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Accounts of police complainants and their experiences of oversight largely reflect North American data. This article examines how complainants fare in Ireland, where police crisis and reform have repeatedly occurred since 2005. Quantitative analysis of the independent police oversight agency's complaint processing highlights patterns in allegations submitted, complaint-handling mechanism applied, and outcomes realised. In doing so, this article draws attention to the experiences of Irish Travellers, the homeless and prisoners. Findings show that socially marginal complainants submitted more serious allegations, secured higher investigation designations but were less likely to have complaints substantiated. Overall, substantiation was below international levels and police investigations were more likely to substantiate complaints than was the oversight agency. Consequently, the article then considers the frequent theoretical characterisation of police oversight in term of 'justice' or 'agency', arguing for inclusion of 'agency self-interest' by the oversight body in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent reports have highlighted the discriminatory treatment endured by foreign national prisoners (FNPs) in particular Irish prisons, but one key voice has been relatively absent from the discourse to date – the perspectives of the prisoners themselves. This article aims to complement these "top-down" perspectives with a comprehensive "bottom-up" analysis rooted in the experiences of 82 FNPs and explore the extent to which they were subject to racism, discrimination and differential treatment by prison staff and fellow inmates across eight Irish prisons. The article begins by outlining the methodology of the qualitative study. It then presents our findings in two parts. The first part focuses on FNPs' personal views of their relationships with staff in Irish prisons. The second part explores the extent to which these FNPs interact with Irish prisoners and prisoners from other jurisdictions. The article reveals that forming relationships with staff and fellow inmates is challenging for certain FNPs due to racial prejudice, language barriers and segregation based on nationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses police lesson learning in the context of complaints. First, it discusses their incidence and accounts of complainants' and officers' perspectives. The genesis of 'lesson learning' and the provisions of the Police (Conduct) Regulations 2020 are summarised. Finally, it considers the extent to which the system is likely to replace 'blame' with 'lesson learning', taking account of psychological effects such as cognitive dissonance. The conclusions are drawn that whilst emphasis on lesson learning is welcome, its application requires an improvement-focussed approach requiring investment in training to reach its potential. The effect on police risk aversion will probably be modest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Citizen complaints are considered by policing researchers as an indicator of police misconduct, and a proxy of police-community relations. Nevertheless, US and EU-based studies tend to focus on sustained complaints as reported by official agencies and officer-based correlates. Using the case of Carabineros, the Chilean militarized police force, this study examines (a) latent topics contained in a large set of complaints against the police on a digital platform, and (b) the change of those topics across time and (c) by complainants' educational level. Methods: We use novel computational natural language processing techniques to identify latent themes across the corpus of complaints (N = 1,623), hosted on an online forum from 2013 to 2020. Results: Our findings show eight latent themes across the corpus. Among others, these themes were related to police effectiveness, police misbehavior, and a master frame of institutional crisis that has significantly grown over the last year. Additionally, differences in the prevalence of topics by complainants' educational level were also found. Conclusions: Our findings contribute to the enterprise of opening the black box of complaints against the police and highlighting opportunities for social accountability in a developing country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a systematic literature review which synthesises current knowledge to advance a more sophisticated conceptual framework to measure the return on investment (ROI) in complaints management. Literature is examined from searches of ProQuest, EBSCO, Emerald Plus and Google Scholar to create a road map of extant knowledge published from 1987 to 2021 in marketing and consumer related fields. Five themes associated with ROI measurement research are identified across four time periods: Cost reduction, Organisational learning, Reputational effect, Current customer focus and Social benefits. Few studies develop a comprehensive conceptual framework for the calculation of the ROI. The current literature is then extended, with the development of a framework to assist complaint management researchers and practitioners to evaluate Customer Complaint Management practices. The framework also informs the necessary data collection. Finally, new research directions are outlined to guide scholarly enquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In prisons, participatory mechanisms can foster important outcomes including fairness, legitimacy and dignity. Complaints are one significant (symbolic) mechanism facilitating prisoner participation. Ombud institutions/Ombudsmen handle complaints externally, providing unelected accountability mechanisms and overseeing prisons around the world. A fair complaints process can stimulate prisoner voice, agency and rights protection, potentially averting self-harm and violence, and facilitating systemic improvements. However, complaints mechanisms are little studied. Addressing this gap, we: i) contextualise discussion by demonstrating that prisoners' actions have directly shaped complaints mechanisms available today; ii) outline prison complaints mechanisms in the case study jurisdiction of England and Wales; and iii) provide a critical review of literature to assess whether prison complaints systems are, in practice, participatory, inclusive and fair? We conclude that complaints mechanisms hold clear potential to enhance prison legitimacy, facilitate prisoner engagement and agency, and improve wellbeing and safety. However, myriad barriers prevent prisoners from participating in complaints processes, including culture, fear, accessibility, timeliness, emotional repression, and bureaucracy. The process of complaining and experiences of these barriers are uneven across different groups of prisoners. Our article provides a springboard for future empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how callers to an NHS complaints helpline get to "tell their story." As project-based institutional calls, the closure of a complaints call is observably organized around "mutually ratified project completion." Our analysis reveals the practices that callers deploy to resist call handlers' (CH) progress through the institutional phase structure of the call, thus also resisting ratification of their project as complete. We show how these practices are varyingly oriented to (re-)telling elements of the complaint or pursuing legitimation of their complaint and/or identity as "reasonable." Callers' resistance to institutional progressivity is oriented to misalignment in the prior uptake of their complaint narrative, revealing the relationship between projects and "identities" in the context of helpline interactions and the tension between the separate projects of caller and CH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although regulation of pharmaceutical promotion in Canada is covered under the Food & Drugs Act and Regulations, in practice it is regulated by two codes, one a code administered by the Pharmaceutical Advertising Advisory Board and a second one controlled by Innovative Medicines Canada, the lobby organization for the large majority of the Canadian and foreign-owned pharmaceutical companies operating in Canada. This study examines complaints about code violations between 2012 and 2021 and puts those complaints and their outcomes into the context of the stringency of the codes, their governance, monitoring, penalties for violations, and compliance by companies. It combines the findings from this analysis with international experience with industry-run codes and concludes that overall, the Canadian codes are ineffective in controlling promotion. Finally, it offers recommendations for how regulation can be improved and how doctors' reliance on information from pharmaceutical companies can be reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resident complaints are vital to understanding nursing home (NH) quality. Using complaints as facility- and resident-level outcomes, this study replicates prior analyses (spanning 1998–2002 and 2007–2012) with 2013–2017 data, the phase prior to NH regulatory changes initiated in November, 2017. Advancing prior papers, we analyze the number of complaints, allegations, and deficiency citations separately. Between 2013–2017, 458,101 total complaints (5.9/NH/year) were identified, containing 949,466 allegations (12.2/NH/year), and resulting in the issuance of 156,135 deficiency citations (2.0/NH/year) in about 15,600 NHs across the country. Regarding the number of complaints, substantiated complaints, and deficiency citations, results show a steady increase compared to previous years. Furthermore, there are marked differences among the CMS survey regions on the prevalence of overall complaints, substantiated complaints, and deficiency citations. However, the average rate of substantiation of complaint allegations shows a decreasing trend over these years, suggesting that complaints may have increased due to higher care expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been limited research on the quality of inpatient psychiatry, yet policies to expand access have increased, such as the use of Medicaid Section 1115 waivers for treatment in "Institutions for Mental Disease" (IMD). Using data from public records requests, we evaluated complaints, restraint, and seclusion from inpatient psychiatric facilities in Massachusetts occurring from 2008 to 2018, and compared differences in the rates of these events by IMD status. There were 17,962 total complaints, with 48.9% related to safety and 19.9% related to abuse (sexual, physical, verbal), and 92,670 episodes of restraint and seclusion. On average, for every 30 census days in a given facility, restraint, and seclusion occurred 7.47 and 1.81 times, respectively, and a complaint was filed 0.94 times. IMDs had 47.8%, 68.3%, 276.9%, 284.8%, 183.6%, and 236.1% greater rates of restraint, seclusion, overall complaints, substantiated complaints, safety-related complaints, and abuse-related complaints, respectively, compared to non-IMDs. This is the first known study to describe complaints from United States inpatient psychiatric facilities. Policies should strengthen the implementation of patients' rights and patient-centeredness, as well as external critical-incident-reporting systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into police misconduct traditionally considers the correlates and antecedents of misconduct among individual officers, as a means of disruption or prevention. However, more recently, deviance among police has been considered through network perspectives. This study considered 7755 allegations of misconduct accrued by 1495 officers from the Baltimore Police Department between January 2015 to January 2020. A social network analysis was employed to consider the characteristics and differences of misconduct networks between assignments and to identify key officers within these networks. Findings suggested that the misconduct networks of patrol assignments functioned marginally different to investigations or specialist duties. Discrete communities of misconduct were identified within each assignment, including a small number of officers that were particularly important to supporting these networks. This study holds practical implications for the identification and disruption of misconduct networks among law enforcement agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas research has investigated links between personality and commenting behavior on various online platforms, research testing who comments positively, neutrally, or negatively in online scientific studies is missing. Herein, we tackle this gap, considering the HEXACO personality dimensions. Relying on a COVID-19 survey (N = 8,809), we find that, as compared to their counterparts, people high in Openness to Experience comment more; that people high in Extraversion and Openness to Experience commend more; and that those high in Emotionality write both more neutral comments and fewer complaints. Notably, these relations all appear to be modest. Combined, our findings provide novel insights into the relations between personality and commenting behavior in online scientific studies, suggesting that--while people with certain personality characteristics comment more in specific ways than others--researchers need not to worry too much that the comments they receive are overly biased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article employs the prism of gift-exchange to analyse the marginalised status of singles within social relations. We trace an emerging critique voiced by single women, who challenge the unilateral etiquette of gifting marital and family-making