Development Studies - Science topic

Emotions play a pivotal role Bill Walker in collective action for human development. As all contexts above suggest, positive emotions such as love, charity, joy, and wisdom contribute to human development as they promote peace, wealth, and progress in society. They encourage individuals to improve themselves and help others, thus contributing to the overall development of their communities. Negative emotions, however, such as hating others without reason or the desire to do evil, disrupt peace and harmony in an individual's life and in society. They may also lead to cost to the economy, increasing poverty, and withholding of essential resources like rain. Thus, it is crucial to nurture positive emotions and subdue negative ones for the betterment of individuals and society as a whole.

The Mplus software allows you to run multigroup EFA. See Chapter 5, Example 5.27 on the Mplus website:

You can find example Mplus syntax files here:

Can you say more about how you to chose to produce one set of answers to these questions qualitatively and the other quantitatively? Having two such different types of data can make it hard to compare them.

In mixed methods research terms, you might be following an exploratory sequential design, where what you learn from the qualitative study of the community members would be used to generate a questionnaire for the quantitative study of the professionals. But that usually involves working with the same general population in both portions of the study, so that what you learn from them in the qualitative study maximizes your ability to hear from them effectively in the quantitative portions of the study. So, I have not encountered the goal of using experience with one group to design a questionnaire for another group.

One thought would be that you could use your first study to hear not just what community members themselves think and prefer, but also what they believe that professionals think and prefer. That would allow you to generate a wider variety of statements that the professionals might agree or disagree with.

That is an interesting field. You need to first find a research topic and then look for related data.

There are several journals that publish cross-validation studies, translated studies, and scale development studies in various fields. Here are some notable journals that often publish research in these areas:

The best way to find data is to dig into the national bureaus of a country regarding any variable. You can use VPN and institutional email if they are not providing access.

An individual movement to the particular location or the country that depends upon the interest or willingness to move with purposes.

An Indy movement due to economic crisis poses him to work for earning salary to meet out his elide expenses.

The social structure and economic situation could support the individual's movement in particular and the necessity of him could enforce to involve certain jobs or commitments have direct and indirect effects.

Trajectory Equifinality Modeling can support the social and economic development of the progress in it's given environment whereas the rest of things could bring the additional enhancements etc.

Though this is Development studies Qualitative model that can confined the limits of it's focus and expansion in the development.

These individuals movements are the time bound activities to generate the income diversities and life expansion gradually.

All the individuals movements could be measured through TEM Qualitative research data that could reflect the issue of the significant development in the society or in the given environment.

In my opinion, to test the theoretical/hypothesized factor structure of a scale that you developed, you do not need exploratory factor analysis (EFA). EFA is mostly for exploring the number of factors. In your case, you would have clear a priori assumptions about the number of factors and the loading pattern (i.e., which item/variable is supposed to measure which factor). Therefore, confirmatory factor analysis is the method of choice to test the hypothesized factor structure.

In general, I am in favor of using as much data as possible for reliability and validity assessment. However, if you choose to split your sample and use the first half of the data for purely exploratory purposes (EFA, determination of the number and nature of factors), I don't find it logical to then combine the data again at the end. It seems more logical to me in that case to only use the second portion of the sample for reliability estimation & validation as I view it as part of the second, "confirmatory" step.

This is one downside of the split-sample approach. You "loose" data/power for the "confirmatory" step. In my view, the exploratory step can often be avoided in scale development. Typically, when we develop new scales, we already have a fairly clear theory about which factor(s) should be measured by which variable/item. If that is true in your case, you may not need to explore the number of factors. In other words, you could avoid EFA altogether and use only CFA on the entire sample (no split) to begin with.

Rasch is better for a unidimensional scale

The question is quite timely to ponder over, especially in the context of economies and regions that lag behind in terms of agriculture growth and the inclusiveness of such growth outcomes. While all agricultural commodities (food and non-food) may have linkages with inclusive growth, the strength and sustainability of the linkages would depend on several factors, such as: (a) price of the commodity accrued by the producers domestically and internationally; (b) the extent of value addition and its redistribution back to the producers and workers; (c) the factors retarding growth and expansion of the commodities, including agro-environmental factors, extreme climatic conditions affecting the growth; (d) the effectiveness of the policies and institutions (including trade related) that facilitate/ promote growth, etc. In short, the question needs to be addressed (understood) with respect to all the above factors and with specific reference to the economies and regions of the world.

1. It hampers the local ecosystem.

2. Noise produced by the developmental works, thereby disturbs the natural habitat of aquatic organisms (Marine mammals).

3. Severe pollution will occur due to human activities.

I agree with you Solomon Mengistie

Post Pandemic world and the economy affected by it. You should choose a topic in relation to it, in your local context, and social environment to get into the reality of the problem.

First, to do parametric test like correlation your data should meet the parametric test conditions. Simply you normal distribution, homogeneity of variances ect.

Second, it seems that your mixed method design is close to explanatory mixed method design. Quantitative analyze than explaining result of this statistics with qualitative data.

