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A model for identifying the impacts of infrastructure deficiency on road traffic safety is needed to help governments prioritize strategic investments to increase public safety. During the 2010-2019 period, U.S. pedestrian and cyclist fatalities rose by 44% and 36%, respectively, and previous studies have shown a positive correlation between pedestrian/cyclist crashes and low-income areas. To our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate further the reasons behind the higher probability of pedestrian and cyclist crashes in low-income areas. The proposed hypothesis is that the higher probability of pedestrian and cyclist crashes in low-income areas correlates with higher infrastructure deficiencies such as sidewalk, crosswalk, and pavement deficiencies. Ordered logistic regression and K-means clustering techniques have been used in this study to model the impacts of infrastructure deficiency on pedestrian-vehicle and cyclist-vehicle crash frequency at intersections in Dallas, Texas as a case study. The results show that for intersections in low-income areas, the odds of having pedestrian and cyclist crashes are 22% and 34% higher than intersections in middle-income and high-income areas, respectively. For intersections with sidewalk, crosswalk, or pavement deficiencies, the odds of having pedestrian and cyclist crashes are 86%, 15%, and 29% higher, respectively, than intersections without such deficiencies. For intersections with one, two, or three infrastructure deficiencies, the odds of having pedestrian and cyclist crashes are 2.8, 3.0, and 3.2 times higher, respectively, than intersections without infrastructure deficiencies.

Citizen-led participation in democracy is explored through studying the online and offline spaces where people work together to influence those in power and improve their communities. The concept of a participation space is introduced to describe these contexts. The spatial theme guides the research, from literature, through methodology, to findings. Case studies of three community/activist groups provide the data to identify participation spaces and model these as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks (STINs) (Kling, McKim, & King, 2003). These participation spaces include social media, email, and blogs, as well as paper media and offline spaces, such as rooms. The STIN models of these participation spaces reveal that the characteristics which influence their use for participation are the same for online and offline spaces. These can be understood in terms of spatial characteristics: the spaces' perceived boundaries and inhabitants, combined with ownership and access, including costs. As well as recording the roles of these spatial characteristics, the participation space models map the day-to-day activities of participation. Collating these activities reveals that participation primarily takes the form of communication: organising and increasing solidarity, sharing information, encouraging involvement, and trying to influence events. The models also reveal that most of these activities are non-public. This sociotechnical study describes the relationship between the activities of local, grassroots democracy and the characteristics of the online and offline spaces where it takes place.

Community Councils are the bottom rung of Scotland's democracy ladder, having few – but highly significant – statutory consultative duties (especially with regard to planning) and no service-delivery duties. Generally they have failed to live up to expectations in terms of activity and impact, and have struggled to gain legitimacy. Despite this, they are often highlighted in policy debates around community involvement, and have been on the agenda again recently with the release of two significant reports calling for increased powers, and the publication of a Scottish Government working group report examining ways to build their resilience and capacity. The Internet potentially offers Community Councils potentially useful capabilities. However, survey data shows that only 22% of Community Councils maintain up-to-date online public presences and only 4% have easily-accessible content relating to planning. Worse, only 14% of up-to-date presences support digital dialogue. Such poor communication is a digital symptom of a disease of poverty, namely CCs' lack of duties and relevance. This article examines these digital symptoms and suggests appropriate treatment. Without such treatment, the CC system may well just die. The article provides detailed data and analysis to inform the ongoing debate. It updates a study carried out in 2004 to 2006, investigating how technology could be developed to help regenerate democracy at the local community level. Although the 2012 survey reveals some good examples of active online presences and support by local authorities, in general there is no sense of improvement in information provision online.

In two studies, participants read persuasive messages introduced by an attractive (Study 1) or likeable (Study 2) source before completing measures of implicit and explicit evaluations. The persuasive messages were in favor of an unfamiliar brand of facial soap (Study 1) and the implementation of comprehensive examinations at the participants' university (Study 2). Results showed that persuasive messages had a stronger impact on an Implicit Association Test when the source was high in attractiveness or likeability (Study 1 and Study 2); responses on an Affect Misattribution Procedure, though in the predicted direction, were not significantly impacted by a source high in likeability (Study 2). These findings parallel those of numerous studies that, however, have looked almost exclusively at persuasion of explicit evaluations. They confirm that implicit evaluations can be changed through direct persuasive appeals and provide new information about the conditions under which persuasion of implicit evaluations can be found.

The Affective Misattribution Procedure (AMP) is one of the leading examples of a class of tasks used to measure attitudes implicitly. Based on the idea that AMP effects occur because participants misattribute affective responses, we hypothesized that asking participants to focus on their affective, gut-level responses would increase the magnitude of AMP eaffects. In line with this prediction, results showed that participants who completed the AMP while "going with their gut" revealed AMP effects that were much larger than for participants who completed the AMP with standard instructions. This result supports the prevailing model of the AMP as being related to affective misattribution, and reveals a straightforward way to increase effect sizes in the AMP.

Technologies such as the web and email have been seen to offer new capabilities through which traditional representative arrangements can be reinvigorated and renewed. This paper explores the ways in which information and communications technologies (ICTs) have become embedded within the cultural norms and activities of parliamentarians, by examining the experience of Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). At the heart of the paper is a discussion of new research data which provides empirical evidence of a significant technological orientation, and an emergent ICT culture that is the outcome of the intertwined relationship between the adoption and use of new communications technologies by parliamentarians, and the established norms and procedures of parliamentary activity. Although there is a body of work which explores the development of the web for parliamentarians and parliaments, this paper avoids the limitations of methodologies based upon an analysis of the characteristics of websites in favour of a grounded approach, focusing on actual uptake and use of a wide range of communications technologies by MSPs, as reported in survey findings. Utilising longitudinal empirical data, the paper sets out to establish how new communications technologies have been approached by MSPs. It explores the extent to which they regard ICTs as having utility for a wide range of their functions as parliamentarians, party actors and representatives, and demonstrates the extent to which new technologies underpin key communications relationships with other actors in the polity. In so doing, it seeks to illustrate that ICTs, rather that having a deterministic 'impact' on practice, have been utilised in specific ways reflecting both parliamentary 'norms' and an appreciation of the distinctive capabilities that they offer. As such, it is evident that there is an emergent ICT culture which is expressed in the working lives and activities of Scottish parliamentarians. Data on uptake and use is further contextualised through an ...