This volume provides an overview of the ways the Italian school of quality of life studies addresses well-being and quality of life, from both a substantive and a methodological point of view. It discusses various topics such as those of equitable and sustainable wellbeing, lifestyles, the organization of economy and welfare, as well as aspects related to the measurement of quality of life in small towns, institutional transparency and corruption prevention indicators. Chapters presented in this volume are drawn from papers presented at the conferences of the Italian Association for Quality of Life Studies (AIQUAV) held in Florence, Italy, in 2015 and 2016. The volume is organised into three parts. The first part is devoted to methods and indicators for research on quality of life, the second part to social sustainability, lifestyles, cultural aspects and local applications, and the third to economy, welfare and quality of life. The volume hosts contributions that are interdisciplinary in scope and mirror the complexity of the globalized world.

The social-research organization Mass-Observation was founded in 1937. In this book, the true extent and significance of Mass-Observation's unique role in the formation of postwar Britain's idea of itself through the examination of everyday life across the long twentieth century. An excellent guide to Mass-Observation and the period generally, this scholarly work also provides surprising insights into the role social research has played in the development of policy and mass democracy.

Biographical data provide unique insights into social life, but they also pose some significant challenges for social science researchers. This book offers a systematic, flexible guide to using biographical narrative methods in your research project. Drawing upon the authors' own research, as well as case studies from a range of international contexts and disciplines, the book illustrates how biographical approaches can be tailored to different research questions and environments. This book will help you to: * Navigate any complexities or missteps when undertaking real-world research * Apply your analytical and research tools to your research question * Choose the right research design for your project, whether single or mixed methods * Ground your understanding within diverse real-world research examples. Clear, adaptable, and applied, this is your definitive guide to working with biographical methods.

The book considers issues relating to accountability in social research by juxtaposing seven ways of approaching the issues and by moving toward the development of a particular approach to the earning of trust on the part of researchers. A conception of the practice and assessment of discursive accountability is presented as an option for consideration. The book grapples with the issue of accountability in social research by considering the extent to which and ways in which it is addressed in a number of different positions regarding the practice of social science. The focus of the book is on reviewing discourses around the practice of professional' inquiry, with a view to highlighting differing arguments around the question of what it might mean to assess researchers' accountabilities. The book is structured around considering in detail various views on accountability in relation to one another. A comprehensive comparison of arguments is presented in the first two chapters of the book. The debate that is set up in the first two chapters forms the background to the elaboration and development (in Chapter 3) of constructivist argumentation in relation to the question of how accounts as set forth by researchers should be treated (by colleagues, participants, and other audiences). The continuing debate about the status to be afforded to constructions developed by researchers is tackled in this chapter. Constructivist thinking is then extended toward what is named in the book a trusting constructivist' position. This position focuses on ways in which trust earning and trust awarding in the context of social inquiry can proceed without researchers having to justify themselves as striving togain access to knowledge as representation of reality. Through the development of the trusting constructivist position, the book explores ways of creating trust through processes of social discourse. An assessment of actual research projects in view of the debates set up in earlier chapters then takes place. Through these assessments readers can relate the details of the arguments developed in earlier chapters to their implications for judging the practice of (accountable) social inquiry.

This volume is divided into two sections, the first presenting work by urban ecologists, the second presenting work by persons working within the broad contours of the new urban sociology. Each section contains chapters written by well-known scholars as well as promising young authors. The resulting essays allow not only a comparison of theoretical perspectives but also of the ways in which proponents of each perspective see the field developing in the future. The final section of the volume includes an article by William Flanagan, author of "Urban Sociology: Images and Structure," the only textbook in urban sociology which makes an effort to systematically incorporate both the structural (new urban sociology) and cultural (human ecology) approaches in the field.

The relationship between theory and practice, research and action, is fundamental to all fields of applied social science. Should research findings and knowledge be useful for science, practice, and policy? If so, how should such research be designed, carried out and disseminated to achieve the twin goals of rigor and relevance? These challenges are particularly relevant in the applied areas of management and organization studies where there is a distinct responsibility for researchers to engage with the "real world." In this carefully crafted and thoughtful book, leading management researcher Andrew Van de Ven both presents the broad intellectual challenge of "engaged scholarship," and also sets out a clear framework and guidelines for carrying out soundly based and useful research for advancing both science and practice.
At a time when some may question the value and status of academic knowledge; and others, contrastingly, urge a closer relationship between researchers and research users--be they businesses, governments or other institutions--the challenge of engaged scholarship is as relevant as ever, and there is a real need for the thoughtful and considered approach offered by Van de Ven. The book both provides a manifesto for engaged scholarship in the social sciences, and clear framework for research design and methodology. It will be an invaluable reference point and guide for academics, researchers and graduate students across the social sciences concerned with rigorous and relevant research in the contemporary world.

This is the 15th volume in a series of studies on research in marketing.