My current research agenda revolves around the macroeconomic and policy implications of informal activities and markets. For this, I (together with my coauthors) construct dynamic general equilibrium models that are calibrated to specific economies (mainly developing countries). Most of these models involve heterogeneous agents and uncertainty of some sort (either aggregate or idiosyncratic).

Contrary to what we're taught, tradition is not a static thing. Times change, generations change, and what we know changes. The most stable aspect of any tradition may be its ability to change, making it able to accommodate changing times, changing generations and changing information. Otherwise, no matter how old and once revered, a tradition can disappear like a magician's bouquet, to resurface if--and only if--it becomes timely and relevant again.

If this were not true, we would all still be sacrificing animals on hilltops to reach the ears of our various gods; on the other hand, we can retain a tradition by reinterpreting it. Eighty years ago the majority of people in the USA believed that the story of Adam and Eve was the natural history of the world. Some still do. But the mainstream no longer does, and has retained the tradition by reinterpreting it as an allegory, or poetry, about the beginning of time and the fate of mortals. Where we locate the sacred realm (in the celestial dome or the womb of the earth), our aesthetics, assumptions, aspirations and animosities will shape every aspect of our expressive behavior, and every mark we leave on earth.

We have to trust people to recreate the past, interpret the present and shape the future in their own best interest--no outsider knows better what that is. To best respect tradition, we have to stand back and watch it change, and seek in those changes, the spirit and mentality of the people who generate, modify and maintain these traditions over time, free of molestation from those who purport to know better than they.

Its only when powerful outsiders interfere in the process of a peoples' own strategic and creative changes in tradition, or try to take over; to guide, shape, change, or prevent change in tradition, that harm is done. Instead, stand by. Watch. And learn. Speak out when powerful interests try to take over a peoples' traditions to suit their own interests and agendas. Then let life happen, let tradition adjust, and learn what we can from the changes. Some things will inevitably be lost, yes--but some will always be gained. Watching and learning would be us at our most respectful and creative. If it seems an imperfect solution, its still most likely the best we can do.

Thanks Saswatik Tripathy refusal of corporate donations is another good example. Here are a few that I know of:

Others you know of?

Am in line with Arvydas Guogis

Hi.,

kindly check this link:

In my personal view as a Researcher who is a practitioner, experience is of great value.

Back to the initial question: the ideological confrontation between the USA and Soviet Union and their respective allies dominated much the global political confrontations after World War II and the end of the 1980s (actually it started earlier: the conference at Bretton Woods e.g. has been in 1944). We call this Cold War. Since then ideological confrontations of the sort capitalism vs socialism have become less important, but they did not disappear. Other ideological confrontations became more important, e.g. around Islamism . These confrontations did exist already earlier. If they are clashed of civilizations depends on details and perspectives. To a very great deal they are around power, which is reflected in resources (oil) rather than religion, but things are indeed very complex. What seems to be very important to me is that the bipolar world has disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The confrontations lost its clear structural dimension, but not their relevance.

many of the studies are rather technical in nature and do not go into qualitative considerations of achieving good environmental services.

I agree that this kind of research is very important especially to people in neuroscience.

I hope what we work can be of help to other colleagues.

Dear Katoka,

Any development assistant or aid is beneficiary as far as it helps to build sustainable internal capacity and managed properly to address certain gaps. Otherwise, there is no country in the world that developed itself with external assistance , NGO, Governmental, multilateral, or a combination of these, without developing its own political, economic and social institutional apparatus. hence, external assistance apart from its transitional role it cannot bring long lasting solution nor replace own government developmental role.

Of course, I believe an all-atom MD is more useful than an NMA (or more specifically a coarse-grained Elastic Network Model (ENM). One should be wary of some caveats though. An all-atom MD has a much more accurate physical representation of a polymer in addition to the effect of solvent, so the conformations generated along a trajectory are in principle more realistic than an NMA. Yet we are usually trapped around the initial conformation in an MD simulation, so some enhanced sampling MnD simulation method might be necessary (especially if the molecules undergoes large conformational transitions).

1) The NMA utilizes one single conformation and "simulates" oscillating vibrations around this conformation (by connecting Hookean springs between residues, usually using a pre-defined spring constant). That is the core feature here. You don't supply any MD simulation trajectory. Just one single initial conformation is enough.

The thing with "energy-minimised" structure is, well, you "assume" that your initial conformation is already "energy-minimised". Because if we have some X-ray structure, for example, we naturally assume that this is the native state of a biopolymer. This might not be always true. Yet it is usually the best starting point. It might be useful to energy-minimize the structure prior to NMA though. I haven't done it myself, but if you're doing an all-atom NMA using a force-field, I read this is even more important.

After you conduct the analysis (Bio3D is fine and I see the documentation and features are much detailed and practical than the last time I checked. I use ProDy though, mostly because I am accustomed to Python), you "decompose" the motion (as described by the Hessian matrix) into individual modes. These are defined by eigenvectors and eigenvalues. Here an eigenvalue is representative of the "frequency" of a mode of motion (so high eigenvalues correspond to low frequency motions). We can talk about low against high frequency motions here. Low frequency modes of motion are usually termed "global" and involve collective movements of structural domains - which may be important for enzyme catalytic activities, for example. High frequency modes are more "local" and usually denote so-called structural "hot-spots" which may be important for ligand binding or stability.

