Food Security, Poverty and Nutrition Policy Analysis: Statistical Methods and Applications, Third Edition combines statistical data analysis and computer literacy, applying the results to develop policy alternatives through a series of statistical methods for real world food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty problems. The book presents the latest uses of statistical methods for policy analysis using the open source statistical environment R, in addition to having the original Stata files and applications. A new chapter on obesity brings in new datasets for analysis to effectively demonstrate the use of such data for addressing policy issues. Finally, program evaluation methods which can be directly applied to the data on food security, nutrition, poverty indicators and causal factors are included. This unique, real-world data takes the reader through a "hands-on" approach toward econometric practice whereby they can also test the effects of policy and program interventions. Further, this is the first book to explore actual data with STATA and R statistical packages that also provides a line-by-line guide to the programming and interpretation of results.

More and more doctoral researchers are focusing on the social justice aspects of dissertation research problems and often not well guided for how to incorporate societal change issues within the dissertation format. Due to the current climate, this interest is likely to continue to increase. Many aim to enact change within their discipline, workplace, or communities as they conduct dissertation research across doctoral program areas. This book comprises of a diverse resource of methods strategies to incorporate social justice to prepare doctoral scholars to integrate social justice research within their methodology of choice for use across doctoral disciplines including education, business, social sciences, health sciences, and more. This book prepares doctoral scholars to incorporate research method strategies to address social justice aspects of doctoral research problems and offers diverse examples and illustrations for how, why, and where to incorporate social justice research within the realm of doctoral dissertation research. It incorporates both qualitative and quantitative methods and approaches.

The project “Narrating Africa” began with an international symposium at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach in September 2019 discussing the project and how to narrate Africa from academic perspectives. Scholars from Germany, Switzerland, and Namibia engaged in intense discussions on a wide range of texts, genres, and research methodologies for two days. This book contains some of the papers presented at the 2019 symposium as well as further presentations on narrating Africa.

Like the open-space project, this publication does not presume to give an answer to the difficult question of how to narrate Africa, but rather it seeks to offer further insights into the field with a special focus on Namibian narrations. This book is divided into four different sections. The first part aims to provide an introductory overview to and reflections of the project’s main theme, “narrating Africa”. In part two, identity is explored and re(considered) along various literary texts and with a particular focus on questions of gender. The third part focuses on oral literature and questions of time and memory.

Finally, the last chapters are dedicated to the archive and colonialism, exploring a variety of archive materials in Marbach and in Windhoek and how they take up and shape facts and fantasies of Namibia and Africa.

Communicating Across Differences: Negotiating Identity, Privilege, and Marginalization in the 21st Century presents research and scholarship from a broad range of contributing authors who represent the voices and perspectives of traditionally marginalized and uniquely underrepresented groups. The anthology explores the intersectionality of intercultural communication and cultural studies, blending social science approaches with critical perspectives. Each chapter examines how marginality and privilege pertain to issues surrounding race, gender, sexuality, class, dis/ability, language, inter/nationality, and instruction that are negotiated through the process of communication and media messaging while being framed in hegemonic cultural dynamics. Readers gain insight into the breadth and depth of the intergroup identities that impact our ability to communicate effectively across differences today. Dedicated chapters examine cross-racial communication, racial representation and grouping in news coverage, cultural influences and variations in language usage, power dynamics surrounding disability discourse, instructor immediacy behaviors from the perspective of international students, and more. Designed to help us better understand and respect the cultural, social, and political implications that surround power, privilege, marginalization, and oppression, Communicating Across Differences is a timely and essential resource for courses focusing on diversity, multiculturalism, cultural studies, and intercultural communication.

Regardless of the discipline or country, creating quality education is multifaceted. At the center of any schooling practice are the educators, their schools, and the teacher education programs that license them. As the schools and faculties of education strive to provide the best practices to pre-service or in-service teachers, it becomes more critical to increase the quality of teacher education via various means to keep up with the demands of schooling in the 21st century. Interdisciplinary Approaches Toward Enhancing Teacher Education provides an overview of how innovation and research experience can enhance teacher education programs with a focus on competencies, skills, and strategies future teachers will need to cope with while teaching students' learning with diversity and facing linguistic, social, and environmental challenges. The book particularly investigates the potentiality of educational technology, innovative techniques, and digital storytelling to enhance education and bilingualism in intercultural contexts and multilingual settings. Covering topics that include performance assessment, teacher training, and professional development, and including many practical and diverse examples, this book is intended for TESOL, second or foreign language learning, and CUL programs and teacher-training institutions, as well as teachers, researchers, academicians, and students in interdisciplinary areas that include science, history, geography, language learning, bilingualism, intercultural competencies, classroom interaction, gamification, and educational technology.

If all humor does indeed come from pain, then American educational policymaking has been a petri dish brimming with hilarity. Even before Betsy DeVos ascended to her perch atop the U.S. Department of Education, her predecessors had offered up an excruciating decade of fodder for satire. Ably assisted by a bevy of billionaires, foundations, and advocacy think tanks, these policymakers unleashed a torrent of rhetorical gibberish and evidence-free "innovations" on the nation's children and their schools. Potential Grizzlies: Making the Nonsense Bearable is one researcher's attempt to laugh instead of cry. The book will bring back memories of policymakers from more innocent times, from Michelle Rhee to Arne Duncan to Chris Christie. Sit back and relax with fond thoughts of your favorite policies, from testing to school choice to "parent trigger." Or maybe just smile and imagine a day when policymakers turn to research evidence and knowledgeable educators to build a sound future for our children.

