Many theories in the social sciences predict spatial dependence or the similarity of behaviors at neighboring locations. Spatial Analysis for the Social Sciences demonstrates how researchers can diagnose and model this spatial dependence and draw more valid inferences as a result. The book is structured around the well-known Galton's problem and presents a step-by-step guide to the application of spatial analysis. The book examines a variety of spatial diagnostics and models through a series of applied examples drawn from the social sciences. These include spatial lag models that capture behavioral diffusion between actors, spatial error models that account for spatial dependence in errors, and models that incorporate spatial heterogeneity in the effects of covariates. Spatial Analysis for the Social Sciences also examines advanced spatial models for time-series cross-sectional data, categorical and limited dependent variables, count data, and survival data.

New Public Management has held a central position within public administration over the past few decades, complemented by various models promoting post-bureaucratic organization. But 'traditional' bureaucracy has not disappeared, and bureaucracy is in transition in the West and the rest of the world. Bureaucracies still fill crucial positions in modern societies, despite growing criticism of assumed inefficiencies and unlimited growth. This volume examines a range of issues related to bureaucracies in transition across Europe, with a particular focus on the Nordic region. Chapters examine a range of topics including a reinterpretation of Weber's conception of bureaucracy; the historical development of institutions and organizational structures in Sweden and Greece; the myth of bureaucratic neutrality and the concept of 'competent neutrality'; performance management systems; the anti-bureaucratic identities of senior civil servants; the role of experts and expertise in bureaucratic organizations; the impact of reform on public sector executives; the curbing of corruption in Scandinavian states; an interrogation of the Nordic administrative model; Supreme Audit Institutions; 'street-level' bureaucracy; and the establishment of an 'ethics of office' amongst Danish civil servants.

This book, comprised of entirely original research, collects data on the socioeconomic situation of China's 56 ethnic groups. Although the majority of China's population is of the Han nationality (which accounts for more than 90% of China's population), the non-Han ethnic groups have a population of more than 100 million. China has officially identified, except for other unknown ethnic groups and foreigners with Chinese citizenship, 55 ethnic minorities. In addition, ethnic minorities vary greatly in size. With a population of more than 15 million, the Zhuang are the largest ethnic minority, and the Lhoba, with a population of only about three thousand, the smallest. China's ethnic diversity has resulted in a special socioeconomic landscape for China itself. However, till presently, a complete socioeconomic picture of China's ethnic groups - especially of its smallest ethnic minorities - still remained unclear. How different have China's ethnic groups been in every sphere of daily life and economic development during China's fast transition period? In order to answer these questions, we have created a detailed and comparable set of data for each of China's ethnic groups. This book presents, in an easy-to-use format, a broad collection of social and economic indicators on China's 56 ethnic groups. This useful resource profiles the general social and economic situations for each of these ethnic groups. These indicators are compiled and estimated based on the regional and local data gathered from a variety of sources up to 2012.

In this newly revised edition of Understanding Research in Early Education, Margaret Clark demonstrates the continuing relevance of research in the homes of young children and in preschool units. Through rigorous yet understandable language, the text stresses the importance of research, acknowledging how easy it can be, amidst the change and flood of documents on early education and care, to overlook the insights to be gained from past research. The author draws on her own studies, and those of others, to illustrate how to avoid common pitfalls, ask the right questions to inform students' research projects, and critically apply findings in the classroom or nursery. The book is one of the few texts for students to bring research alive, analysing key research to consider its limitations and the extent to which results are relevant to policy and practice. Without requiring any prior expertise in research and research methodologies, the third edition will prove invaluable for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in early years' education, and practitioners undertaking continuing professional development. New content includes: fully revised chapters, an updated reference list, and a new chapter discussing current research on baseline assessment.

This book makes valuable theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions to the study of overseas doctoral students' cross-cultural adaptation. Focusing on Australia, one of the top three destinations for Chinese students, this book seeks to understand how Chinese doctoral students perceive their lived experience of adapting to the academic and research environment at Australian universities. The book presents an innovative data collection chiefly based on interviews. It probes into Chinese doctoral students' emic perception of their cross-cultural adaptation from a human development perspective and in three main phrases: how motivated and prepared they are for their overseas stay (planning), how they experience their adaptation as active agents (implementing), and how they evaluate their overseas doctoral journey after the fact (reflecting). Empirically speaking, its findings can help bolster the effectiveness of cross-cultural adaptation and that of the internationalisation of doctoral education. Methodologically speaking, it combines popular techniques and underused instruments such as graphics and maps to offer an in-depth portrait of the issue. Given its content, the book is primarily intended for researchers in cultural studies and practitioners in international education, or in a broader sense for anyone who has a keen interest in how individuals navigate the learning trajectory and construe meanings in unfamiliar academic and socio-cultural settings. Though the book focuses on Australia as a case study, its findings are equally applicable to other contexts.