2) Once we get the eigenvectors, it is possible to calculate the fluctuations of each "node" in this system (which are residues). See the documentation of ANM 2.1 server for more explanation:

1) The first 6 modes are always missing, because these correspond to rigid body translational motions which are always there for any system (we are not really interested in this, are we?). The fact that Bio3D reports these is methodologically accurate but they're not really informative.

2) Yes, I think so. But we're almost always interested in a subset of modes and this is also dependent on what aspect of the intrinsic dynamics we're investigating (in the context of biological meaning of low versus high frequency motions).

3) Frequencies plot, I guess, indicates the mode frequency (each bar denotes a mode)

I found the following lecture notes quite formative by the way:

Dear Fred

If you need more references please le me know. i could also try and retrieve my Leeds University lecture PPTs which I used for teaching a Leeds

Best wishes

Colin Barnes

Dear Kashif,

This is certainly an interesting question.

Marxism can provide a solid theoretical critique of today's 'development studies'. At its core, 'development studies' was created as a post-colonial interdisciplinary field of studies--one which aimed aimed to examine and address the developmental gap between Global North and Global South.

For the most part, development studies is bifurcated. On the one hand, there are those who advocate for state-led development. On the other, we have the stern believers in market-led development. The Marxian contribution here is that it brings to the fore the fact that, despite their core ideological discrepancies, both economic models are grounded on surplus value as a means for capital accumulation. That is, despite their methodological and theoretical differences, state-led and market-led development is exploitative at its core. Workers under both economic models are subordinated to the needs and desired of the capitalist/bourgeois class.

In this sense, I think Marxism is particularly useful not only in helping us understand the ways in which global capitalism perpetuates uneven development in the Global North and South but, most importantly, draw attention to the inherent flaws of capitalism, helping us, as scholars, to move forward in re-thinking new global political scenarios.

In terms of literature, I would recommend the following:

1. Murat Arsel & Anirban Dasgupta, "Critique, Rediscovery and Revival in Development Studies" Development and Change. 2015. Vol 46(4).

2. Benjamin Selwyn, "Karl Marx, Class Struggle and the Labour-Centred Development" Global Labour Journal. 2014. Vol 4(1)

I hope you find it useful.

Regards,

Here are some sources that I've used in my courses:

Disney, Abigail E., and Gini Reticker. 2008. Pray the Devil back to Hell. [Videorecording]. [Sausalito, CA] : Distributed by Roco Films Educational, [2008].

Lederach, John Paul. 2015. Memoirs of Nepal: Reflections Across a Decade. Blurb. http://www.blurb.com/b/6579628.

Mac Ginty, Roger, and Oliver P Richmond. 2013. “The Local Turn in Peace Building: A Critical Agenda for Peace.” Third World Quarterly 34 (5):763–83.

Noma, Emiko, Dee Aker, and Jennifer Freeman. 2012. “Heeding Women’s Voices: Breaking Cycles of Conflict and Deepening the Concept of Peacebuilding.” Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 7 (1):7–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2012.719384.

Suurmond, Jeannine, and Prakash Mani Sharma. 2012. “Like Yeast That Leavens the Dough? Community Mediation as Local Infrastructure for Peace in Nepal.” Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 7 (3):81–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2013.767648.

Thanks, Dr Can.

Sara you might want to broaden out slightly to faith based engagement with development? If so you might look at the very interesting work of my colleagues Olivia Wilkinson

Olivia Wilkinson

Good luck with the project!

There are some key steps to follow when performing (exploratory) factor analysis:

1. Ensure the quality of your indicators. No statistical method, no matter how refined, will make your data useful if poorly defined measures have been used. Therefore, a great deal of effort has to be devoted in making the measure as clear, coherent, and comprehensive as possible.

2. Choose whether your analysis will be based on Pearson, tetrachoric, or polychoric correlations. If your data are continous, Pearson correlations may be the best choice. However, if your data are categorical in nature (dichotomous or polytomous), then you should go for tetrachoric/polychoric correlations. Obviously, it only makes sense if there is an underlying continuum implicit in your categorical data (e.g. it wouldn't make any sense to perform factor analysis on a dichotomous variable like gender).

3. Choose your extraction method: ML or its robust variants, DWLS, ULS, PAF, etc. These methods have different assumptions: some are more restrictive than others. Please, take into consideration the fact that principal components analysis  is a different method of extraction; it is not, strictly speaking, factor analysis. There has been a lot of confusion about it.

4. Decide how many factors you will retain. Perhaps this is the most overlooked aspect of factor analysis, even though it's arguably the most important one. There are some useful guidelines for deciding the number of factores; my personal preferences are parallel analysis, lowest BIC, and the scree plot. Unfortunately, only the latter is included in SPSS (perhaps the most popular statistical software in the world). Using fit indices (e.g. CFI, RMSEA) as guidance to decide the number of factors to retain is also very fruitful, but these again are not included in SPSS. However, remember that, in the end, the number of factors should be decided on the basis of conceptual and interpretational issues.

