This volume describes the development and application of the Mmogo-method (R) as a projective visual data-gathering method, applied in different contexts and with different groups of people. "Mmogo" means togetherness in Setswana, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa. The Mmogo-method (R) provides a deep understanding of personal, relational and group experiences and is particularly useful in cross-cultural contexts and across age groups. By allowing visual expressions of the self as a complex, dynamic social system it overcomes some of the limitations of traditional data-collection methods, such as questionnaires or interviews. The book draws together contributions by leading social scientists to show how this flexible, visual data-collection method can be used independently or jointly with other data-gathering techniques, such as journalling or in-depth interviewing, to acquire rich information. The research method described here enables investigators to access perceptions, feelings and personal experiences participants might otherwise find hard to verbalize and explain. Researchers in disciplines such as education, social sciences, consumer sciences, market research, and city and town planning will find this book and its innovative method particularly valuable in addressing a gap in available visual and other data collection resources.

This text takes up the debate about matching vocational education with the labour market, and shows progress in terms of theoretical models, tools (transformation and matching processes), and learning environments. The contributions address the concepts of qualifications and skilling, the role, strengths and weaknesses of practical training, models and processes of becoming skilled, and whether or not one should try to plan the content of vocational programmes in accordance with changing qualifications requirements and skill needs in the labour market is the essential question.

What is the relationship between social science research and public health policy, particularly in the developing world? This question is at the heart of this collection of essays drawn from Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored conferences at Harvard University. The book examines the theoretical impact of social science research as well as specific case studies of successful applied research.

Beginning with a section on broad issues and the conceptualization of behavioral change, the volume then examines the anti-smoking movement in the United States; measures to prevent and control HIV infection in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the United States; anti-malaria measures; and the application of dietary management and lot quality assurance sampling to public health issues in Peru. The volume concludes with a section re-examining ways social science research can have an impact on improving public health. Scholars and researchers as well as policy makers involved with health research and international development will find this collection particularly valuable.

The papers contained in this volume are based on the contributions to an international, interdisciplinary Symposium entitled 'Analytical and Sociologi cal Action Theories' which took place in Berlin (West) on September 1-3, 1982. Each part comprises a main paper followed by two (in Part IV three) papers commenting on it. On the whole there is an equal division into philo sophical and sociological papers. In particular each main paper receives both inter- and innerdisciplinary comments. The Berlin Symposium was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Bonn) and, to a smaller extent, by the Freie UniversiHit Berlin; both grants are acknowledged gratefully. Berlin and Helsinki, May 1984 GOTTFRIED SEEBASS RAIMO TUOMELA vii GOTTFRIED SEEBASS INTRODUCTION I. It is a striking fact that the extended efforts of both sociologists and analytical philosophers to work out what is termed a 'theory of action' have taken little, if any, account of each other. Yet of the various reasons for this that come to mind none appears to be such as to foil any hopes for fruitful interdisciplinary exchange. Being concerned, apparently, with the same set of phenomena, viz. individual and social actions, the two theories can reasonably be expected to be partially overlapping as well as competitive and complementary. Accordingly each can eventually be shown by the other to need completion or revision. Whether or to what extent this is the case is subject to inquiry and discussion."

This book deals with the theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications of bounded rationality in the operation of institutions. It focuses on decisions made under uncertainty, and presents a reliable strategy of knowledge acquisition for the design and implementation of decision-support systems. Based on the distinction between the inner and outer environment of decisions, the book explores both the cognitive mechanisms at work when actors decide, and the institutional mechanisms existing among and within organizations that make decisions fairly predictable. While a great deal of work has been done on how organizations act as patterns of events for (boundedly) rational decisions, less effort has been devoted to study under which circumstances organizations cease to act as such reliable mechanisms. Through an empirical strategy on open-ended response data from a survey among junior judges, the work pursues two main goals. The first one is to explore the limits of "institutional rationality" of the Spanish lower courts on-call service, an optimal scenario to observe decision-making under uncertainty. The second aim is to achieve a better understanding of the kind of uncertainty under which inexperienced decision-makers work. This entails exploring the demands imposed by problems and the knowledge needed to deal with them, making this book also a study on expertise achievement in institutional environments. This book combines standard multivariate statistical methods with machine learning techniques such as multidimensional scaling and topic models, treating text as data. Doing so, the book contributes to the collaboration between empirical social scientific approaches and the community of scientists that provide the set of tools and methods to make sense of the fastest growing resource of our time: data.

