This book explores the ontologies, epistemologies, methodologies, and methods that inform tourism qualitative research conducted either by Asian scholars or non-Asian scholars focusing on Asia. In addition to providing a platform for researchers to publish their qualitative journeys, it aims to encourage further Asian qualitative tourism research production. The book not only includes chapters from Asian scholars but also non-Asian tourism researchers with a focus on Asia, as their chapters are crucial to represent the multiplicity of realities constituting 'Asia'. It is of interest to the whole tourism academic community as it provides novel methodological insights from a non-Western perspective, which at the moment are often silenced by dominant (Western) voices.

A volume in the Chinese American Educational Research and Development Association Book Series Series Editor Jinfa Cai, University of Delaware The book is linked to the annual theme of the 2008 CAERDA International Conference with contributing authors serving as keynote speakers, invited panelists, paper presenters, as well as specialists and educators in the field. The book provides a most comprehensive description of and a theoretically wellinformed and a scholarly cogent account of teaching and learning Chinese in general and in the United States in particular. It examines a wide range of important issues in Chinese teaching and learning: current state in teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL) in the United States, US national standards for learning foreign languages K-12, policy making about how to meet the growing demand for Chinese language and cultural education with regard to a national coordination of efforts, professional teacher training in terms of the quantity and quality of Chinese language teachers at all levels, promotion of early language learning, characteristics of Chinese pedagogy, aspects of Chinese linguistics, methods and methodology in teaching TCSL, techniques and technology in Chinese language education, curriculum and instruction in TCSL, cultural aspects of teaching Chinese as a Second Language, issues in Chinese pedagogy, development of Chinese as a Heritage Language (HL) and the issue of cultural identity for bilingual/multilingual learners (particularly bilingual/multilingual children), testing and evaluation in TCSL, Chinese literacy and reading, approaches to instruction and program design, etc.

An exploration of evaluator role and identity. The areas addressed include: evaluation in an organizational world; evaluation as responsibility, conscience and conviction; the evaluator's role in the transformative context; hidden images of self; and evaluation in dystopian times.

This book focuses on 'research on research methodologies' - an area rarely addressed in social entrepreneurship. Methodological debates are integral to the quest for knowledge and to advancing theories and practices in any field, and, as a multi-disciplinary and emerging field, social entrepreneurship cannot avoid such debates. Providing a fresh perspective on social entrepreneurship research, the book includes contributions from diverse disciplinary settings, e.g. sociology, psychology, social work, anthropology, public policy, economics and management, and discusses the 'methodological challenges' of practice as well as social entrepreneurship research. Rather than favouring any particular method or methodological approach, it acknowledges the diversity of methodological approaches needed to reveal the nuances of social entrepreneurship and promote new knowledge and practices in this promising field.

This unique and well-researched study takes a systematic look at the incredible rise in the life expectancy of the population of Albania, one of the world's poorest countries. Through a careful analysis of newly available archive documents and statistics, Gjon^D,ca examines the social, economic, and political factors behind the success of improving life expectancy at birth from 51 to 71 years in a relatively short period of time and despite extreme poverty and strict isolationist governmental policies. The research, based on data obtained primarily from the Albanian State Archives, which opened in 1994, attempts to explain why the Albanian pattern of mortality, with very high infant and child mortality and very low adult mortality, is so different from that of other East European countries with similar social and economic conditions. Using many tables, figures, and other data to illustrate the trends, the author concludes that lifestyle factors, and to a lesser extent government policies directed at health care, are the most likely determinants of Albania's successful mortality transition. In his attempt to shed new light on the phenomena of Albania's remarkable success in shifting patterns of mortality, the author compares the changes with those experienced by other similar countries in an effort to determine whether the Albanian success was part of an overall improvement among countries that have good health at low cost or if the Albanian way is a novel route to low mortality in developing countries. To support his conclusion that Albania's success largely depended on lifestyle, he carefully examines the changes in disease and infection, dietary patterns and lifestyle, education and urbanization, fertility levels, and regional differences. By providing a brief but detailed background of the country itself, and its policies and programs to promote lower mortality, Gjon^D,ca offers readers an interesting portrait of the transitions that have taken place in this poorest of countries.

This book introduces statistical techniques for the particular needs of historians. The approach is practical and applied; alternative ways of resolving methodological problems are worked through. The emphasis is on applying the fundamentals of statistical theory to the specific research interests of historians and available historical sources. A special feature of the book is a discussion of the historical evolution of statistical techniques as a means of understanding their current applications and interpretations.