5. If you retain more than one factor, choose which rotation method you shall use. Oblique rotations (e.g. Direct Oblimin, Promax) are usually recommended. They allow the correlations between factors to be estimated. In case these correlations are near null (close to zero), then it may be more parsimonious to change to an orthogonal rotation (e.g. Varimax) which assumes factors are uncorrelated.

As you start performing your factor analysis, it will become obvious that this is an iterative process, so the sequence outlined here is only for general guidance.

You also ask about tools to use. If you want something more or less refined, you may want to try FACTOR, which is free software specialized in EFA. Here's a readable tutorial to using FACTOR with ordinal data: http://pareonline.net/pdf/v19n5.pdf

Good luck!

Akhshay,

To determine flexoelectric coefficients you need

1) accurate information  about the director profile, and 

2) accurate information about the polarization of the materials.

I'm not familiar with later but for the former there are still a lot things to do. One possible direction is using techniques in integrated optics that people have been using for decades.

I think HDI is the only quantitative measure of human development. It has a time series and cover all countries. Maybe a proxy of this could be a dummy variable (qualitative) using 1 to "human development" and 0 to 'not human development". It means you should point to a HDI value which values above it mean high level or "human development" and values under it mean low level or"not human development". It is a little bit confusing and I really don't know if it works because even low level means human development. Because of its qualitative characteristic it is difficult to be used as a quantitative variable. This opinion is just an assumption and requires caution.  

Hi Valerie,

Interesting research ! Please find attached some links that will enable you to add some value to your literature.

Best Wishes !

South–South cooperation is something of an umbrella term that describes the exchange of resources, technology, and knowledge between developing countries. (To my mind, even if cooperative agreements are commonly framed as a means to enhance strategic resources, the more important rationale is always the intent to learn.) This said, asymmetries between parties do (naturally) exist, which of course explains why they partner in the first place. Knowledge-related asymmetries, for example, fall in three categories: (i) information, (ii) knowledge, and (iii) learning. Capabilities in each will have a different effect on the individual performance of partners, the realization of objectives, and the stability of the cooperative agreement. And so, yes, South–South cooperative agreements should not be sold as if they were partnerships of equals. Therefore, the least that partners should do is to be conscious of that so they may, proactively, work together to resolve variegated differences and enhance overall effectiveness.

I would nice to see a more detailed explanation about who to specify a moderation model in a multi-variate regression. Do you simply shift the kinds of correlation coefficients and then proceed as usual?

See the education system in Finland

My research focuses on the recent history of the (small-scale) gold mining sector in Tanzania. There is a little section on this in "Just picking up stones: Gender and technology in a small-scale gold mining site."

Thank you for the help!

Kirk, thanks so much. 

Elise

With archive as the foundation or the histories in organizations that contribute to the National Development of  a state can set importance such as; good decision making, assuring qualities, and productiveness. With those qualities development can move forward nationally or internationally through relations.

Access to education and health, clean drinking water, sanitation and housing for all citizens.

I am not a specialist in this area. Plsease try emeka.okpara@unn.edu.ng

Look for attributions of Moto Miyahara  Otago University Dunedin NZ

Dear Prakhar

India is a huge country.

It is difficult to say one uniform impact on poverty, employment, women's empowerment, natural resources and asset creation. 

I would like to suggest that you read the following.

Government sources

For government supported monitoring and evaluation studies on MGNREGA refer to the following links

1. Studies by Professional Institution Network (includes IIM, IIT, women's rights groups). Data is available state wise and  district wise- but done by different institutes.

http://www.nrega.net/pin/pin-members-and-coverage/   

You can download the evaluation reports from the fourth column of the Table (see the link there)

2. Power points of more number of studies are available at: 

http://www.nrega.net/pin/reports-and-resources/presentations-made-by-pin-members 

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE TO SEE SUMMARY OF FINDINGS FROM several STUDIES IN THE SAME WEB PAGE

3. Link to a national level concurrent evaluation report is given below- now a bit old

http://planningcommission.gov.in/reports/genrep/rep_NREGA.pdf 

Non governmental reports

4. For non governmental reports see Economic Political weekly. I have downloaded one for you (2015)

5. Please find attached my powerpoint presentation on findings from meta-evaluation of MGNREGA that I carried out on behalf of the Institute of Social Studies Trust. The full report is available on request. 

Best

Ranjani

Dear Jörg, dear Elango,

you're hints are very much appreciated!

Best regards, Stefan

Sarika Bansal 's report  is a valuable one. We must learn from failure and be open to speak out about our failure. The FAILFaire is also an interesting idea. This kind of media is necessary to be open to failure. In this regards, I have to thank Ritu Verma for making me aware of Sarika Bansal 's report.