This sixth volume in the series covers a variety of topics in research in rural sociology and development.

A group of leading sociologists present a new and compelling analysis of social mobility, one of the central topics in contemporary sociology.

This collection demonstrates the use and variety of applications of time use methodology from multidisciplinary, multinational, and multicultural perspectives. A distinguished roster of contributors from such fields as psychology, occupational therapy, sociology, economics, and architecture examines the complex relationship between human time utilization and health and well-being and evaluates the future of time use analysis as a research tool in the social sciences.

Organizations of all kinds struggle to understand, adapt, respond and manipulate changing conditions in their internal and external environments. Approaches based on the causal, linear logic of mechanistic sciences and engineering continue to play an important role, given people's ability to create order. But such approaches are valid only within carefully circumscribed boundaries. They become counterproductive when the same organizations display the highly reflexive, context-dependent, dynamic nature of systems in which agents learn and adapt and new patterns emerge. The rapidly expanding discussion about complex systems offers important contributions to the integration of diverse perspectives and ultimately new insights into organizational effectiveness. There is increasing interest in complexity in mainstream business education, as well as in specialist business disciplines such as knowledge management. Real world systems can't be completely designed, controlled, understood or predicted, even by the so-called sciences of complexity, but they can be more effective when understood as complex systems. While many scientific disciplines explore complexity principally through abstract mathematical models and simulations, Emergence: Complexity & Organization explores the emerging understanding of human systems from both the 'hard' quantitative sciences and the 'soft' qualitative perspectives. This 2007 Annual includes articles from Alice MacGillivray, Dale Lockwood, L. Deborah Sword, Gerald Midgley, Viveca Asporth, Jack Meek, and many more, which explore a range of complexity-related topics from philosophical concerns through to the practical application of complexity ideas, concepts and frameworks in human organizations. Also included are a series of four reproductions of classical papers in the fields of complexity and systems, each with critical introductions that explore their modern relevance: "The Philosophy of the Present" by George Herbert Mead (originally published in 1932), "Emergence" by Michael Polanyi (originally published in 1966), "The Theory of Complex Phenomena" by Friedrich August von Hayek (originally published in 1967), and "The Pretence of Knowledge" by Friedrich August von Hayek (originally published in 1975).

"British Parliamentary Lists, 1660-1800" identifies all known lists - division lists, forecasts, management, and propaganda lists - for the House of Commons between 1660 and 1761; for the House of Lords between 1660 and 1800; and for the Scottish Parliament between 1660 and 1707. This new listing entirely supersedes the 1979 Register of Parliamentary Lists, containing many new lists and additions and corrections to those previously listed. It will also be a useful adjunct to Donald E. Ginter's Voting Records of the British House of Commons, 1761-1820.

This book addresses some of the key questions facing contemporary social scientists. It does so by focusing on international research on identity and social inequality grounded in "race" and ethnic difference. The contributors to the volume, who are drawn from Europe, North America, South Africa, and Australia, reflect on questions from the position of "insiders", in the sense that they are active participants in the research cultures about which they are writing. They ask searching questions about the politics of research finding, the empowerment of minorities and the prospects for meaningful social change. In doing so we gain a fascinating insight into, for example, the position of social scientists in war-torn Serbia, in post-apartheid in South Africa, and in the contemporary US.

Hardbound. This volume contains in-depth or comparative case studies of specific occupations in America and other countries. The special emphasis of this collection is upon unusual occupations and unusually organized occupations. Through the focus on the unusual, our volume brings into focus the usual taken-for-grantedness of the occupational world, which is typically seen only from the focus on prestigious professions. Included are analyses of tattoo artists, exotic dancers, sex workers, correctional officers, catholic liturgists, marginalized computer workers, university professors in foreign military extension programs, product protectors, traveling nurses and clerical temporary workers. The audience for this book includes university students and faculty.

TThis book illustrates recent advances in applications of partial order theory and Hasse diagram techniques to data analysis, mainly in the socio-economic and environmental sciences. For years, partial order theory has been considered a fundamental branch of mathematics of only theoretical interest. In recent years, its effectiveness as a tool for data analysis is increasingly being realized and many applications of partially ordered sets to real problems in statistics and applied sciences have appeared. Main examples pertain to the analysis of complex and multidimensional systems of ordinal data and to problems of multi-criteria decision making, so relevant in social and environmental sciences. Partial Order Concepts in Applied Sciences presents new theoretical and methodological developments in partial order for data analysis, together with a wide range of applications to different topics: multidimensional poverty, economic development, inequality measurement, ecology and pollution, and biology, to mention a few. The book is of interest for applied mathematicians, statisticians, social scientists, environmental scientists and all those aiming at keeping pace with innovation in this interesting, growing and promising research field.