School districts today face increasing calls for accountability during a time when budgets are stretched and students' needs have become increasingly complex. The teacher's responsibility is to educate younger people, but now more than ever, teachers face demands on a variety of fronts. In addition to teaching academic content, schools are responsible for students' performance on state-wide tests. They are also asked to play an increasingly larger role in children's well-being, including their nutritional needs and social and emotional welfare. Teachers have shown themselves to be more than capable of taking up such challenges, but what price is paid for the increasing demands we are placing on our schools? Understanding Teacher Stress in an Age of Accountability is about the nature of teachers stress and the resources they can employ to cope with it. Accountability is a two-way street and the authors in this volume suggest remedies for reducing teacher stress and in all likelihood increasing student learning-greater administrative support, more and better instructional materials, specialized resources targeted at demanding children, parental support, and professional recognition. Readers will discover that lack of funding, low pay, concerns about academic performance and student misbehavior, and increased public and governmental scrutiny are not exclusive to the United States. In this volume, the third in a series on Research on Stress and Coping in Education, authors from Australia, Turkey, Malaysia, and the Netherlands sound the same alarms, post the same warnings, and draw similarly disturbing conclusions.

The idea that science is a blueprint for research, and imagination gives research its life and purpose inspired this comprehensive explanation of research methodology. The authors' decades of experience have revealed that research is a craft requiring judgment and creativity, not simply memorization and application of the rules of science. Whether one is conducting an intimate one-on-one interview or a large-scale examination of an entire society, human imagination and scientific principles of inquiry go hand in hand. To that end, this book emphasizes scientific method, but also acknowledges its critics. It covers a wide variety of data-collection techniques, but presents them as reinforcing rather than competing with one another, thus striking a balance between qualitative and quantitative methods. It is designed for students and instructors who want a comprehensive treatment of a variety of research techniques with special emphasis on qualitative approaches.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of public opinion patterns among Muslims, particularly in the Arab world. On the basis of data from the World Values Survey, the Arab Barometer Project and the Arab Opinion Index, it compares the dynamics of Muslim opinion structures with global publics and arrives at social scientific predictions of value changes in the region. Using country factor scores from a variety of surveys, it also develops composite indices of support for democracy and a liberal society on a global level and in the Muslim world, and analyzes a multivariate model of opinion structures in the Arab world, based on over 40 variables from 12 countries in the Arab League and covering 67% of the total population of the Arab countries. While being optimistic about the general, long-term trend towards democracy and the resilience of Arab and Muslim civil society to Islamism, the book also highlights anti-Semitic trends in the region and discusses them in the larger context of xenophobia in traditional societies. In light of the current global confrontation with radical Islamism, this book provides vital material for policy planners, academics and think tanks alike.

As a result of the AIDS epidemic, many nations around the world have faced the demands of caring for a particularly vulnerable population of children, the orphans of parents who have died of AIDS or whose caregivers are terminally ill from the disease. Overcoming AIDS: Lessons Learned from Uganda offers an in-depth exploration of this global issue and provides a broad focus on evolving a constructive response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This collaborative resource is the fourth in the Research in Global Child Advocacy book series, and it offers readers a glimpse into the experience of HIV/AIDS infected and affected people from the perspective of researchers, policy makers, and professionals who diligently work toward crafting a framework for action that is integrated across disciplines. Despite the enormity and intensity of the problem, chapter authors share a commitment to advocate for a better world in which social and economic disparities do not preclude children from experiencing a future that is bright with potential opportunities and hope.

Volume 20 of "Research in Social Stratification and Mobility" continues to remain at the forefront of the diverse group of social scientists who study social inequality and is now the official publication of the Social Stratification Research Group of the International Sociological Association (RC-28). This issue features a comprehensive retrospective on the 40 years of contributions to social stratification research made by the late William Sewell and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Survey, including an all-inclusive bibliography of publications. Other contributions address the growing differences between workers with full-time jobs and various categories of the underemployed (in Israel, the United States and Germany), social mobility in Korea and Sweden, subjective responses to social inequality and the social consequences of status inconsistency, and analyses of class consciousness and growing wealth inequality in the OECD.

The book covers all important topics in the area of Survival Analysis. Each topic has been covered by one or more chapters written by internationally renowned experts. Each chapter provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the topic. Several new illustrative examples have been used to demonstrate the methodologies developed. The book also includes an exhaustive list of important references in the area of Survival Analysis.
.Includes up-to-date reviews on many important topics.
.Chapters written by many internationally renowned experts.
.Some Chapters provide completely new methodologies and analyses.
.Includes some new data and methods of analyzing them.

The proceedings of the 2017 Symposium on Chaos, Complexity and Leadership illuminate current research results and academic work from the fields of physics, mathematics, education, economics, as well as management and social sciences. The text explores chaotic and complex systems, as well as chaos and complexity theory in view of their applicability to management and leadership. This proceedings explores non-linearity as well as data-modelling and simulation in order to uncover new approaches and perspectives. Effort will not be spared in bringing theory into practice while exploring leadership and management-laden concepts. This book will cover the analysis of different chaotic developments from different fields within the concepts of chaos and complexity theory. Researchers and students in the field will find answers to questions surrounding these intertwined and compelling fields.