Each project has its own failure and we should detect it. However, as Ritu Verma suggests, there are so many failures and we must question if there are some structural problems. In this regards, we must question the current state of three fields:

Development economics started 1940's and 50's. At that time, structuralists were prevalent. Although they were too much inclined to central or government planning, they were right in stressing the lack of social and economic conditions that a market economy works well and normally. With the arrival of neoclassical revolution in development economics, the economists who work on development started to think with macro data and reasoned that the market failure is a result of regulations. They recommended market-friendly policies. I agree that there are many unnecessary regulations but we must also see that some of them are crucial to the well-being of the people and the latter is the very basis of economic development.  We should question the state of the art of development economics.

Development studies seems to have started with some discontent vis-à-vis development economics dominated by neoclassical  economists. Development studies include varied fields. I am interested Discourse Analysis but this is not our subject now. Although they are not uniquely responsible, development studies remained rather separated from development economics. This indifference towards economics implied (with no intention) the indifference towards examining conditions for economic development.

International trade theory is important, because no country or area can be separated from the world economy, if you like it or not. Many of successful Asian economies used foreign trade strategically. There are wide spread understanding that these economies adopted free trade policy. Except the case of Singapore and  Hong Kong, this is a kind of urban legend and false. We must learn more closely the secrets of successful countries such as Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia and others. Why could they get a (relative) success in their economic building. With this regards, a thorough re-examination of  trade theory is necessary. Export oriented policy was successful, but we should know the conditions that it  would be successful.

In general, I feel there is a lack of interests in theory. I am now discussing the reason

Why did Eaton and Kortum model perform so badly? 

but there are very few reaction to this kind of questions. This facts may indicates a kind of apathy in theory. It is a shame.  

I want to share an example. 

Around ten women had assembled to discuss the goal of a livelihood and microfinance project,  how they would measure if it had been achieved and actually assessed progress. The steps that I follow are:

1. Divide the participants into groups of 5-6 women.

2. Ask the participants whether they know the goals of the project/programme. If they are not aware, share the goal with them. The goal needs to be written in big letters and on a big piece of paper!

3. Give the participants flash cards.

4. Ask the group what is required to achieve the goal. If they are non-literate they can draw on the flash card. Do not stick at this stage, as they may change their mind.

5. Then ask - to achieve what is written in the flash cards, what are the measures required and proceed similarly.

6. The participants may change their mind on the level of flash cards. Give them time to come to a firm conclusion and then stick the flash cards.

7. Now give the participants a pen, and ask them to rate achievement of indicator at each level. A rating of * means not achieved, a rating of *** means fully achieved, and a rating of **means partially achieved.

.

Interestingly the women stated the goal of the project was poverty reduction of women. The women identified two pathways to poverty reduction- increase women’s income and reduce household expenditure.  They observed that women’s income could increase if women-managed  income-generation programmes expanded  (many) and if their control over existing income enhanced (a few).  They further shared that women-managed income generation can expand only if they had livestock (many) or land (few) on their names.  The women noted that their control over income would be reflected in them having savings accounts on their name.  On the expenditure front, majority of women stated that expenditure can come down if men drank less and a few mentioned that if domestic violence was less health expenditure would be reduced.  Women observed that group should collectively intervene on these issues.

The project, the women observed, had had a moderate impact on most of the indicators they had listed, other than reduction in alcohol consumption and violence against women.  While the group did intervene in instances of violence against women it did not always meet with success

Source: Murthy, 2015, Tool kit on gender sensitive participatory methods for evaluation, Institute of Social Studies, New Delhi (being published in a month) 

Economic history provides many important lessons that remain unheeded. Perhaps a review of Helliwell's MACE model may provide some pointers into the econometric setup that you are looking for. I suspect the degree of viciousness will also depend on the prevailing global economic climate- globalization may result in more supply shocks (especially those coming from natural disaster). Weakened currency, inelastic food supply substitutions, inflexible labor markets, and declining rates of productivity are all harbingers of a vicious cycle.

Hi Dr. Surender,

How low is low cost, equally so, how efficient should one be? From my experience, since my research was in developing country. all firms can be regarded as low cost when compared with competitive exporters from around the region. IN retrospect, they can be individually be inefficient in terms of: number of commodity they send, volume of commodity they send, number of employers they employ. In fact most stick to what they believe to be the definition of efficiency.

Without detracting from the seriousness of this question, Flann O'Brien does offer one (wonderfully cutting) example, when he describes the consequences of a campaign to increase the speaking of English in the terribly backward Corkadoragh in rural Ireland ('The Poor Mouth'). This campaign involved paying people a pound for every child that could demonstrate English capacity to a visitor going from home to home. This backfires predictably: Did it work? not at all (as a method for alleviating the misery of the indigenous population) but then everyone involved is satisfied. Developmental indicators including literacy rates and wellbeing measures have been refined and should be universal, allowing comparative, and over time, study. Likewise survey methods are strengthening in this area, and there is some literature - both statistical and evaluative - on this.

You are looking to work with oral preference learners. Ghanese culture has a rich oral tradition. You can use stories and proverbs to help in the training. Develop the material so that it can be shared orally through stories, with repetition of content, and using folklore. Your learners gain most of their information and solutions for problems through communicating with friends and neighbors orally, so design your material to be shared in this way.