celebrations. While dominant social norms normalise gift-giving at weddings and subsequent family-related occasions, there are no commensurable opportunities for singles to receive back their accumulative investments in the life events of others. Drawing on various online sources, we explore the discursive articulations through which single women highlight the unfairness that underpins their position as constant givers. We show how single women manage the social risks that such public complaints entail, and how they claim to be worthy receivers themselves. This article offers singlehood as a valuable case study for engaging with broader questions concerning reciprocity – specifically, what happens when reciprocal gifting is not an established norm within ostensibly reciprocal social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complaints processes and their governance in UK higher education (HE) have received little critical scrutiny, despite their expanded role under the increasing marketisation of HE. This article draws on interviews with students who attempted to make complaints of staff sexual misconduct to their HE institution. It outlines four groups among the interviewees according to the 'remedy' that they obtained, describing how most interviewees could not access the services of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education in England as they could not complete internal institutional complaints processes. The failure of most complainants to obtain remedy, and the difficult experiences of those who did, reveals the inadequacies of using an individualist, consumer-oriented model for addressing discrimination complaints in HE. The article also contributes to discussions of justice for sexual violence survivors, suggesting that community-oriented remedies are needed alongside formal administrative justice processes to address power-based sexual misconduct in institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: It is increasingly recognized that patient safety requires heterogeneous insights from a range of stakeholders, yet incident reporting systems in health care still primarily rely on staff perspectives. This paper examines the potential of combining insights from patient complaints and staff incident reports for a more comprehensive understanding of the causes and severity of harm. Methods: Using five years of patient complaints and staff incident reporting data at a large multi-site hospital in London (in the United Kingdom), this study conducted retrospective patient-level data linkage to identify overlapping reports. Using a combination of quantitative coding and in-depth qualitative analysis, we then compared level of harm reported, identified descriptions of adjacent events missed by the other party and examined combined narratives of mutually identified events. Results: Incidents where complaints and incident reports overlapped (n = 446, reported in 7.6%' of all complaints and 0.6% of all incident reports) represented a small but critical area of investigation, with significantly higher rates of Serious Incidents and severe harm. Linked complaints described greater harm from safety incidents in 60% of cases, reported many surrounding safety events missed by staff (n = 582), and provided contesting stories of why problems occurred in 46% cases, and complementary accounts in 26% cases. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the value of using patient complaints to supplement, test, and challenge staff reports, including to provide greater insight on the many potential factors that may give rise to unsafe care. Accordingly, we propose that a more holistic analysis of critical safety incidents can be achieved through combining heterogeneous data from different viewpoints, such as through the integration of patient complaints and staff incident reporting data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing transparency and accountability in policing is a top priority for police administrators, community groups, academics, and many others. The internal affairs process is an accountability tool designed to hold officers and agencies accountable to the citizens they serve, yet very little is known about the effect of internal investigative units on such outcomes as subsequent complaints and temporal distances between complaints. This current study examines two critical aspects of the internal affairs process, the likelihood of subsequent complaints and temporal distance between the first and a subsequent complaint of misconduct. Officers' complaint data were collected from the internal affairs unit of a large, metropolitan police agency in the southwestern United States. Results indicate that a longer time to initial complaint and regional patrol assignment were related to a reduced likelihood of receiving future complaints. Moreover, of those officers who received a subsequent complaint after their initial complaint, more than half did so within the first year, and 94% did so within the first three years of receiving their initial complaint. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings on policy and training opportunities, supervision, mentoring, accountability, and Early Intervention (EI) systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In everyday interaction, subtle manifestations of sexism often pass unacknowledged and become internalised and thus perceived as "natural" conduct. The introduction of new vocabularies for referring to previously unnamed sexist conduct would presumably enable individuals to start problematising hitherto unchallengeable sexism. In this paper, we investigate whether and how these vocabularies empower people to speak out against sexism. We focus on the use of the term "mansplaining" which, although coined over 10 years ago, remains controversial and contested. Using Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorisation Analysis, this paper excavates the interactional methods individuals use to formulate, in vivo, some prior spate of talk as mansplaining. In doing so, speakers necessarily reformulate a co-participant's social action to highlight its sexist nature. Accusations of mansplaining are accomplished by invoking gender (and other) categories and their associated rights to knowledge. In reconstructing another's conduct as mansplaining, speakers display their understanding of what mansplaining is (and could be) for the purpose at hand. Thus, the paper contributes to the well-established body of interactional research on manifestations of sexism by documenting how the normativity of epistemic rights is mobilised as a resource for bringing off accusations of mansplaining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joe Blann's (2011) comic 'Things We had' is a complex and nuanced multimodal realisation of a tense interaction between a couple, rendered through the subtle interplay