This book explores social constructionism and the language of mental distress. Mental health research has traditionally been dominated by genetic and biomedical explanations that provide only partial explanations. However, process research that utilises qualitative methods has grown in popularity. Situated within this new strand of research, the authors examine and critically assess some of the different contributions that social constructionism has made to the study of mental distress and to how those diagnosed are conceptualized and labeled. This will be an invaluable introduction and source of practical strategies for academics, researchers and students as well as clinical practitioners, mental health professionals, and others working with mental health such as educationalists and social workers.

This book presents different research designs, their respective purposes and merits as well as their underlying assumptions. Research designs are characterised by a certain combination of knowledge aims and strategies for data production. An adequate design is the key to carrying out a successful research project. Nevertheless, the literature on design is scarce, compared to the literature on methods. This book clarifies the basic distinction between variable-oriented designs and case designs, and proceeds to integrated, comparative and intervention-oriented designs. A step-by-step guide to the design process and the choices to make is also included. The book's clear style makes it an excellent guide for master students and PhD students doing their first research exercises, while it is also useful for more experienced researchers who want to broaden their design repertoire and keep up to recent innovations in the field of research design.

Topics of complex system physics and their interdisciplinary applications to different problems in seismology, biology, economy, sociology, energy and nanotechnology are covered in this new work from renowned experts in their fields. Inparticular, contributed papers contain original results on network science, earthquake dynamics, econophysics, sociophysics, nanoscience and biological physics. Most of the papers use interdisciplinary approaches based on statistical physics, quantum physics and other topics of complex system physics.Papers on econophysics and sociophysics are focussed on societal aspects of physics such as, opinion dynamics, public debates and financial and economic stability. This work will be of interest to statistical physicists, economists, biologists, seismologists and all scientists working in interdisciplinary topics of complexity."

This book explores how public opinion is used to design, monitor and evaluate government programmes in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Using information collected from the media and from international practitioners in the public opinion field, as well as interviews in each of the 4 countries, the author describes how views of public opinion and governance differ significantly between elites and the general public. Bennett argues that elites generally risk more by allowing the creation of new data, fearing that its analysis may become public and create communications and political problems of various kinds. The book finds evidence that recent conservative governments in several countries are changing their perspective on the use of public opinion, and that conventional public opinion studies are facing challenges from the availability of other kinds of information and new technologies. This book is a hugely valuable contribution to a hitherto little explored field and will appeal to academics and practitioners alike.

In this book Pragati Rawat and John C. Morris identify and evaluate the impact of factors that can help explain the difference in e-participation, public participation using information and communication technology, in different countries. While cross-sectional studies have been covered, few have taken an in-depth look at cross-national studies. This book attempts to fill the gap using quantitative panel data to explore the influence of technology and institutions, and the impact of their complex relationships in a mediation and moderation analysis, on e-participation. The current study reviews the scholarly work in the field of "offline" and "online participation" to identify a set of antecedents that influence e-participation. A conceptual framework is developed, supported by the theories from the public policy and socio-technical premise. The authors utilize secondary data, primarily from the UN and World Economic Forum, for 143 countries from three waves of surveys to measure the dependent and explanatory variables. The panel data is statistically analyzed and findings reveal the role of technology as a mediator as well as a moderator for institutions' impact on e-participation. The Effects of Technology and Institutions on E-Participation provides a groundbreaking country-level analysis that will appeal to academics and students of e-government and Digital Government, Public Policy, Public Administration, Public Sector Innovation, and Public Participation.

This book showcases a selection of arts-based research methods used in the empirical study of business, organisation and the humanities. Each chapter presents a discursive analysis and a detailed how-to guide for a range of methods including poetry, drawing, photography and social media, film, food, knitting, letter writing and dance. Consideration is given to a variety of steps in the research process, from research design and data collection to analysis and publication. Using Arts-based Research Methods is a unique resource for experienced researchers and students looking to broaden their palette of qualitative research methods.