You might also want to look at Daniel Miller and Mirca Madianou's contribution on polymedia.

Hi Paul !

I applaud your efforts!  I have been teaching and evolving my approach (usually precipitated by technological innovations, but now from Journals devoted to education of medical student, college, residents, fellows and faculty development).  I agree with all the answers you have been provided.  What I humbly recommend, without tempering your enthusiasm from seeking an ideal solution - where one size fits all- making implementation much easier without costly infrastructures, etc.  Realistically, it becomes very clear to me that one size does not fit all and many of the reasons for this were articulated in the above answers.  Diversity in perceived needs I have found is best addressed by assessing those needs and then using one-to-one or small groups as supplemental to the common needs for all to help ease the transition.  Various concepts such as flipping the classroom, having them teach a small topic, etc can all be incorporated into a learning environment, but that is probably not particularly helpful during the first semester.  Orientation and suggestions for study skills while bonding with the class as a whole - e.g. have random small teams that go on a treasure hunt for items and clues spread throughout the institution, led by second year voluntary students.

Showing them the commitment the faculty have to help them reach the various 6 milestone (for example) that the ACGME's NAS established with the idea this is a process that occurs over time- to evolve into professionalism, lifelong learning, communication skills.  They need to feel safe and know that each will accomplish various aspects of ultimately becoming an independent clinician at their own pace.

Instilling the concepts of time management can be very helpful and a book (easy read) by David Allen "Getting Things Done" should enable to them to think about the issue confronting them , prioritizing, then doing the very next step to begin down the path of getting whatever it is ,done.  Another book, very helpful to read over there summer prior to matriculation is "How to Say No, Without Feeling Guilty"   This will empower them and help them learn to set effective boundaries that can then be further developed in their clinical years.

Finally, asking for their feedback (anonymous at first, but openly when all are comfortable and trusting) re-assuring them that no harm or judgement will come of it.

Not only does variation occur among different schools in the same geographic area but also, no two classes are alike. Embrace the challenge and enjoy ! Your enthusiasm will be exuded and then transferred to the students who will be grateful and responsive to whatever you ultimately put together.

Please feel free to share your plan with those of us who have responded so that we give you more specific feedback in the spirit of helpful collaboration.

Unfortunately, formal data in our country also presents not directly the deaf (who are users of sign language and lives in a habitat centralized at/around sign language) but all with hearing problems in any ages. 

I published a few studies to find out the data of real "deaf " population in Turkey for a few years in Turkish. Only one which is also available in ResearchGate (The history of sign language and deaf education in Turkey) is in English. But this paper is mostly related with problems of the deaf in Turkey and also their history in and around Anatolia. None of development indices, but their current problems in education (schooling, special education, university education, etc) were mentioned.

We (me and Pinar Yaprak Kemaloglu) have some other works which are already presented as only conference papers about "social institutions"  (available in ResearchGate: An Investigation of the Social Institutions Regarding Deaf Citizens in Turkiye), and "sports". And some data about problems and proposals in higher education settings for the deaf young which was taken from "E-işit" project, (supported by the Worldbank a few years ago) is also present in ResearchGate as a conference paper. Currently I published another paper about the necessity of sign language in medical services (Dysability, Otorhinolaryngologic Practice and Sign Language) which is also Turkish.

Recently a book is prepared by some researchers in Turkey (but not published yet; editor: E Arik), which is about sign language researches in Turkey, and in this book not only me but also some other researchers pointed out many aspects of Turkish deaf society.

Now I am about to set a research on medical problems and health status of the deaf, which will be done in sign language through the deaf societies in Turkey. 

Hi,

I think this can be helpful

Who Is Mobilized to Vote? A Re-Analysis of 11 Field Experiments

Kevin Arceneaux & David W. Nickerson (2009)

Please see the articles on global economy and sustainable economy.

Thanks a lot for the responses:

I am particulalry enthused by responses of Daniel from numbers 1 to 4.

They can be summed up as: more inward-looking strategies than outward-orientation.

However, for number 5, proper programming and targetting is needed to ensure that the vulnerable (e.g. women, etc) whose live depend heavily on agriculture are not pushed out of the equation.

Thanks

Reza, if you wish your question leads to discussion, you have to participate, you are the moderator. 

Read Judea Pearl's forthcoming Econometric Theory paper (2014). A regression model generally summarizes "see-type" relationships as found in the data, whether they be observational or experimental data. An econometric model generally looks to summarize "do- type" relations. It will agree with the see-type relationship in experimental data; but not necessarily with the see type relationship found in observational data. An econometric model asks for an answer to the question: What will Y be if I change X to be X + DX? Note with observational data a regression model may give us parameter estimates that do not correspond to the partial of Y with respect to X, due to omitted variables (what Pearl calls backdoor path variables). Read as well Pearl's 2009 book causality.

Hi,

I believe Mario Diani, the Italian sociologist has one of the most well-founded theories on the different modes of collective action that characterises 'bottom-up'/self-organized or civil/non-state actors.

