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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social research & statistics > General
This book scrutinizes how contemporary practices of security have come to rely on many different translations of security, risk, and danger. Institutions of national security policies are currently undergoing radical conceptual and organisational changes, and this book presents a novel approach for how to study and politically address the new situation. Complex and uncertain threat environments, such as terrorism, climate change, and the global financial crisis, have paved the way for new forms of security governance that have profoundly transformed the ways in which threats are handled today. Crucially, there is a decentralisation of the management of security, which is increasingly handled by a broad set of societal actors that previously were not considered powerful in the conduct of security affairs. This transformation of security knowledge and management changes the meaning of traditional concepts and practices, and calls for investigation into the many meanings of security implied when contemporary societies manage radical dangers, risks, and threats. It is necessary to study both what these meanings are and how they developed from the security practices of the past. Addressing this knowledge gap, the book asks how different ideas about threats, risk, and dangers meet in the current practices of security, broadly understood, and with what political consequences. This book will be of interest to students of critical security studies, anthropology, risk studies, science and technology studies and International Relations. The Open Access version of this book, available at: https://www.routledge.com/Translations-of-Security-A-Framework-for-the-Study-of-Unwanted-Futures/Berling-Gad-Petersen-Waever/p/book/9781032007090 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license
This book deals with the application of wavelet and spectral methods for the analysis of nonlinear and dynamic processes in economics and finance. It reflects some of the latest developments in the area of wavelet methods applied to economics and finance. The topics include business cycle analysis, asset prices, financial econometrics, and forecasting. An introductory paper by James Ramsey, providing a personal retrospective of a decade's research on wavelet analysis, offers an excellent overview over the field.
In this first book of the series Survey Methods in Educational Research, we have brought together leading authors and scholars in the field to discuss key introductory concepts in the creation, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of survey instruments and their resultant findings. While there are other textbooks that might introduce these concepts adequately well, the authors here have focused on the pragmatic issues that inevitably arise in the development and administration process of survey instruments. Drawing from their rich experiences, the authors present these potential speed bumps or road blocks a survey researcher in education or the social sciences might encounter. Referencing their own work and practice, the authors provide valuable suggestions for dealing with these issues "your advisor never told you about." And all of the recommendations are aligned with standard protocols and current research on best practices in the field of research methodology. This book is broken into four broad units on creating survey items and instruments, administering surveys, analyzing the data from surveys, and stories of successful administrations modeling the entire research cycle. Each chapter focuses on a different concept in the survey research process, and the authors share their approaches to addressing the issues. These topics include survey item construction, scale development, cognitive interviewing, measuring change with self-report data, translation issues with surveys administered in multiple languages, working with school and program administrators when implementing surveys, a review of current software used in survey research, the use of weights, response styles, assessing validity of results, and effectively communicating your results and findings ... and much more. The intended audience of the volume will be practitioners, administrators, teachers as researchers, graduate students, social science and education researchers not experienced in survey research, and students learning program evaluation. In brief, if you are considering doing survey research, this book is meant for you
In this first book of the series Survey Methods in Educational Research, we have brought together leading authors and scholars in the field to discuss key introductory concepts in the creation, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of survey instruments and their resultant findings. While there are other textbooks that might introduce these concepts adequately well, the authors here have focused on the pragmatic issues that inevitably arise in the development and administration process of survey instruments. Drawing from their rich experiences, the authors present these potential speed bumps or road blocks a survey researcher in education or the social sciences might encounter. Referencing their own work and practice, the authors provide valuable suggestions for dealing with these issues "your advisor never told you about." And all of the recommendations are aligned with standard protocols and current research on best practices in the field of research methodology. This book is broken into four broad units on creating survey items and instruments, administering surveys, analyzing the data from surveys, and stories of successful administrations modeling the entire research cycle. Each chapter focuses on a different concept in the survey research process, and the authors share their approaches to addressing the issues. These topics include survey item construction, scale development, cognitive interviewing, measuring change with self-report data, translation issues with surveys administered in multiple languages, working with school and program administrators when implementing surveys, a review of current software used in survey research, the use of weights, response styles, assessing validity of results, and effectively communicating your results and findings ... and much more. The intended audience of the volume will be practitioners, administrators, teachers as researchers, graduate students, social science and education researchers not experienced in survey research, and students learning program evaluation. In brief, if you are considering doing survey research, this book is meant for you
This book explores the very latest developments in the South China Sea maritime dispute. It examines the South China Sea as an arena for geostrategic competition between China and the United States and why the dispute is so important for regional and global geopolitics. It outlines the most recent developments in the sea itself and assesses the role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the current views of the contesting claimants. It considers the position of countries from outside the region, India as well as Japan; surveys military and naval developments; and examines confidence building, preventive diplomacy, and dispute resolution measures. The book concludes by highlighting the points of greatest risk and by discussing how the situation is likely to develop going forward.