Quantitative Anthropology: A Workbook contributes an anthropological perspective to quantitative methods. The book's authors address characteristics of quantitative data, entering and manipulating data in SPSS, graphical displays, distributions and measures of central tendency and dispersion, and including hypothesis testing with both parametric and nonparametric statistical tests. Increasingly complex exercises build on cumulative learning from chapter to chapter and stress the application of methods beyond coursework. The focus of the manual is on univariate statistical analysis, and the book is written to be accessible to higher level undergraduate students and graduate students in all fields of anthropology.

This unique book comprehensively covers the evolving field of transversality, globalization and education, and presents creative, research-based thought experiments that seek to unravel the forces of globalization impacting education. Pursuing various approaches to and uses of transversality, with a focus on the ideas of Felix Guattari, it is the only book of its kind. Specifically, it examines the influence of Guattari at the forefront of educational research that addresses, enhances and sets free activist micro-perspectives, which can counter macro-global movements, such as capitalism and climate change. This book is a global education research text that includes perspectives from four continents, providing a balanced and significant work on globalization in education.

This volume presents a comprehensive overview of methodological issues and empirical methods of practice-oriented research. It examines questions regarding the scope and boundaries of practice-oriented approaches and practice theory. It discusses the potential advantages and disadvantages of the diversity resulting from the use of these approaches, as well as method and methodology-related issues. The specific questions explored in this volume are: What consequences are linked to the application of a praxeological perspective in empirical research when it comes to the choice of methods? Is there such a thing as an ideal path to follow in praxeological empirical research? What relationship is there between qualitative and quantitative approaches? What differentiates practice-based social research from other perspectives and approaches such as discourse analysis or hermeneutics? The contributions in this book discuss these questions either from a methodological point of view or from a reflective perspective on empirical research practices.

This book focuses on the effects of information policy. While information policy studies often consider the ideology underlying policy, the policy process, the stakeholders and players in that process, and the nature of the outcomes of policy development, there have been few studies that focus on the ultimate effects of information policy. This book looks at effects from two perspectives. First, it examines the impact of government-wide information policies on a specific government agency in terms of its dissemination policies for the information it provides. Secondly, the effects of the ensuing agency information policies on social science research are examined. The government-wide policies of interest here are cost-recovery and restraint initiatives imposed by the Canadian federal government in the mid-1980s. The policy statements specifically identified government information as an area in which increased revenues could be generated. Such de facto information policies can have a wide effect on government information production and dissemination. In this book, the history and background of the policies is considered and the effects were empirically examined using multiple methods of analysis. The period covered is mid-1980s through mid-1990s. An epilogue chapter provides information on recent policy developments in Canada and the continuing effects of the policies of the 1980s.

This volume showcases selected conference papers addressing the sustainable future of ASEAN from the perspectives of business and social science disciplines. In addressing the 17 Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs) envisioned by the United Nations in the domains of environment, health and well-being, posing potential means of reducing inequalities globally, the authors target specific issues and challenges confronting the fast-growing region of ASEAN and present suggestions for co-operation and commitment from governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and society at large, in line with the ASEAN Vision 2020. Papers are selected from the 3rd International Conference on the Future of ASEAN (ICoFA) 2019, organised by Universiti Teknologi MARA in Malaysia, whose conference theme "Charting the Sustainable Future of ASEAN" enables intellectual discourse on sustainability issues from business and the social sciences, as well as science and technology. The selection of papers is published in two volumes, comprising scholarly and practical insights into sustainability in ASEAN. This first volume of papers from business and social science scholars will be of interest to researchers and policymakers interested in sustainability developments in the ASEAN region.

The "Statistical Handbook on Technology" is the first easy-to-use resource to provide the general reader with comprehensive statistical information on how technology affects all areas of our lives. More than 250 charts, tables, and graphs are featured, making it easy for users to quickly find answers to such questions as: How has the number of ATM transactions per month grown since 1988? What percentage of U.S. public libraries offers access to the Internet? How many CD players have been sold in the U.S. since 1983? What is the most prescribed drug? What is the average age of the U.S. aviation fleet? Each of the book's 13 chapters includes a short essay introducing the topic and describing the statistics that follow. The Handbook also provides insightful forecasts, information that is normally difficult to find.