of narration, panel composition and dialogue. The tug of war and blame game the couple engage in are rife with instances of impoliteness. Drawing on Culpeper's (2011a, 2015b) impoliteness framework and an integrative pragmatics approach, this article examines the sophisticated multimodal realisation of impoliteness and power dynamics, with a particular focus on the subtle forms of implicational impoliteness and intricate impoliteness patterning used in the fictional interaction. In doing so, it analyses the interplay between impoliteness and power dynamics in the exchange, highlighting the importance of impoliteness analysis in revealing the fluid relational power dynamics underlying the couple's interaction. This is accompanied by an analysis of the key affective and interactional role of impoliteness in driving the exchange between the couple. Impoliteness, along with the evaluative negative affect it involves, is shown to be instrumental in the couple's struggle for interactional power in the course of the interaction, and also more broadly, in their negotiation of relational power within the relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formulation and management of coaches' dissent with referees in a setting where complaints may be sanctioned presents an empirical test for the "dilemma of stake." This article analyzes how ice hockey coaches raise complaints against referees in postgame press conferences (PGPCs). Based on the conversation analytic study of video recordings from Finnish and Swedish men's (semi)professional ice hockey leagues, this article posits that complaints are formulated within assessment sequences and are made hearable as complaints through implicit and explicit verbal and bodily cues. This article also suggests that while referees are the non-present third party in the PGPC, the design of the complaints provides opportunities and places obligations on the participants present in the PGPC (media representatives, game officials, and the opposing coach) to (dis)align with the complainer. Finally, this article reveals a tension between the normative expectations of the coaches to stand by their team, which may include criticizing referees, while respecting referees as guardians of sporting ethics and acknowledging the increased demands for media attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Police body-worn cameras (BWCs) can help improve transparency, accountability, and policing behaviors. This study extends prior BWC research by using a panel analysis design with a measure of treatment duration to examine how the effects of BWCs change over time. Using data from the Milwaukee Police Department (N = 1,009), we propose and test two competing hypotheses: The program maturity hypothesis suggests that BWCs will be more effective at reducing use of force and complaints over time, whereas the program fatigue hypothesis expects BWCs to be less effective the longer officers wear BWCs. We find that BWCs reduced complaints overall and that, over time, each additional month with a camera resulted in 6% fewer complaints. There was no overall relationship between BWCs and use of force, but our treatment duration model suggests that there was an immediate decrease in use of force incidents, followed by a gradual increase in subsequent months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers play a key role in the U.S. nursing home (NH) oversight through a federally established complaint process. However, past variation by state in complaint numbers and rates raised questions about the uniformity of the process. We examined state variation in numbers of complaints at intake and substantiated complaints, percentages of NHs with at least one complaint and one substantiated complaint, number of allegations per complaint, and complaint substantiation rates. We found state variation most prominently at the intake level, ranging from 0.4 to 30.4 complaints per NH. The investigation process appears to reduce this variation: however, variation remains among states in frequency and prevalence of substantiated complaints. Further work is needed to ensure federal standards concerning the handling of consumer complaints are applied equally across the states. This includes policies affecting how complaints are initially filed, in addition to how complaints are investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the introduction of body worn cameras, new data types have emerged, including activation metadata, which is information on the extent of the implementation of body worn cameras, by whom, and under what conditions. In this paper, we propose an avenue of methodological interest: linking activation metadata with police-recorded behaviour. We take the case of complaints to examine the use of these data for investigations of officers' misconduct. We used an observational approach, analysing 1.73 million body worn camera activations by more than 3900 frontline officers, juxtaposed with professional conduct data. We find a heterogeneous distribution of implementation, despite a 'blanket' body worn camera policy requiring activation. Specifically, distinct types of officers disproportionally under-activate body worn cameras. We show that body worn cameras activation rates are inversely correlated with complaints, although minimally when observed at the population level. We discuss the use of metadata for research as well as for policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research investigates the productivity and performance of a large sample of police officers, beginning in the police academy and through their first 10 years of policing. Using longitudinal data and latent class growth analyses, we examine measures of productivity and performance over this time. Findings indicate that officers' academy performance did not influence officer trajectories, but selected demographic variables were significantly related to performance across the career course. Among these, female and non-White officers were consistently rated lower in their performance evaluations. Overall, results suggest that factors predicting productivity and performance are dynamic, and there is no single combination of characteristics that predicts who will be a "good" officer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality of care in nursing homes has been evaluated from varying perspectives, but few studies analyze complaints made to surveyors. This study analyzed complaints, investigations, and citations for nursing homes nationwide. Using the complaint and survey data sets, analyses match nursing home complaints with findings of investigations conducted. Results showed the average complaint rate was 13.3 complaints per 100 residents and that 43.2% of complaint allegations were substantiated, with complaints about care and services provided being the most prevalent. Variability