Feminist social scientists often find that carrying feminism into practice in their research is neither easy nor straightforward. Designed precisely with feminist researchers in mind, Feminist Praxis gives detailed analytic accounts of particular examples of feminist research, showing how feminist epistemology can translate into concrete feminist research practices. The contributors, all experts in their field, give practical examples of feminist research practices, covering colonialism, child-minding, gay men, feminist social work, cancer, working with young girls using drama, Marilyn Monroe, statistics - even the writing and reading of research accounts. These detailed accounts are located in relation to the position of feminism and of women generally in the academic world, and looked at in the light of discussions, debates, and controversies about feminist methodology across several disciplines. Feminist Praxis is unique in combining theoretical discussion of feminist methodology with detailed accounts of practical research processes. This blend of the practical and the theoretical will make it an invaluable text for feminists carrying out research at all levels, and it will also appeal to those interested in the relationship between theory, method and feminist epistemology.

"Encyclopedia of the U.S. Census" represents a unique and definitive collaboration among more than 80 leading experts on all aspects of the U.S. Census. Drawing from academia, government, and the private sector, CQ Press and the editorial board have commissioned more than 100 concise, definitive articles on the decennial census and related topics. Subjects covered include: content of the census - what the census tracks, and when it began to ask specific questions, how questions are formulated, and factors that affect which questions are asked, and other types of censuses (housing, economic, and agricultural); procedure - how the census is planned, advertised, and conducted, state and local involvement, and how results are tabulated and stored; and uses of the census - publications, databases, and electronic products that provide census information for statistical and demographic research, and archiving of census records and genealogical use of census schedules. It also includes: census history - census taking in America from colonial times to the present and at each census, population trends over time, including changes in family composition, racial and ethnic groups, and the social, economic, and educational status of the population; politics of the census - effect of census data on congressional districts and funding of federal programs, controversies: from slavery and the three-fifths compromise in 1790, to the use of statistical sampling in 2000. Other features include a 16-page photo collection that visually shows the census evolution, and an extensive glossary of terms, as well as an appendix of useful information and a detailed index round out the volume. Most articles include references for further reading; many also point the reader to online resources for census information.

"Systemic Action Research" works with real social and organisational issues to uncover their complex dynamics, often revealing unexpected opportunities. This book shows how this process can be integrated, in any context, to the process of social and organisational development and change. The book explains how systemic thinking works and how Systemic Action Research can be embedded into organisational structures and processes to catalyse sustainable change and critical local interventions. Practically written, it details how to design a programme and build it directly into policy and practice development, extending the possibilities of action research beyond the 'individual' and the 'group' to work across whole organisations, multi agency governance arenas, and networks.The book is filled with illustrative stories and pictures which bring the concepts to life enabling the reader to develop a clear picture of how to put it into practice. Systemic Action Research programmes are now being adopted in Government and local governance contexts as well as in national and international NGOs. This book will be invaluable for experienced action researchers as well as social science and social policy researchers who will benefit from an approach to qualitative research which is participative, grounded in practice and allows systemic understandings of complex problems. Policy makers and practitioners will appreciate a process which generates meaningful evidence about the dynamics of change and offers a tangible system for continuously integrating that learning into both formal and informal decision-making.

What factors influence the relationship of a newly married couple? Do these factors change as the marriage matures? The authors of this book examine the determinants of marital instability in the early years of marriage. Conclusions are based on the results of a survey of 199 black couples and 174 white couples throughout the first four years of marriage. Findings focus on attitudes, perceptions, and feelings spouses have for each other and the manner in which they interact. Some of the topics discussed in the survey include: length of courtship, educational differences, religion, and family involvement. The findings show what effect these and other factors have on a marriage.

Definitive analyses of transboundary water management in Latin America are conspicuous by their absence. The situation is a little better for rivers compared to groundwater resources. Transboundary water management in Latin America has been evolving in a somewhat different manner compared to other continents.

The book includes eight authoritative case studies of Latin American transboundary rivers and aquifers, as well as a thinkpiece on the complexities of managing aquifers based on global experiences. The case studies are of different scales, ranging from the mighty Amazon to small Silala. The overall focus of the book is on ways in which such difficult and complex rivers and aquifers that are shared by two or more countries can be managed efficiently and equitably, and on the lessons, both positive and negative, that other regions can learn from the Latin American experience.