His upcoming book "The Cement of Civil Society", based on his studies of civic networks in Glasgow and Bristol will be the central piece on this theory, but there are already several publications out there (see e.g. Diani 2002, Diani and Bisson 2004; his work on this started in 1992 with his well-cited piece). I have drawn upon it in my study of mobilisation in Stockholm that protected a large urban park landscape. Through this theory I could, based on my empirical data, distinguish between different types of collective action processes (and in spite of having the perfect dataset for this type of work). I have the paper on that study to this message.

Now I am working with Mario in a study in Cape Town where we have interviewed over 100 organisations that are mobilising around the urban environment (see more here about that study: http://www.situatedecologies.net/archives/602 or here http://www.situatedecologies.net/move/civnet-cape-town).

I hope this could be helpful.

Cheers,

Henrik

PS: Mario has a good Academia.edu page where you will find most of his publications in full text.

PS: If you like to have the publication as it was published in the Cambridge book, please let me know and I will send the file (it is 2.4 MB) so I choose to upload the before-proof-version which is close to the final text.

Henrik Ernstson (PhD) @rhizomia

Department of History, Stanford University (Wallenberg Stig Hagström scholar, 2013-2015); African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town (Visiting Scholar, Principal Investigator); KTH Environmental Humanities, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (Researcher);

Twitter: @rhizomia ; Blog: http://www.rhizomia.net

Projects: http://www.situatedecologies.net :: Situated Urban Political Ecologies Platform :: Book project: Grounding Urban Natures

*New publications* In Regional Studies - 'Conceptual Vectors of African Urbanism' (2014); In ANTIPODE - 'Provincializing Urban Political Ecology—Towards a Situated UPE through African Urbanism' (2014); *Other selected publications* 1. Ecosystem Services as Technology of Globalization (2013 in Ecological Economics); 2. The Social Production of Ecosystem Services (2013 in Landscape and Urban Planning); 3. Re-translating Nature in Post-Apartheid Cape Town (2013 as Working Paper); 4. Transformative collective action... (2011 as chapter in Cambridge University Press).

Sorry for the delay in answering, but I've been rather busy these days. I think you mentioned some possible variables to study tourism policy (can not find what you left writing). I think your point out some possible classical variables (tourist income, household disposable income, etc). I think it would be necessary first to analyze that these variables have not been used in other studies.

The tourism sector in Japan has some interesting features such as the strong imbalance in the balance of tourism payments and the strength of domestic tourism market, with weaker international tourism market. The tourist structure of Japan has enough similarities with South Korea and partly with Taiwan. This situation is repeated in several developed countries but these have developed measures to balance its tourist balance, for the moment this fact has not worried so much to Japan.In summary, we can propose several things: choosing the analysis variables, analyze the existence of a possible model of tourist infrastructure in certain countries of East Asia and the possible comparison Japan / Korea.

I would like to know your opinion.

PS: East Asia is one of my areas of study, I teach a course on tourism in East Asia in the Grade of East Asian Studies.

My e.mail is falmeida@uma.es

@Debi, here is the example of FIAT "investment" in Serbia!!! "The Serbian government subsequently agreed to compensate Fiat for this by paying it €10,000 for each employee it took on—not the first time a government has had its arm twisted by a carmaker into providing subsidies. It also promised Fiat a further €3,000 per car to make cheaper 500Ls for the Serbian market."

students sometimes are taken as examples, too. As panel data are more expensive to collect, high frequency may refer to yearly frequency, rather than data collected every fifth year or more. It always depends upon the features of the phenomenon one is up to.

Probably, you could find some data in the recently released version [6th Wave] of the World Values Survey. Official documentation and data are available at the website below.

WVS

Also, although a little old one, you might be interested in the following article.

Participation and protest in the European Union and the ‘outsider’ states

Thank you for your kind attention.

Best wishes,

Katsuto Furusawa

This is the dilemma each and every Social Work Professional would have come across at least once in life time. I need to know when this Question arises to the Professional (A professional begins a profession, Mid Career Professional or an Expert? What is the issue that would result in..... (is it Life threatening to the other or by breaching (while reporting) what is the effect that would cause to the one who shared with you. It is the professional judgement and the one’s own conviction and integrity to Professional Values. I am not sure what in what context your dilemma arises. If you could give me the incident or narrate the situation with which you encounter with this dilemma we could discuss. You need not mention the Agency you work for or where you encounter this issue, Narrate the incident so that we can discuss. Another way to tackle this issue is through the Principle of Double Effect (a principle – in plain choose the lesser evil, usually used in medical issues like - Pregnancy and abortion – What is your intention and whether your integrity (social work ethics ) is not questioned, to what extent that is going to affect the other and the one who shared ? Whether is there any legal implication attached to it (It depends upon country to country). To my best of my knowledge it is always better to get the consent from the person before you could start the intake that you discuss certain issues like dilemmas with the experts/agencies, which would sort all your issues. Hence you share the responsibility with the experts/ agencies in treating this special issues and it would lead to better discussion than brood over dilemma always...( I am Dr.S.Ubahara Sahayaraj, a Psychiatric Social Worker, completed MSW (2003) from Loyola College, Chennai, India ; M.Phil (Psychiatric Social Work) (2007) and Ph.D (2013) from the Department of Psychiatric Social Work, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience (NIMHANS), Bangalore, India. I worked as a Psychiatric Social Worker for three years at the Department of Psychiatric Social Work, NIMHANS, Bangalore, At Present working at Centre for Addiction Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, NIMHANS, Bangalore, India. When you work with a multi disciplinary team all these issues would be solved, because the discussion is based on a team than by one (You alone). I am ready to discuss further on this issue...