was noted among the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regions and, on average, 47.5% of facilities had five or more complaints in a given year. While additional research could evaluate the effect of complaint investigations on nursing home quality, results indicated that complaints and subsequent investigations provide further information regarding quality for residents. Results also suggest improvements in the training for surveyors and more consistency across Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services survey regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses police oversight systems. In the Nordic countries, the primary focus of external oversight is on individual accountability, and the article reports on results from an evaluation of the Danish Independent Police Complaints Authority (IPCA), established in 2011. Results show that the vast majority of complaints are not upheld, and that most complainants are dissatisfied with their experience with the system. They find the case processing time too long, they think the Authority is prejudiced in favour of the police, and they do not understand the reasoning behind the decisions. The article argues that disappointment is related to the fact that the IPCA focuses almost exclusively on individual wrongdoing (rarely finding sufficient evidence to take action), whereas complainants seek recognition and wish to hold the police organization accountable. It is suggested that the complaints system should be redirected towards mediation between officers and citizens and include a focus on organizational accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Traditionally, managing patient complaints and medicolegal claims has been largely a reactive process. However, attention has recently turned to systematically learning from complaints and litigation to prevent recurrence. Within a high-volume maternity service, we explored whether developing predictive tools for patient complaints and litigation to support proactive management was feasible. Objectives To develop and assess two screening tools to predict the likelihood of (i) patient complaints and/or (ii) medicolegal claims arising from maternity care and to assess practitioner awareness of patient risk factors. Methods Births between 1 April 2011 and 30 April 2016 at a university hospital maternity service in Melbourne, Australia were considered. Univariate binary logistic regression was performed to identify the variables contributing to complaints and claims. Backwards-stepwise logistic regression was applied to develop each screening tool. Clinicians completed a survey to assess awareness of identified risk factors. Results In the study period, there were 41,443 births, 173 complaints and 19 claims. The complaints tool had only fair predictive capacity (receiver operating characteristic 0.72, p < 0.001) and the claims tool failed. Neither approach afforded sufficient discrimination to be useful in routine predictive modelling. One hundred and one practitioners completed the survey (response rate 15.7%). Practitioners were better at recognising risk factors for legal claims than for patient complaints. Conclusion Whilst new risk factors for patient complaints and medicolegal claims were identified, we were unable to develop a screening tool that was sufficiently discriminatory to be useful in routine predictive triaging. However, increasing practitioner awareness of key risk factors may afford opportunities to improve care quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that it makes a moral difference whether an individual is worse off than she could have been. Here, I part company with consequentialists such as Parfit and side with contractualists such as Scanlon. But, unlike some contractualists, I reject the view that all that matters is whether a principle can be justified to each particular individual, where such a justification is attentive to her interests, complaints and other claims. The anonymous goodness of a distribution also matters. My attempt to reconcile contractualist and consequentialist approaches proceeds via a serious of reflections on cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Being involved in serious patient injury is devastating for most doctors. During the last two decades, several efforts have been launched to improve Norwegian doctors’ coping with adverse events and complaints. Methods The method involved survey to a representative sample of 1792 Norwegian doctors in 2012. The questions on adverse events and its effects were previously asked in 2000. Results Response rate was 71%. More doctors reported to have been involved in episodes with serious patient harm in 2012 (35%) than in 2000 (28%), and more of the episodes were reported as required by law. Doctors below age 50 report better support from colleagues, more collegial retrospective discussion on the event and less patient/family blame. In all, 27% of the doctors had been reported to the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision; 79% of these complaints were rejected; 73% of the doctors who had received a reaction from the health authorities found the reaction reasonable, but almost one out of five practiced more testing and referrals after a complaint and 25% claimed that the complaint had made them into a more fearful doctor. Conclusion Our results indicate that adverse events are being met more openly in 2012 than in 2000, and that coping with imperfection and patient complaints is less devastating for new generations of doctors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) by the police is rising. One proposed effect of BWCs is reducing complaints against police, which assumes that BWCs reduce officer noncompliance with procedures, improve suspects’ demeanor, or both, leading to fewer complaints. We report results from a global, multisite randomized controlled trial on whether BWC use reduces citizens’ complaints. Seven discrete tests (N = 1,847 officers), with police shifts as the unit of analysis (N = 4,264), were randomly assigned into treatment and control conditions. Using a prospective meta-analytic approach, we found a 93% before–after reduction in complaint incidence (Z = −3.234; p < .001), but no significant differences between trial arms in the studies (d = .053, SE = .11; 95% confidence interval [CI] = [−.163, .269]), and little between-site variation (Q = 4.905; p = .428). We discuss these results in terms of an “observer effect” that influences both officers’ and citizens’ behavior and assess what we interpret as treatment diffusion between experimental and control conditions within the framework of “contagious accountability.