While there are many English books available on academic research methods and philosophy, many complain that they are difficult for budding, non-native English-speaking researchers to use and understand. Rather than hiding behind jargon, writers should describe and define the concepts for the benefit of non-native English speakers. Social Research Methodology and Publishing Results: A Guide to Non-Native English Speakers explains methods commonly used in the field of academic research, provides stimulus to non-native English-speaking researchers for successful implementation of academic research, and meets the need for an appropriate course framework and materials for teaching research methodology. Covering topics such as pragmatism, research design, and empirical modeling, this premier reference source is a dynamic resource for educators and administrators of higher education, pre-service teachers, librarians, teacher educators, non-native English-speaking researchers, and academicians.

European Perceptions of China and Perspectives on the Belt and Road Initiative is a collection of fourteen essays on the way China is perceived in Europe today. These perceptions - and they are multiple - are particularly important to the People's Republic of China as the country grapples with its increasingly prominent role on the international stage, and equally important to Europe as it attempts to come to terms with the technological, social and economic advances of the Belt and Road Initiative. The authors are, on the whole, senior academics specializing in such topics as International Relations and Security, Public Diplomacy, Media and Cultural Studies, and Philosophy and Religion from more than a dozen different European countries and are involved in various international projects focussed on Europe-China relations.

Mapping the Travel Behavior Genome covers the latest research on the biological, motivational, cognitive, situational, and dispositional factors that drive activity-travel behavior. Organized into three sections, Retrospective and Prospective Survey of Travel Behavior Research, New Research Methods and Findings, and Future Research, the chapters of this book provide evidence of progress made in the most recent years in four dimensions of the travel behavior genome. These dimensions are Substantive Problems, Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks, Behavioral Measurement, and Behavioral Analysis. Including the movement of goods as well as the movement of people, the book shows how traveler values, norms, attitudes, perceptions, emotions, feelings, and constraints lead to observed behavior; how to design efficient infrastructure and services to meet tomorrow's needs for accessibility and mobility; how to assess equity and distributional justice; and how to assess and implement policies for improving sustainability and quality of life. Mapping the Travel Behavior Genome examines the paradigm shift toward more dynamic, user-centric, demand-responsive transport services, including the "sharing economy," mobility as a service, automation, and robotics. This volume provides research directions to answer behavioral questions emerging from these upheavals.

Presents a useful guide for applications of SEM whilst systematically demonstrating various SEM models using Mplus Focusing on the conceptual and practical aspects of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), this book demonstrates basic concepts and examples of various SEM models, along with updates on many advanced methods, including confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with categorical items, bifactor model, Bayesian CFA model, item response theory (IRT) model, graded response model (GRM), multiple imputation (MI) of missing values, plausible values of latent variables, moderated mediation model, Bayesian SEM, latent growth modeling (LGM) with individually varying times of observations, dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM), residual dynamic structural equation modeling (RDSEM), testing measurement invariance of instrument with categorical variables, longitudinal latent class analysis (LLCA), latent transition analysis (LTA), growth mixture modeling (GMM) with covariates and distal outcome, manual implementation of the BCH method and the three-step method for mixture modeling, Monte Carlo simulation power analysis for various SEM models, and estimate sample size for latent class analysis (LCA) model. The statistical modeling program Mplus Version 8.2 is featured with all models updated. It provides researchers with a flexible tool that allows them to analyze data with an easy-to-use interface and graphical displays of data and analysis results. Intended as both a teaching resource and a reference guide, and written in non-mathematical terms, Structural Equation Modeling: Applications Using Mplus, 2nd edition provides step-by-step instructions of model specification, estimation, evaluation, and modification. Chapters cover: Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA); Structural Equation Models (SEM); SEM for Longitudinal Data; Multi-Group Models; Mixture Models; and Power Analysis and Sample Size Estimate for SEM. Presents a useful reference guide for applications of SEM while systematically demonstrating various advanced SEM models Discusses and demonstrates various SEM models using both cross-sectional and longitudinal data with both continuous and categorical outcomes Provides step-by-step instructions of model specification and estimation, as well as detailed interpretation of Mplus results using real data sets Introduces different methods for sample size estimate and statistical power analysis for SEM Structural Equation Modeling is an excellent book for researchers and graduate students of SEM who want to understand the theory and learn how to build their own SEM models using Mplus.

The realm of higher education, much like everything else in a global and mobile world, has rapidly altered in the last few decades. More and more universities and seats of higher education are using strategies towards ' 'internationalization'; by increasing heterogeneity in rank, student composition, resource endowments, faculty profiles, and their social spaces. The essays in this volume take a critical look at universities across South Asia, more specifically, at the dynamics of student mobility and mobilizations existing in such localized social spaces, and compares these with their counterparts in universities across the world. While elite universities in South Asia, as elsewhere, have been caught in a stiff international competition and are aspiring for the highest ranks, students from the most excluded communities and remote parts of the country seek entry to badly endowed universities, facing obstacles during their courses, and upon seeking entry into employment. The volume evaluates such universities as spaces for mobility opportunity and mobilizations in a globally networked world. It combines local and international perspectives with thorough observations of the dynamics in localized university spaces while embedding them in transnational processes.

We are living in a digital era in which most of our daily activities take place online. This has created a big data phenomenon that has been subject to scientific research with increasingly available tools and processing power. As a result, a growing number of social science scholars are using computational methods for analyzing social behavior. To further the area, these evolving methods must be made known to sociological research scholars. Opportunities and Challenges for Computational Social Science Methods focuses on the implementation of social science methods and the opportunities and challenges of these methods. This book sheds light on the infrastructure that should be built to gain required skillsets, the tools used in computational social sciences, and the methods developed and applied into computational social sciences. Covering topics like computational communication, ecological cognition, and natural language processing, this book is an essential resource for researchers, data scientists, scholars, students, professors, sociologists, and academicians.