Is the phenomenon of state failure better understood through a focus on the regional context? To what extent may studies of regional security benefit from a focus on the capacities and vulnerabilities of the states involved? These are the questions addressed in this volume of "Comparative Social Research". Substantially, this special issue operates at the intersection of the larger debates on state failure and on regional (in-) security, relating to various perspectives within each of these. State failure, manifesting itself in the inability of a state to maintain its monopoly of violence, has become a widespread phenomenon in several regions of the world. While the weakness of the institutions of the state in question is an obvious dimension of state failure, there is also an important international dimension. In many of these cases, conflicts are interwoven and violence spills across borders.
This is an accessible introduction to the philosophy of social research which relates philosophical ideas to actual research practice. The book makes effective use of illustrations from the UK, US and Europe to examine specific problems and broader issues. The book is intended for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in social research methods within sociology, social policy, politics, social psychology, human geography; philosophy of social science and social theory courses; and as a personal reference for professional researchers.
Avoiding both over-simplification and jargon-riddled complexity, this book is an invaluable, straightforward guide to participatory research for you and your fellow practitioners working with community groups and organisations. The book offers a route map for co-research projects with groups and communities, taking you through each stage of the participatory research process, from planning a project to sharing the findings. Keeping in mind imperatives such as engagement and voice, the book explores how to carry out research in ways that are meaningful for communities. This book includes valuable resources such as reflection points, tasks and further reading lists, offering support to practitioners to plan and undertake participatory research projects with confidence.
This book focuses on performing hands-on meta-analysis using MetaXL, a free add-on to MS Excel. The illustrative examples are taken mainly from medical and health sciences studies, but the generic methods can be used to perform meta-analysis on data from any other discipline. The book adopts a step-by-step approach to perform meta-analyses and interpret the results. Stata codes for meta-analyses are also provided. All popularly used meta-analytic methods and models - such as the fixed effect model, random effects model, inverse variance heterogeneity model, and quality effect model - are used to find the confidence interval for the effect size measure of independent primary studies and the pooled study. In addition to the commonly used meta-analytic methods for various effect size measures, the book includes special topics such as meta-regression, dose-response meta-analysis, and publication bias. The main attraction for readers is the book's simplicity and straightforwardness in conducting actual meta-analysis using MetaXL. Researchers would easily find everything on meta-analysis of any particular effect size in one specific chapter once they could determine the underlying effect measure. Readers will be able to see the results under different models and also will be able to select the correct model to obtain accurate results.
Find the answers to disaster and emergency management research questions with Disaster and Emergency Management Methods. Written to engage students and to provide a flexible foundation for instructors and practitioners, this interdisciplinary textbook provides a holistic understanding of disaster and emergency management research methods used in the field. The disaster and emergency management contexts have a host of challenges that affect the research process that subsequently shape methodological approaches, data quality, analysis and inferences. In this book, readers are presented with the considerations that must be made before engaging in the research process, in addition to a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches that are currently being used in the discipline. Current, relevant, and fascinating real-world applications provide a window into how each approach is being applied in the field. Disaster and Emergency Management Methods serves as an effective way to empower readers to approach their own study of disaster and emergency management research methods with confidence.