This is the first international study of maternal care and maternal mortality. Over the last two hundred years, different countries developed quite different systems of maternal care. Death in Childbirth is a meticulously researched analysis, firmly grounded in the available statistics, of the evolution of those systems between 1800 and 1950 in Britain, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, and on the continent of Europe. Irvine Loudon examines the effectiveness of various forms of maternal care by means of the measurement of maternal mortality - the number of women who died as a result of childbirth. His scholarly and comprehensive study sets out to answer a number of important questions. What was the relative risk of a home or hospital delivery, or a delivery by a midwife as opposed to a doctor? What was the safest country in which to have a baby, and what were the factors which accounted for enormous international differences? Why, against all expectations, did maternal mortality fail to decline significantly until the late 1930s? Death in Childbirth makes an invaluable contribution to medical and social history.

There has been a data rush in the past decade brought about by online communication and, in particular, social media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, among others), which promises a new age of digital enlightenment. But social data is compromised: it is being seized by specific economic interests, it leads to a fundamental shift in the relationship between research and the public good, and it fosters new forms of control and surveillance. Compromised Data: From Social Media to Big Data explores how we perform critical research within a compromised social data framework. The expert, international lineup of contributors explores the limits and challenges of social data research in order to invent and develop new modes of doing public research. At its core, this collection argues that we are witnessing a fundamental reshaping of the social through social data mining.

This is the first annotated bibliography to thoroughly cover the research studies on public opinion polls and survey research for the period 1935-1979. In addition to examining the first 45 years of polling and survey research in the United States, Walden provides appendixes on acronyms, source journals, print and CD-ROM sources, organizations associated with the field, and author and selective keyword indexes.

This is the first annotated bibliography to cover the research studies on public opinion polls and survey research for the first 45 years of polling and survey research in the United States. Nearly 7,000 entries are provided, making this the most comprehensive work on the subject. The work is organized by subject, and within each subject or subcategory, alphabetically by author. Use of this work is augmented by appendixes on acronmyms, source journals, print and CD-ROM sources, organizations associated with the field, and author and selective keyword indexes.

Historians and others concerned with the development of polls and surveys will be the main users of this work. Others who will find the volume invaluable include sociologists of science. Collections on communications, modern American society, and politics will find the work of use as well.

This book focuses on photography within the social research field, building a solid foundation for photography as a social research method and describing different techniques and applications of photo research. It provides a comprehensive approach to research photography, from preparation and the ethical considerations that need to be understood prior to going into the field, to collecting data, analysis and preparing research for publication. It also introduces artistic genres of photography to help readers with the choices they make when pursuing photographic research and as a reminder that when collecting photographs that they are in fact producing art. The ethical issues examined place a new focus on dignity and considerations of participant anonymity and recognition, informed consent, working with vulnerable groups, unequal power relationships and possible intervention. Combining preparation and ethics, it examines how best to collect and take good photographs, and explores the practical issues of stigma and introduces Verstaendnis (german: understanding) to aid researchers in the field. Subsequently, the book discusses the different photo-analytical approaches for researchers and provides examples of how to analyse photographs using the different techniques. Lastly, it offers guidelines, with examples, for researchers wanting to publish their work.

Explores the meaning of writing in the post postmodernist moment when master narratives have been questioned and the very act of representing others has been problematized, and discusses some of the key theoretical debates emerging in the aftermath of what came to be known as the postmodernist crisis.

When the author first went to Botswana in the early 1980s to study the impact a major land reform had on rural life in this impoverished African country, social theory and ethnographic practice seemed solid and convincing. A decade later, and again in 1999, she returned to Bostwana and to the Tswapong people whose lives she had shared, and she encountered not only a rapidly shifting social reality, but she also began to ask questions that stemmed from and were shaped by theoretical frames quite different from those she had employed in her earlier work.

At the center of the narrative that runs through this study is a critical reflexive discussion that explores the tension between data recorded at a particular historical moment and the interpretive frames offered to make sense of such data.

The contributors to this volume demonstrate that it is now possible to undertake community prevention trials of alcohol-involved problems with the same precision, good design, and careful planning that has characterized similar prevention trials for heart disease and cancer prevention. This is the first book to establish a scientific basis for the integration of research into program design and in program evaluation, making it possible to determine if community programs are effective or worth the money spent for them.

In part I, the contributors address issues of outcome measures, selection of relevant community interventions, utilization of appropriate research designs and analyses, and adjustment to social and political realities. Part II reviews definitions, perspectives, and issues that provide a conceptual base for the rest of the book. Also considered are the selection and measurement of alcohol problems that may be candidate outcome variables for a community intervention study. Part III summarizes the perspectives and prior experiences of community-based approaches in other health areas (including heart disease, cancer, and adolescent health) that may be applicable to the prevention of alcohol-related problems. Experiences and implications of alcohol-prevention projects in Ontario, Texas, and Rhode Island are discussed in part IV. Part V evaluates different experimental designs, methodologies, and relative risk regression models of community-based intervention programs in alcohol prevention. The two chapters in part VI discuss the dynamic social and political realities facing community prevention trials for alcohol problems and guidelines for undertaking such trials. This book will be useful for state and local prevention program planners and evaluators, researchers in alcohol and substance abuse, teachers of applied research methods or social program development and planning, and government policy makers.