This book was published as a special issue of the "International Journal of Water Resources Development."

This practical, user-friendly guide examines ethics in research. It helps researchers to manage ethical dilemmas that arise while research is being planned, conducted and reported and includes a unique 'ethical review checklist', as well as other useful features, to aid ethics in practice.

Review: This book is an easy and informative read - an excellent introduction to SPSS for the novice, and a handy reference guide for the more experienced user who needs to refresh their memory. ---Dr Helen Kara, We Research It This book offers a quick, down to earth, explanation of everything you could possibly want to achieve using SPSS. It's as if the author understands my concerns as I read the book. - Stepan Stasishyn (Amazon review) Cole Davis's new book is practical, well written and very reader friendly, especially by those who are not or would not describe themselves as mathematicians or skilled in the science of numbers. For those wanting to use SPSS, this book clearly explains what the software can do and how to achieve its potential. I particularly liked the way the book does not assume (as so many manuals do) that we are all familiar with statistical terms. It explains what they mean and offers practical examples of how they are used. As a freelance researcher engaged in many areas of social investigation, I would strongly recommend this book both as a practical and easy to understand guide to the use of SPSS but also for its valuable introduction to data analysis and statistics. Geraldine Pettersson, Social Researcher

Why do people rebel? This is one of the most important questions historians and social scientists have been grappling with over the years. It is a question to which no satisfactory answer has been found, despite more than a century of research. However, in most cases the research has focused on what people do if they rebel but hardly ever, why they rebel. The essays in this volume offer an alternative perspective, based on the question at what point families decided to add collective action to their repertoires of survival strategies, In this way this volume opens up a promising new field of historical research: the intersection of labour and family history. The authors offer fascinating case studies in several countries spanning over four continents during the last two centuries. In an extensive introduction the relevant literature on households and collective action is discussed, and the volume is rounded off by a conclusion that provides methodological and theoretical suggestions for the further exploration of this new field in social history.

This book introduces the theory of stochastic processes with applications taken from physics and finance. Fundamental concepts like the random walk or Brownian motion but also Levy-stable distributions are discussed. Applications are selected to show the interdisciplinary character of the concepts and methods. In the second edition of the book a discussion of extreme events ranging from their mathematical definition to their importance for financial crashes was included. The exposition of basic notions of probability theory and the Brownian motion problem as well as the relation between conservative diffusion processes and quantum mechanics is expanded. The second edition also enlarges the treatment of financial markets. Beyond a presentation of geometric Brownian motion and the Black-Scholes approach to option pricing as well as the econophysics analysis of the stylized facts of financial markets, an introduction to agent based modeling approaches is given.

Over the last fifty years advanced mathematical tools have become an integral part in the development of modern economic theory. Economists continue to invoke sophisticated mathematical techniques and ideas in order to understand complex economic and social problems. In the last ten years the theory of Riesz spaces (vector lattices) has been successfully applied to economic theory. By now it is understood relatively well that the lattice structure of Riesz spaces can be employed to capture and interpret several economic notions. On April 16-20, 1990, a small conference on Riesz Spaces, Positive Opera tors, and their Applications to Economics took place at the California Institute of Technology. The purpose of the conference was to bring mathematicians special ized in Riesz Spaces and economists specialized in General Equilibrium together to exchange ideas and advance the interdisciplinary cooperation between math ematicians and economists. This volume is a collection of papers that represent the talks and discussions of the participants at the week-long conference. We take this opportunity to thank all the participants of the conference, especially those whose articles are contained in this volume. We also greatly ap preciate the financial support provided by the California Institute of Technology. In particular, we express our sincerest thanks to David Grether, John Ledyard, and David Wales for their support. Finally, we would like to thank Susan Davis, Victoria Mason, and Marge D'Elia who handled the delicate logistics for the smooth running of the confer ence."

This book is concerned with the universality of wellbeing indicators. It provides contributions from international scholars in the field of quality of life and subjective well-being. The book provides substantial conceptual coverage on issues relating to the universality of subjective wellbeing including detailed discussion of central underlying mechanisms and processes involved in subjective wellbeing. The main topics covered include: the theoretical bases for the measurement of quality of life, the affective dimension in quality of life, the roles of homeostasis and personality in the processes of quality of life assessment and maintenance, the impact of factors including residential care, economic wealth, and work-related variables on subjective wellbeing. The book is of interest to all who want to develop their understanding of the universality, assessment, development and maintenance of subjective wellbeing.