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an online survey about experiences with the police complaint system, 239 client advocates described a recent incident in which a client with grounds to lodge a complaint declined to do so. Almost one third of those incidents involved domestic violence. Thematic analysis of case descriptions revealed that many police did not take domestic violence reports seriously. A typology of problematic police conduct was developed. Many officers failed to observe current procedures and appeared to lack knowledge of relevant laws. Citizens feared retaliatory victimization by police and/or perceived that complaining was futile. Implications of these findings are reviewed in light of procedural justice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines sequences of interaction in which speakers utter a possible -ism, that is, something possibly racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudiced, in the course of making, warranting, or defending against complaints. Recorded encounters between mediators and their (prospective) clients were analysed using conversation analysis. I show how participants orient to their own or recipients’ talk as possibly prejudiced, occasionally explicitly characterising that talk as racist (sexist, etc.). Mediators’ responses fell into one of two broad categories, either deleting (e.g., through reformulation) or challenging the -ism (e.g., through admonishment). Both involve misalignment or disaffiliation rather than the mediation-mandated impartial stance. Two upshots will be discussed. First, the fact that few instances of -isms are treated explicitly as such goes to the heart of debates in conversation analysis about warrants for particular kinds of observations, and the designed defeasibility of social action. Second, the article discusses the way the data and analysis are used in communication training workshops with mediators, for whom such cases present challenges to their commitment to impartiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Reading newspapers, watching television, taking part in public meetings, and also listening to the ‘popular voice,’ one can have an impression that Poland is a country full of frustrated, manipulated, ignored people who have been pushed to the margin and deprived of the respect they deserve,” claim the authors of the book Cudze problemy (Problems of Others) in 1991. From this perspective, it is impossible to overestimate the role played in the system of “popular democracy” by institutions of social control, worker/peasant inspections, bureaus of letters and complaints, and also by books of complaints and requests, which were supposed to act as substitutes for nonexistent democratic institutions. This article, based on a historical Old Polish tradition of laments and supplications, will contextualize the articulation of injustice in the trade discourse popularized in the period of the Polish People’s Republic through books of complaints and requests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The hotel industry continues to develop strategies for addressing consumer-generated online reviews, and particularly responding to poor reviews, which can have a damaging effect on a hotel’s reputation. To gain a greater understanding of the dynamics of poor reviews, this study analyzed 1,946 one-star reviews from ten popular online review websites, as well as 225 management responses from eighty-six Washington, D.C., hotels. A comprehensive complaint framework found that the most common complaints related to front desk staff, bathroom issues, room cleanliness, and guestroom noise issues. Complaints were also analyzed by hotel characteristics, including chain-scale segments, and reviewer characteristics, including purpose of travel and geographic location. Examining the reviews, highly rated hotels often respond to online complaints with appreciation, apologies, and explanations for what had gone wrong. Compensation adjustments are rarely mentioned by any hotel. The increasingly prominent role of social media necessitates that hotels use online reviews for market research and service recovery opportunities, regardless of whether they respond publicly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Patients with focal cartilage defects in the knee may suffer from both pain and functional impairment. Treatment options are often insufficient. It is not known, however, to what extent their complaints affect quality of life, compared with other knee disorders. Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) is a validated global knee score suitable for comparison of patients with knee complaints attributable to different causes. Hypothesis: Complaints because of localized cartilage defects in the knee reduce quality of life measured by KOOS to a different extent than those due to anterior cruciate ligament deficiency and osteoarthritis, when comparing patients within the working population scheduled for surgery. Study Design: Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: Previously registered KOOS baseline data on patients enrolled in different knee treatment studies were included in the present study; the patients were 18 to 67 years of age (working population) at data registration. The different patient categories were (1) patients with knee osteoarthritis enrolled for knee arthroplasty, (2) patients with knee osteoarthritis enrolled for osteotomies around the knee, (3) patients with focal cartilage lesions enrolled for cartilage repair, and (4) patients with anterior cruciate ligament-deficient knees enrolled for anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. The KOOS subscale quality of life was the main parameter for comparison of complaints. Results: At preoperative baseline, patients with focal cartilage defects in the knee scored 27.5 on the KOOS subscale quality of life, not significantly different from the 28.8 and 27.2 in the patients with osteoarthritis enrolled for knee osteotomies and arthroplasties, respectively. For all the subscales of KOOS, the cartilage patients scored significantly lower than the patients with anterior cruciate ligament deficiency. Conclusion: Patients with focal cartilage lesions have major problems with pain and functional impairment. Their complaints are worse than those of patients with anterior cruciate ligament-deficient knees, and quality of life is affected to the same extent as in patients scheduled for knee replacement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: to assess the use of, knowledge about, and the demand for information concerning complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in cancer patients. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was performed on consecutive patients visiting the outpatient tumor treatment center of a university hospital at Munich, Germany. The authors used a questionnaire with questions on sociodemographics, tumor diagnosis and treatment, current symptoms, previous use of CAM, and expectations and attitudes with respect to CAM. Results: 52% used at least 1 CAM method, 24% did not use CAM but asked for consultation, and 24% neither used CAM nor were interested; 59% rated CAM treatment as personally important; 76% and 34% described themselves as well informed about conventional treatment and CAM, respectively. Current CAM use was associated with higher degrees of information and subjective importance, and not suffering from lymphatic cancer and metastases. Conclusions: CAM is a relevant topic for the care of cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minority representation among police personnel, relative to the communities they serve, has long been advanced as an explanatory factor for the prevalence of negative police-public interactions as well as police agency responsiveness to public concerns, particularly with regard to the use of force. But minority representation has rarely been studied empirically and on a large scale. The present study examined minority representation and additional organizational, administrative, and environmental correlates of citizen complaints about police use of force in 496 large municipal police departments. Data were drawn from the 2003 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey administered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Results indicate that (a) rates of force complaints were higher among agencies having greater spatial differentiation, internal affairs units, and higher violent crime rates; (b) the percentage of complaints sustained was higher among agencies characterized by greater formalization and lower where collective bargaining was authorized for officers; and (c) minority representation was unrelated to complaint rates nor to the percentage of complaints sustained. Implications for the policing literature as well as future refinements for the LEMAS survey are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suspicion is an understudied factor in police discretionary decision-making. This study presents an analysis of traffic stop data from Louisville, KY that focuses upon factors that led police officers to note that they had pre-existing knowledge about certain persons who were stopped. Factors related to this designation with specific emphasis upon race are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To describe the differences in psychological morbidity between Australian general practitioners (GPs) who have experienced a medico-legal matter and those who have not. Methods: A total of 1499 GPs were initially invited to participate in the study. Two hundred and sixty requested not to participate, with 1239 subsequently being sent a survey. There were 566 respondents (45.7% response rate to survey). There were two sources of data. First, a cross-sectional survey sought demographic information, personality traits via the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), history of a medico-legal matter with any medical defence organization, and measures of psychological morbidity, including the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), Sheehan Disability Scale (SDS), and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test. Second, information was extracted from the United Medical Protection database on medico-legal matters. Results: Fifty-nine per cent of respondents to the survey reported ever having a medico-legal matter, with 13% having a current medico-legal matter. Those with a current matter reported increased levels of disability (in work, social or family life) and higher prevalence of psychiatric morbidity (45% vs 27% GHQ 'case identification' rates), compared to those with no current matter. Those respondents with a history of past medico-legal matters reported increased levels of disability (SDS) and depression subscores (GHQ). Male respondents drank significantly more alcohol than female respondents, and male respondents with current or past medico-legal matters had significantly higher levels of alcohol use than male respondents with no experience of medico-legal matters. Conclusions: Doctors who have current and past medico-legal matters have a higher level of psychological morbidity. The study design was unable to distinguish cause or effect. A longitudinal study is planned to investigate this. The findings have significant implications for medical training, doctor support systems and medical insurance groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the existence and extent of emotional contagion, as measured by facial displays and reported affective states, in a service failure event. Using video vignettes of customers complaining about a service failure as stimulus material, the authors measured the facial displays and affective states of service providers as proxies for emotional contagion. Following a two-step approach, service providers `facial expressions were first recorded and assessed, revealing that service providers' facial displays matched those of the angry consumer. Second, a mixed ANOVA revealed service providers reported stronger negative affective states after exposure to an angry complaint than prior to exposure. The results demonstrated that during a complaint situation, angry outbursts by consumers can initiate the emotional contagion process, and service providers are susceptible to "catch" consumer anger through emotional contagion. Implications for complaint management and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This pilot study investigates the psychological impact on doctors of a complaint to the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission and the doctor’s perception of legal risk. Method: Doctors who received a complaint were sent a set of questionnaires embracing psychological variables and their perceptions of legal risk. Results: The response rate was 60%. Thirty-eight per cent of respondents met screening criteria for psychiatric disorder. There was, however, minimal functional impairment of work, social or family life. Respondents scored highly on altruism, but at the same time were ‘tough minded’. The questionnaire to assess the doctor’s perception of legal risk appeared to have acceptable construct validity but showed that doctors still misunderstand medico-legal risk. Conclusions: Psychiatric morbidity rates of our sample were comparable with other Australian medical samples. This small sample appeared to cope with the stress of a complaint better than those reported in other studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the system of medical regulation through which doctors are held to account has come under sustained criticism. A series of public inquiries have revealed incompetence, dishonesty, sexual misconduct by individual doctors and, in one case, serial killing, as well as weaknesses in systems that failed to detect deviant behaviour early and then to take action to protect patients. This article looks