Data audit: Its place in auditing

The terms “audit”; and “data audit”; have previously appeared in the science literature (see for example, Glide, 1975, p. 207, 1976, pp. 187–190; Noel, 1979, p. 73). Attempts have been made in that literature to discuss the nature of these terms. However, we are not aware of any discussions that have evaluated the nature of “data auditing”; in terms of the existing auditing literature. In this paper we briefly review the history of traditional auditing; briefly review the various types of auditing and auditors that exist in the United States; consider the generic nature of auditing; consider definitions of data audits that appear in existing science literature; consider the nature of data auditing; and consider where data auditing can be placed within auditing.     

Global Economic Integration and Local Community Resilience: Road Paving and Rural Demographic Change in the Southwestern Amazon

Recent years have witnessed an expansion in international investment in large‐scale infrastructure projects with the goal of achieving global economic integration. We focus on one such project, the Inter‐Oceanic Highway in the “MAP” region, a trinational frontier where Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru meet in the southwestern Amazon. We adopt a resilience approach as an integrative framework to understand various types of road‐paving impacts. We focus on migration activity as an indicator of retention of collective memory, a concept associated with resilience. We pursue a comparative analysis of the three sides of the MAP frontier as well as subregions within each side. Since road paving may be mediated by other factors, we distinguish among the effects of multiple explanatory factors. Data come from a multinational survey of rural communities. The findings show considerable net migration and turnover, both indicative of eroding collective memory and a lack of demographic resilience to externally induced change in the MAP frontier. The findings indicate variation across the frontier, which road paving helps explain, along with some of the mediating factors. These findings contribute to the literature on the impacts of new infrastructure and integration as well as the study of social‐ecological resilience.     

Indigenous rights and internal wars: The Chiapas conflict at 15 years

This article examines the origins and outcomes of the indigenous-based Zapatista rebellion launched 15 years ago in Chiapas, Mexico. The precursors responsible for the resistance movement are assessed, as well as the proximate events which convinced the indigenous communities to embrace a militarized approach. International relations conflict theory is plumbed for explanations of the conflict and for conflict resolution strategies relevant to this particular event. This study finds that the conflict in Chiapas was the consequence of two antecedent conditions – systematic human rights abuses and extreme material deprivation; and two proximate factors – NAFTA ratification and pending revisions to communal land laws. The article also explains how violence mitigation was subsequently achieved as a result of the behavior of state and non-state actors.     

Screening opportunity bias in case-control studies of cancer screening

In case-control evaluations of cancer screening, subjects who have died from the cancer in question (cases) are compared with those who have not (controls) with respect to screening histories. This method is subject to a rather subtle bias, among others, whereby the cases have greater opportunity to have been screened than the controls. In this paper, we propose a method of correction for this bias. We demonstrate its use on two case-control studies of mammographic screening for breast cancer.     

In My Mother’s Tongue

ABSTRACT

By way of a vignette about my childhood mix of British and American accents, I explore how the Mother of the primal scene becomes a nodal point in the recursive iteration of psyche and society that is given voice in the child’s mother tongue.