This work provides an innovative new look at police ethics, including results from an updated version of the classic Police Integrity Questionnaire, including new social and technological advances. It aims to push the study of police research further, expanding on and testing police integrity theory and methodology, the relationship between community and integrity, and the influence of multiculturalism and globalization on policing and community attitudes. This work brings together experienced scholars who have used the police integrity theory and the accompanying methodology to measure police integrity in eleven countries, and provide advance and sophisticated explorations of the topic. Organized into three thematic sections, it explores the testing methodology for international comparisons, insights into police-community relations, and explores police subcultures. This innovative book will be of interest to researchers in criminology & criminal justice, particularly with an interest in policing, as well as related fields such as sociology, public policy, and comparative law.

This detailed textbook critically examines methods used in sociolinguistc studies, including the ways in which the categories of age, gender, ethnicity and social class have been employed to chart language variation. It discusses the nature of data and encourages students to examine the evidence with a more critical eye.

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book describes the extensive contributions made toward the advancement of human assessment by scientists from one of the world's leading research institutions, Educational Testing Service. The book's four major sections detail research and development in measurement and statistics, education policy analysis and evaluation, scientific psychology, and validity. Many of the developments presented have become de-facto standards in educational and psychological measurement, including in item response theory (IRT), linking and equating, differential item functioning (DIF), and educational surveys like the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Programme of international Student Assessment (PISA), the Progress of International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In addition to its comprehensive coverage of contributions to the theory and methodology of educational and psychological measurement and statistics, the book gives significant attention to ETS work in cognitive, personality, developmental, and social psychology, and to education policy analysis and program evaluation. The chapter authors are long-standing experts who provide broad coverage and thoughtful insights that build upon decades of experience in research and best practices for measurement, evaluation, scientific psychology, and education policy analysis. Opening with a chapter on the genesis of ETS and closing with a synthesis of the enormously diverse set of contributions made over its 70-year history, the book is a useful resource for all interested in the improvement of human assessment.

First published Open Access under a Creative Commons license as What is Inclusive Research?, this title is now also available as part of the Bloomsbury Research Methods series. This book describes and defines inclusive research, outlining how to recognize it, understand it, do it, and know when it is done well. In doing so it addresses the areas of overlap and distinctiveness in relation to participatory, emancipatory, user-led and partnership research as well as exploring the various practices encompassed within each of these inclusive approaches. The author, Melanie Nind, focuses on how and why more inclusive approaches to research have evolved. She positions inclusive research within the key debates and shifts in policy, defines key ideas and terms, discusses the contested nature of inclusive research and illustrates a range of approaches using exemplars. The aim is to discuss the range of challenges involved and to examine the degree to which these challenges have so far been met.

It sounds like a paradox: How do you engage in autoethnography collaboratively? Heewon Chang, Faith Ngunjiri, and Kathy-Ann Hernandez break new ground on this blossoming new array of research models, collectively labeled Collaborative Autoethnography. Their book serves as a practical guide by providing you with a variety of data collection, analytic, and writing techniques to conduct collaborative projects. It also answers your questions about the bigger picture: What advantages does a collaborative approach offer to autoethnography? What are some of the methodological, ethical, and interpersonal challenges you'll encounter along the way? Model collaborative autoethnographies and writing prompts are included in the appendixes. This exceptional, in-depth resource will help you explore this exciting new frontier in qualitative methods.

This book focuses on human adaptive thermal comfort in the building environment and the balance between reducing building air conditioning energy and improving occupants' thermal comfort. It examines the mechanism of human thermal adaptation using a newly developed adaptive heat balance model, and presents pioneering findings based on an on online survey, real building investigation, climate chamber experiments, and theoretical models. The book investigates three critical issues related to human thermal adaptation: (i) the dynamics of human thermal adaptation in the building environment; (ii) the basic rules and effects of human physiological acclimatization and psychological adaptation; and (iii) a new, adaptive, heat balance model describing behavioral adjustment, physiological acclimatization, psychological adaptation, and physical improvement effects. Providing the basis for establishing a more reasonable adaptive thermal comfort model, the book is a valuable reference resource for anyone interested in future building thermal environment evaluation criteria.

Measuring research impact and engagement is a much debated topic in the UK and internationally. This book is the first to provide a critical review of the research impact agenda, situating it within international efforts to improve research utilisation. Using empirical data, it discusses research impact tools and processes for key groups such as academics, research funders, 'knowledge brokers' and research users, and considers the challenges and consequences of incentivising and rewarding particular articulations of research impact. It draws on wide ranging qualitative data, combined with theories about the science-policy interplay and audit regimes to suggest ways to improve research impact.