at the longer-term social and political changes that have brought a shift in the relationship between patients, doctors and the state and a greater concern for predictability in medical competence. It then assesses the evidence for a decline in public trust in doctors as individual practitioners and in the system of professional self-regulation. The concept of trust is discussed and, from the data available, it is suggested that members of the public continue to trust their doctor. However, data on complaints indicate an increasing propensity for people to make complaints about individual doctors and the doctors' regulatory body, the General Medical Council (GMC) has been seen by the public as self-interested. Various state-sponsored inquiries have questioned whether professional self-regulation in its present form can be sustained. The final section of the article looks at the reforms introduced by the GMC and government, and considers whether these are sufficient to restore trust. The discussions have implications for other professions as professional governance systems in the UK have been based on the medical model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political systems may respond not only to elections but also to expressions of dissatisfaction through complaints and geographic mobility. Understanding the implications of citizen dissatisfaction with local public services is the goal of this article, which examines empirically two forms of consequences of dissatisfaction—complaints to governmental agencies and decisions to move. The authors find that dissatisfied individuals are more likely to complain and to plan to move and that these two courses of action appear to be substitutes. An implication of the findings that stated dissatisfaction does have predictable behavioral consequences is that survey data on satisfaction with public services have information content that has been underappreciated in economics research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The law is clear that hospitality operators must prevent and remedy sexual harassment in the workplace of employees by supervisors or other employees. However, where the alleged harasser is a guest, the law seems far more interested in what the hospitality operator did to remedy the complaint than to prevent the incident. At this point, case law on this topic is relatively slender and few states have passed specific laws. Employers must make a "reasonable effort" to address such harassment, but it is not yet clear what exactly that means-especially since a judge or jury would determine what is "reasonable" in court. While the hospitality operator's lack of control over its guest must be considered in determining liability, no reported case has excused liability on this ground alone. As always, the best defense is a good offense-meaning adequate training of all employees and fair warning to guests that harassment is not tolerated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The law is clear that hospitality operators must prevent and remedy sexual harassment in the workplace of employees by supervisors or other employees. However, where the alleged harasser is a guest, the law seems far more interested in what the hospitality operator did to remedy the complaint than to prevent the incident. At this point, case law on this topic is relatively slender and few states have passed specific laws. Employers must make a “reasonable effort” to address such harassment, but it is not yet clear what exactly that means—especially since a judge or jury would determine what is “reasonable” in court. While the hospitality operator’s lack of control over its guest must be considered in determining liability, no reported case has excused liability on this ground alone. As always, the best defense is a good offense—meaning adequate training of all employees and fair warning to guests that harassment is not tolerated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objective: To describe the psychological impact of complaints and negligence litigation on doctors.Methods: A review of the literature from 1966 to 2003 was conducted. Additional sources were obtained from targeted experts and organizations.Results: Doctors who have been sued or who have had formal complaints made against them describe the process as an extremely stressful experience. Depression and adjustment disorder were relatively common, while drug and alcohol abuse, physical illness and suicidal ideation were reported less frequently. The majority of doctors who have been the subject of a complaint or law suit practice more 'defensively'.Conclusions: A complaint or law suit is uncommon in the daily practice of doctors, yet in today's medicolegal environment they pose a constant potential threat. The threat of, or actual, legal process can cause psychological, physical and behavioural practice changes. The obsessional personality of many doctors may make them particularly vulnerable to seeing the process as a challenge to their professional and personal identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interviews among a selection of 37 of the 289 Swedish local Environmental Health Authorities (EHA) were undertaken in order to assess the occurrence of complaints on low frequency noise. The study also aimed to evaluate whether the specific guidelines on low frequency noise, adopted in 1996, were used and how they performed when assessing low frequency noise. The results showed that most complaints of low frequency noise were due to noise from fan- and ventilation installations, amplified music, compressors and laundryrooms. According to 46% of the EHA, complaints due to low frequency noise had increased during the last two years, while the same percentage reported no change. When assessing low frequency noise, 62% of the EHA reported that the specific guidelines on low frequency noise based on third octave band analysis performed better or much better compared to the previous A-weighted guideline, and only one EHA thought it performed worse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complaint management has become increasingly important in the tourism and hospitality fields, yet little is really known about how complainers assess the organizational response, and how those assessments affect their future consumer behavior as far as word-of-mouth activity and repurchase intentions are concerned. This research suggests an answer by presenting and testing a model of complainants’ perceptions of the organizational response and the impact of the organizational response on postcomplaint customer behavior. The results provide partial support for the model. Attentiveness is the most important organizational response dimension, affecting both word-of-mouth activity and repurchase intentions. Managerial implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]