support for the police indicate a need for additional research on this phenomenon.

The findings suggest that the recent police reforms in Mexico have failed to instill public confidence in the police and that the Mexican government needs to increase police reform efforts. In addition, because of the large influx of immigration from Mexico into the USA, police agencies in the USA will need to increase efforts to work with Hispanic communities in order to gain the confidence of the Mexican immigrants.

To date, this is the most comprehensive empirical examination of perceptions of the police forces in Mexico.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between board demographic diversity and human rights reporting for a sample of large Western European companies.

Grounded on resource dependence theory, the authors hypothesize that greater gender, age and nationality diversities will translate into enhanced levels of human rights reporting. The authors use ordinal logistic regression analysis to analyze the association between these types of board diversity and such reporting.

The findings suggest that the companies in the sample attribute little importance to the reporting of information pertaining to the issue of human rights. They also suggest that only the diversity of nations represented in the board of directors is significant in explaining this type of reporting.

The sample includes only large companies from Western Europe and the analysis covers only one year.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study provides the first empirical analysis of factors influencing human rights reporting conducted on a multiple-country setting. It is also the first investigating the association between boards of directors’ demographic diversity and such reporting.

THE HOME HOUSE PROJECT; THE FUTURE OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING

The paper aims to investigate whether the Islamic banks (IBs) and the conventional banks (CBs) could be distinguished from one another on the basis of their capital structure, profitability and their respective determinants with using a multivariate statistical method for analysis of data.

The paper provides a comparative study based on a predictive model, the binary logistic regression, using a sample of 53 listed CBs and 45 listed IBs from the Middle East region for the period 2006-2014.

The binary logistic regression reveals that profitability and capital structure are good predictors that help to distinguish between the two categories of banks. Results suggest that higher are the net margin and capital ratio, higher is the probability that the bank is Islamic. For the return on assets, results show that lower is this value; higher is the likelihood that the bank is Islamic. Regarding their related determinants, the findings suggest first that banks with higher dividend payout policy, financing ratio, costs ratio and insolvency risk are more likely to be Islamic. Second, results suggest that banks with lower collaterals, size and credit risk are more likely to be Islamic.

The study contributes to the growing literature on corporate finance and Islamic banking. Analyzing the capital structure and profitability of the two categories of banks is important for investors, financial analysts and regulators. Understanding the differences contributes to understand how following Islamic finance principles and being under Sharīʿah governance could impact the bank profitability and financial decision, as well as investors behavior.

The study contributes to the scare literature dedicated to the use of the multivariate statistical methods for the analysis of data to compare the financial characteristics of IBs and CBs.

This paper aims to examine whether the characteristics of boards are more important in determining dividend policy than management characteristics. The authors show that as the final declarers of dividend policy is a firm’s board, the composition of a firm’s board significantly subsumes the effect of management characteristics that may also influence dividend policy.

Using the dividend declaration dummy variable, the authors run a fixed effect logistic regression of the dividend indicator on board characteristics, and managerial characteristics with firm level controls, year effects and industry effects while clustering standard errors at the firm level. For dividend yield variable which is censored at zero, they use a fixed effect Tobit regression.

The results of the study show that board characteristics such as average age, female presence and size have a strong positive significant effect, whereas board independent chair and voting right of directors have a negative significant effect on the likelihood of dividend declaration. For dividend yields, the results suggest that the presence of directors with financial expertise and the board size are the main influencers of dividend policy. Managerial characteristics are subsumed by director characteristics for determining dividend policy. The results overall support the evidence on the monitoring role of boards on management.

The originality and value of this study lies in the approach of including a comprehensive number of board characteristics unlike previous studies which makes the study of the influence of board composition on dividends more encompassing.