This book provides a contemporary treatment of quantitative economics, with a focus on data science. The book introduces the reader to R and RStudio, and uses expert Hadley Wickham's tidyverse package for different parts of the data analysis workflow. After a gentle introduction to R code, the reader's R skills are gradually honed, with the help of "your turn" exercises. At the heart of data science is data, and the book equips the reader to import and wrangle data, (including network data). Very early on, the reader will begin using the popular ggplot2 package for visualizing data, even making basic maps. The use of R in understanding functions, simulating difference equations, and carrying out matrix operations is also covered. The book uses Monte Carlo simulation to understand probability and statistical inference, and the bootstrap is introduced. Causal inference is illuminated using simulation, data graphs, and R code for applications with real economic examples, covering experiments, matching, regression discontinuity, difference-in-difference, and instrumental variables. The interplay of growth related data and models is presented, before the book introduces the reader to time series data analysis with graphs, simulation, and examples. Lastly, two computationally intensive methods-generalized additive models and random forests (an important and versatile machine learning method)-are introduced intuitively with applications. The book will be of great interest to economists-students, teachers, and researchers alike-who want to learn R. It will help economics students gain an intuitive appreciation of applied economics and enjoy engaging with the material actively, while also equipping them with key data science skills.
The golden anniversary edition of "Theory of Collective Behavior" is a modern republication of a sociological and social psychology classic. Adding a reflective new Preface by the author and an extensive, analytical Foreword by MIT's Gary Marx, it is an authorized edition.
This book explores how, unlike in the West, the daily religious life of most Chinese people spreads without institutional propagation. Based upon more than a decade of field research in rural China, the book demonstrates the decisive role of rites of passage and yearly festival rituals held in every household in shaping people's religious dispositions. It focuses on the family, the unit most central to Chinese culture and society, and reveals the repertoire embodied in daily life in a world envisioned as comprising both the "yin" world of ancestors, spirits, and ghosts, and the "yang" world of the living. It discusses especially the concept of bai, which refers to both concrete bodily movements that express respect and awe, such as bowing, kneeling, or holding up ritual offerings, and to people's religious inclinations and dispositions, which indicate that they are aware of a spiritual realm that is separate from yet close to the world of the living. Overall, the book shows that the daily practices of religion are not a separate sphere, but rather belief and ritual integrated into a way of dwelling in a world envisaged as consisting of both the "yin" and the "yang" worlds that regularly communicate with each other.
Is religion a factor in initiating interstate armed conflict, and do different religions have different effects? Breaking new ground in political science, this book explores these questions both qualitatively and quantitively, concluding that the answer is yes. Previous studies have focused on conflict within states or interstate aggression with overtly religious motivations; in contrast, Brown shows how religion affects states' propensities to militarize even disputes that are not religious in nature. Different religions are shown to have different influences on those propensities, and those influences are linked to the war ethics inculcated in those religions. The book analyses and classifies war ethics contained in religious scripture and other religious classics, teachings of religions' contemporary epistemic communities, and religions' historical narratives. Using data from the new Religious Characteristics of States dataset project, qualitative studies are combined with empirical measurements of governments' institutional preferences and populations' cultures. This book will provide interesting insights to scholars and researchers in international security studies, political science, international law, sociology, and religious studies.
Gone are the days when researchers, policymakers, and practitioners each worked in isolation. In recent years, a few interrelated issues have emphasized the need for greater collaboration among these groups: the increased emphasis on results and accountability (particularly where public funds are at stake), the need to improve services, and the growing use of technology. This book is about these all-important partnerships, specifically the relationships between those searching for evidence and those putting evidence to use, designing and implementing policy at the federal, state, or local level. Yet the science or art of how to create partnerships and how to make them work has just begun. This book offers the reader a toolkit for effective researcher/policymaker collaborations by exploring innovations underway around the country and developing an analytic framework to describe the process. It asks questions such as: What can we learn from these examples? How can and should partners communicate? Where should partners plan together, and where is it best to leave some separation to respect the differences in our roles? Through carefully chosen and organized case studies, this book demonstrates the motivations that lead to partnerships, the core elements of successful implementation, and the lessons to be learned about sustaining these relationships. It further examines the use of research once the research phase has concluded, as well as the ever-important consideration of investing in collaboration by both non-profit and public sector funders. For policymakers, this book offers a greater appreciation of the role of research in the policy process and new insights into different types of research. For researchers, the book provides insights into how best to formulate questions, how to work closely with those most affected, and how to communicate findings in ways that can be more easily understood by those who are depending on clear answers. Students of public policy, public administration, social work, and education will find much to inform future roles in research, policy or practice.
This book is the sixth in a series covering bet practices in community quality-of-life (QOL) indicators. The cases in this volume describe communities that have launched their own community indicators programs. Elements that are included in the descriptions are the history of the community indicators work within the target region, the planning of community indicators, the actual indicators that were selected, the data collection process, the reporting of the results, and the use of the indicators to guide community development decisions and public policy.