This volume aims to provide consolidated analyses of the 2019 European elections and explanations about the future of the European party system, in a context in which the EU has to face many challenges, including the erosion of electoral support for mainstream parties and the increasing success of populist parties. The structure of the book is designed to combine the overall view on the role of elections in shaping the future European project with relevant case studies. The reader is given a perspective not only on the results of the European Parliament elections as such, but also on how these results are related to national trends which pre-exist and what kind of collateral effects on the quality of democracy they could have. Contributors include: Jan Biba, Sorin Bocancea, Dora Bokay, Radu Carp, Jozsef Duro, Tomas Dvorak, Alexandra Alina Iancu, Ruxandra Ivan, Petra Jankovska, Malgorzata Madej, Cristina Matiuta, Sergiu Miscoiu, Valentin Naumescu, Gianluca Piccolino, Leonardo Puleo, Alexandru Radu, Mihai Sebe, Sorina Soare, Tobias Spoeri, Jeremias Stadlmair, Martin Stefek, Piotr Sula, and Jaroslav Usiak.

This volume presents research focusing on environmental issues, local community and global changes resulting from socioeconomic and political forces in advanced industrialized societies. Some of the changing perceptions of technology in the environmental movement, ecological concerns, and policy issues are examined. Case studies of community problems and community development efforts are discussed within the context of local-global environmental nexus and quality of community life.

This book analyzes the main post-war features of consumption. It traces the historical development of consumption and discusses the major contributions made by sociologists in discussing the subject. Robert Bocock is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Open University.

Hardbound. Advances in Social Science Methodology: Volume 4 is separated into two parts: factor analytic methods and non-factor analytic methods. The first section begins with an examination of basic issues in classical measurement and correlation, forming a foundation for subsequent discussions. Further chapters discuss explained-variance partitioning, repeated measures designs, canonical correlation analyses and selected parametric solutions to the Behrens-Fisher problem.Part two focuses on diverse aspects of factor analysis including an exploration of contemporary analytic and reporting practices in counselling psychology research, factor analyses of entities other than variables, confirmatory extraction and rotation and finally, an incisive treatment of higher-order exploratory methods.

This important book provides a systematic and quantitative analysis of the development of the software industry: the major growth industry in advanced economies of the world. It presents the results of a comprehensive set of industry surveys to shed light on the differences in specialization and performance of US and European software firms. Salvatore Torrisi analyses the development of the software industry within the context of theories of technical change. He interprets exhaustive surveys of firms participating in software industries conducted between 1990 and 1997. These reveal the main characteristics of innovation activities in software, including the characteristics of product and process innovations, the sources of technological change within firms, the instruments for the protection of innovation and the nature of innovative skills. The author also compares the historical evolution of software activities in Europe and in the United States and explains the differences in specialization and performance in terms of the geographical proximity to leading hardware manufacturers, the size of the domestic market, regulation and public policies, including property rights and anti-trust. This unparalleled book will be required reading for academics interested in industrial organisation and the economics of innovation.

This manual walks students through the procedures for analysis in SPSS and provides exercises that go hand-in-hand with online data sets. The manual complements the textbook Understanding Political Science Statistics: Observations and Expectations in Political Analysis, by Peter Galderisi, making it easy to use alongside the book in a course or as a stand-alone guide to using SPSS. Galderisi demonstrates how to use both syntax and GUI driven formats and shows sample results of the analyses. Filled with annotated screenshots from SPSS version 22 (but compatible with all versions, including the student version), the students will be guided through standard processes replete with examples and exercises to ready them for future work in political science research. The diverse group of data sets provided include subsamples of both the 2008 and 2012 American National Election Studies, a Eurobarometer survey, single year and longitudinal congressional district files, the 2012 Comparative Congressional Election Study data set, and a comparative, crossnational country file. Versions with reduced case numbers and variables are also included that are compatible with the student version. This manual (and a parallel Stata manual) are available as stand-alone products or packaged with the textbook Understanding Political Science Statistics.

Community-based research (CBR) is the most commonly used method for serving community needs and effecting change through authentic, ethical, and meaningful social research. In this brief introduction to CBR, the real-world approach of noted experts Vera Caine and Judy Mill helps novice researchers understand the promise and perils of engaging in this research tradition. This book * outlines the basic steps and issues in the CBR process-from collaboratively designing and conducting the research with community members to building community capacity; * covers how to negotiate complicated questions of researcher control and ethics; * includes a chapter written by community partners, among the examples from numerous projects from around the world.

This book gives an overview of the state of the art in five different approaches to social science simulation on the individual level. The volume contains microanalytical simulation models designed for policy implementation and evaluation, multilevel simulation methods designed for detecting emergent phenomena, dynamical game theory applications, the use of cellular automata to explain the emergence of structure in social systems, and multi-agent models using the experience from distributed artificial intelligence applied to special phenomena. The book collects the results of an international conference which brought together social scientists and computer scientists both engaged in a wide range of simulation approaches for the first time.