Dear Dan-Cristian

Thanks for the paper you attached. It is indeed very useful for the answers I am looking for.

As partners in progress women and men need security in all walks of life. Gender analysis helps us know the values parameters of human security in general as well as the gender gap.

You can first try sites, maintained by Ministries/ Govt. of India (for free access, after due registration), such as:

1. Ministry of Statistics: at http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/site/home.aspx

2. Census data of Govt. of India, at: http://censusindia.gov.in/

Also u can try for commercial/ paid sites, like:

3. http://www.indiastat.com/default.aspx

We should get the required data.

All the very best.

I agree with Marijana. The move has to be away from thinking formal/informal. Why should people continue in the informal economy?......because it is their natural place of work! often historically so. The Supreme Court of India acknowledged the same. The demarcation of 'informal' and 'formal' comes from the taxation and other regulatory requirements. Maybe the authorities need is to find new ways and processes to deal with the informal economy, rather than trying to change the informal economy to fit their slots/definitions.

I have used both methods in previous works. It is the way I would proceed. A method woul be to resample with one exclusion each step. It is a type of jacknife estimator. Good luck with your estimations

Informal workers and poverty in Ghana

It is true that majority of informal workers who are mainly necessity driven are poor especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It is also true that there are few opportunity driven informal workers who even earn more from their activities than their formal counterparts. Again, there is a near universal belief of working informally and being poor. However, the ILO categorically believes, there is no direct relationship between working informally and being poor or working formally and escaping poverty. There are still grey areas when it comes to defining poverty or a poor person. The reality is that most informal workers earn very low income compared to their counterparts in the formal economy as confirmed by several studies. The living and working conditions of most informal workers are very poor and have seen little change over the past decade or so especially in Ghana. Similarly, some formal workers live in appalling situations, which reinforce the ILO perspective of informal work and poverty.

In terms of relationship between formal and informal economy in Ghana, it is still dualistic where the formal is seen as distinct from the informal economy. The relationship between informal work and poverty is complex and contentious and is continuously being contested. However, it is believed that the majority of the informal workers, in developing countries especially, are low-income earners. The situation is no different in Ghana: where the majority (over 80%) earns a living in the informal economy and are considered being poor. Given that the informal economy is deeply rooted and street vending is not going to disappear easily, what needs to be done is to adopt a fitting policy response to the issue of poverty that encourages a more unbiased linkage between formal and informal economy.

Policy makers (in Ghana) have to recognize the informal participants and consider their needs and at some stage involve them in the formulation of certain policies that may directly or indirectly affect them. For example, the head porter (locally called “kayayo” or “kayaye” in Ga and “paa-o-paa” in Akan) is an informal worker who provides a vital source of transportation for carrying travellers’ luggage and other belongings from one car park (station) to the other and sometimes to their homes. Nevertheless, these people are seen as a nuisance and are rarely considered in national policy debates affecting the informal economy, with some even calling for their eradication from the cities.

The fact is that it may well be difficult, if not impossible, to eliminate this activity within the informal transportation network. To avoid reckless dissipation of limited resources, a more positive and friendly approach is required to inculcate in informal workers the need to observe health, safety and environmental sanitation in conducting their activities. They need recognition and support so that they can go about their activity in a more welcoming environment – without any form of harassment. There should be training for these people who are mainly women and who tend also to have very little or no formal education. They are mostly migrants and therefore may have no proper accommodation near to where they are conducting their activities. They take time to integrate into the urban economy, as most of them are originally from rural areas. In Accra, Kumasi and other cities it is believed that some of these people sleep on the street, in front of stores, in kiosks, uncompleted houses, slums and shantytowns and so on. They are mostly exposed to the vagaries of the weather, and in the night to mosquitoes (which may cause malaria), and are at the mercy of criminals and other social deviants.

This is one form of informal work which is dominated by child labour, and many other informal workers, mostly young male migrants in the hawking business, are in a similar situation, as discussed above. Most of the social vices (e.g. criminal activities such as burglary, armed robbery activities, rape, prostitution and so on) in the cities are alleged to be committed by some of these people, of whom some are believed to have been born and bred on the street. The key question that has to be answered is ‘how to deal with these people’. First, there must be widespread recognition of these people as part of the wider society and an integral part of the Ghana’s national economy.

The logical next stage, in the interests of social justice, would be to assess their urgent basic needs and prioritise them accordingly. There could be registration of these people to keep track of them. A special savings scheme could be offered in order to inculcate the habit of saving. The present belief is that most of these workers entrust their hard-earned daily income to friends (normally older friends or family members), who s