Practice Methodologies in Education Research offers a fresh approach to researching practice in education. Addressing a major gap in research methodology scholarship, it highlights how integral practice theory is to the transformational agendas of education research, introducing a theory of activist practice methodologies informed by expansive theories of practice. With contributions from leading education researchers drawn from across the world, the book confronts onto-epistemological dilemmas for doing research that arise from taking practice theory seriously, including the theories of Bourdieu, de Certeau, Deleuze, Haraway, Latour, Taylor, and Vygotsky. A defining feature of the chapters is their activist axiologies and their experimental approach to researching practice in education, in fields as diverse as educational leadership, schooling, higher education, adult and workplace education and training, professional practice, and informal learning. Practice Methodologies in Education is essential reading for education academics and postgraduates engaged in critical research using practice theory.
This book studies R. Buckminster Fuller's World Game and similar world games, past and present. Proposed by Fuller in 1964 and first played in colleges and universities across North America at a time of growing ecological crisis, the World Game attempted to turn data analysis, systems modelling, scenario building, computer technology, and information design to more egalitarian ends to meet human needs. It challenged players to redistribute finite planetary resources more equitably, to 'make the world work'. Criticised and lauded in equal measure, the World Game has evolved through several formats and continues today in correspondence with debates on planetary stewardship, gamification, data management, and the democratic deficit. This book looks again at how the World Game has been played, focusing on its architecture, design, and gameplay. With hindsight, the World Game might appear naive, utopian, or technocratic, but we share its problems, if not necessarily its solutions. Such a study will be of interest to scholars working in art history, design history, game studies, media studies, architecture, and the environmental humanities.
This volume examines the impact of wealth on quality of life and subjective well-being (SWB). As wealth is related to economic, environmental and social features of societies, this volume serves as an important resource in understanding economic and SWB. It further discusses a variety of experiences and consequences of inequalities of wealth. Through the availability of wealth data in recent international surveys, this volume explores the multiple relations between wealth and SWB. Structured around four main pillars the book presents analysis of the topic at various levels such as theoretical and conceptual, methodological and empirically, ending with a section on distribution and policies.
The Handbook on Teaching Social Issues, 2nd edition, provides teachers and teacher educators with a comprehensive guide to teaching social issues in the classroom. This second edition re-frames the teaching of social issues with a dedicated emphasis on issues of social justice. It raises the potential for a new and stronger focus on social issues instruction in schools. Contributors include many of the leading experts in the field of social studies education. Issues-centered social studies is an approach to teaching history, government, geography, economics and other subject related courses through a focus on persistent social issues. The emphasis is on problematic questions that need to be addressed and investigated in-depth to increase social understanding, active participation, and social progress. Questions or issues may address problems of the past, present, or future, and involve disagreement over facts, definitions, values, and beliefs arising in the study of any of the social studies disciplines, or other aspects of human affairs. The authors and editor believe that this approach should be at the heart of social studies instruction in schools.
This is the third and final book in the series Transformative Pedagogies in Teacher Education. Like the first two books in the series it is geared towards practitioners in the field of teacher education. This third book focuses on transformative leadership in teacher education. In other words, the kind of leadership and practices that will be important and necessary to bring about the kind of changes that both teachers and students seek to improve educational outcomes for all students, but in particular Black, Indigenous and racialized students who have been traditionally underserved by the education system. Teacher leadership plays an important role in transformative educational change that challenges all forms of oppression and white supremacy. This book features chapters by a collection of scholars, teacher educators, researchers, teacher advocates and practitioners drawing on their research and experiences to explore critical issues in teacher education. The book will be useful to teacher educators working with teacher candidates in different contexts, experienced teachers andschool leaders. Given demographic shifts and the need for educators to respond to growing diversity in schools, educators will find valuable strategies in Transformative Pedagogies in Teacher Education: Re-Imagining Transformative Leadership in Teacher Education they can employ in their own practice. In addition to valuable strategies, authors explore different approaches and perspectives critical in these changing and challenging times. Critical notions of education are posited from different perspectives and contexts. This book will be useful for teacher education programs, principal preparation programs, in-service teachers, school boards and districts engaging in ongoing professional development of teachers and school leaders. |
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