The study of quality of urban life involves both an objective approach to analysis using spatially aggregated secondary data and a subjective approach using unit record survey data whereby people provide subjective evaluations of QOL domains. This book provides a comprehensive overview of theoretical perspectives on QOUL and methodological approaches to research design to investigate QOUL and measure QOL dimensions. It incorporates empirical investigations into QOUL in a range of cities across the world.

Published annually since 1985, the Handbook series provides a compendium of thorough and integrative literature reviews. These cover a diverse array of topics of interest to the higher education scholarly and policy communities.

Experimental Econophysics describes the method of controlled human experiments, which is developed by physicists to study some problems in economics or finance, namely, stylized facts, fluctuation phenomena, herd behavior, contrarian behavior, hedge behavior, cooperation, business cycles, partial information, risk management, and stock prediction. Experimental econophysics together with empirical econophysics are two branches of the field of econophysics. The latter one has been extensively discussed in the existing books, while the former one has been seldom touched. In this book, the author will focus on the branch of experimental econophysics. Empirical econophysics is based on the analysis of data in real markets by using some statistical tools borrowed from traditional statistical physics. Differently, inspired by the role of controlled experiments and system modelling (for computer simulations and/or analytical theory) in developing modern physics, experimental econophysics specially relies on controlled human experiments in the laboratory (producing data for analysis) together with agent-based modelling (for computer simulations and/or analytical theory), with an aim at revealing the general cause-effect relationship between specific parameters and emergent properties of real economic/financial markets. This book covers the basic concepts, experimental methods, modelling approaches, and latest progress in the field of experimental econophysics.

This volume examines research in corporate social performance and policy. Topics covered in this volume include: political strategies and industry environments; evaluating corporate claims of social responsibility and self-deception; and, interviews with the founders of the Sim Oral History Project.

An increasing interest in children's lives has tested the ethical and practical limits of research. Rather than making tricky ethical decisions, transparent researchers tend to gloss over stories that do not fit with sanitized narratives. This book aims to fill this gap by making explicit the lived experiences of research with children.

The American Educational History Journal is a peer reviewed national research journal devoted to the examination of educational topics using perspectives from a variety of disciplines. The editors of ""AEHJ"" encourage communication between scholars from numerous disciplines, nationalities, institutions, and backgrounds. Its authors come from a variety of disciplines including political science, curriculum, history, philosophy, teacher education, and educational leadership. Acceptance for publication in ""AEHJ"" requires that each author present a well-articulated argument that deals substantively with questions of educational history.

This book is devoted to Corrado Gini, father of the Italian statistical school. It celebrates the 50th anniversary of his death by bearing witness to the continuing extraordinary scientific relevance of his interdisciplinary interests. The book comprises a selection of the papers presented at the conference of the Italian Statistical Society, Statistics and Demography - the Legacy of Corrado Gini, held in Treviso in September 2015. The work covers many topics linked to Gini's scientific legacy, ranging from the theory of statistical inference to multivariate statistical analysis, demography and sociology. In this volume, readers will find many interesting contributions on entropy measures, permutation procedures for the heterogeneity test, robust estimation of skew-normal parameters, S-weighted estimator, measures of multidimensional performance using Gini's delta, small-sample confidence intervals for Gini's gamma index, Bayesian estimation of the Gini-Simpson index, spatial residential patterns of selected foreign groups, minority segregation processes, dynamic time warping to study cruise tourism, and financial stress spill over. This book will appeal to all statisticians, demographers, economists, and sociologists interested in the field.

The contingent valuation technique for measuring the economic value of environmental goods and services has become increasingly popular in recent years and has many advantages over other revealed or stated preference methods. It has been criticised, however, for being inconsistent with economic theory by reflecting altruistic motives and moral obligations. This book examines the role of the 'warmglow' effect (the pleasure derived from giving to good causes or being concerned about the environment) in contingent valuation studies and examines whether warmglow is an underlying force in CV responses. The author argues that if the empirical evidence suggests that warmglow is important, then its magnitude needs to be assessed in the valuation function. The ultimate goal is to disentangle the warmglow effect from the original 'willingness-to-pay' mean estimates and compute a dry estimate, free from any warmglow. The author conducts a CV application in a Portuguese natural park to test the validity of this approach. He tests the premise that the financial contribution by itself constitutes a source of well-being to the respondent and also discusses whether the warm glow component should or should not be included when formulating benefit-cost analysis and environmental policy. This innovative book will be essential reading to all students and scholars of the economics of environmental valuation.

This book about the philosophy of science is the second out of four volumes by Richard Ned Lebow in this book series. It not only provides a useful overview of this broad topic, but also provides deeper insight into specific topics like the philosophy of science causation, epistemology and methods, and especially on counter factual analysis.

Even today, many people think of 'social problems' as involving poor and powerless individuals in society. "Research in Social Problems and Public Policy" seeks to improve the balance by adding a focus on important and powerful institutions. Such organizations often play key roles in managing, and mismanaging, the ways in which some of today's most important social problems are handled by the public policy system. The papers discuss policy sciences, public policy analysis and public management, addressing operations and design issues for government organizations.