Fliegel overviews and summarizes research on the spread of innovations through rural populations. The volume begins with a look at the discovery of diffusion as a patterned process in the 1940s and examines the creation of the classical model to explain diffusion as a transfer of information. Fliegel then notes how the classical model changed to accommodate the particular socioeconomic condition when the model was applied to developing countries after 1945. He concludes by commenting on the revival of interest in diffusion research, the further development and refinement of the classical model, and the modern emphasis on conservation-oriented innovations rather than on innovations that enhance production. Fliegel overviews and summarizes research on the spread of innovations through rural populations. The volume gives detailed attention to the development and utilization of diffusion research from the 1940s to 1970 and traces the creation of the classical model for explaining the spread of innovations. Because the classical model seemed inadequate when applied to the diffusion of innovations in lesser-developed countries after World War II, the model changed to accommodate new research. The book notes the role of diffusion research in developing countries after the second world war, the change of the classical model to include socioeconomic conditions peculiar to these countries, and the growth and development of diffusion research to the present day. The first part of the book provides an historical survey of diffusion research through 1970. The chapters in this section discuss the discovery of diffusion as a patterned process, the development of the classical model to explain diffusion as an information transfer, and the implementation of diffusion research in developing countries after 1945. The second part, devoted to recent trends, includes chapters on the further development and refinement of the classical model, the revival of interest in diffusion research, and the modern emphasis on conservation-oriented innovations rather than on ones that enhance production. An extensive bibliography concludes this comprehensive study.

This volume covers such topics as varieties in governance reform and political constraint and policy choices in the field of research in consumer behaviour.

Hardbound. In 1997 Science for Peace invited experts on Yugoslavia to Toronto for a conference to discuss the lessons learnt from the Yugoslav conflict and eventual break-up of the former country. Although each expert addressed a specific range of problems, there was also a surprising degree of consensus.Before this book was ready for publication, war broke out in Kosovo and therefore additional papers were invited to analyse the Kosovan conflict. The resulting review of the Yugoslav tragedy is a comprehensive one, representing a variety of perspectives. The issues discussed include the ambiguous state of international law as it applies to disputes over secession; structural features of the society such as the distribution of ethnic groups within enclaves; the impact of foreign countries on Yugoslav politics; Tito's legacy in defining the constitution and decentralising power; the Dayton process and the following Bosnian elections; the conflict

This introductory text is devoted to exposing the underlying nature of price formation in financial markets as a predominantly sociological phenomenon that relates individual decision-making to emergent and co-evolving social and financial structures.

Two different levels of this sociological influence are considered: First, we examine how price formation results from the social dynamics of interacting individuals, where interaction occurs either through the price or by direct communication. Then the same processes are revisited and examined at the level of larger groups of individuals.

In this book, models of both levels of socio-finance are presented, and it is shown, in particular, how complexity theory provides the conceptual and methodological tools needed to understand and describe such phenomena. Accordingly, readers are first given a broad introduction to the standard economic theory of rational financial markets and will come to understand its shortcomings with the help of concrete examples. Complexity theory is then introduced in order to properly account for behavioral decision-making and match the observed market dynamics.

This book is conceived as a primer for newcomers to the field, as well as for practitioners seeking new insights into the field of complexity science applied to socio-economic systems in general, and financial markets and price formation in particular.

In this volume of "Research in the Sociology of Health Care" a variety of topics concerning patients, consumers, providers and caregivers are covered.

In this book new mathematical and statistical techniques that permit more sophisticated analysis are refined and applied to questions of current concern in order to understand the forces that are driving the recent dramatic changes in family patterns. The areas examined include the impact of the evolving Second Demographic Transition, where complex patterns of gender dynamics and social change are re-orienting family life. New analyses of marriage, cohabitation, union dynamics, and union dissolution provide a fresh look at the changing family life cycle, emerging patterns of partner choice, and the impact of union dissolution on the life course. The demography of kinship is explored, and the importance of parity progression to the generation of the kinship web is highlighted. The methodology of population projections by family status is examined, and new results presented that demonstrate how recognizing family status advances long term policy objectives, especially with regard to children and the elderly. This book applies up-to-date methods to examine the demography of the family, and will be of value to sociologists, demographers, and all those who are interested in the family.

This book helps college instructors in all disciplines design library research projects that students will enjoy writing, and faculty will enjoy reading. It is a librarian's contribution to the literature of the Writing Across the Curriculum movement. The ideas and techniques presented are offered not as prescriptions, but as starting points for the construction of projects to meet the needs and use the resources of a wide range of curricula, students, faculty, and libraries. The book helps instructors desing appropriate undergraduate library research projects with specific practical suggestions for selecting and assigning topics and for fully utilizing available library resources. The author also suggests meaningful ways to teach scholarly documentation, and to design plagiarism-proof assignments. Appendices include tips for grading research papers, sample research worksheets, and a sample selection of topics.

The Handbook series provides a compendium of thorough and integrative literature reviews on a diverse array of topics of interest to the higher education scholarly and policy communities. Each chapter provides a comprehensive review of research findings on a selected topic, critiques the research literature in terms of its conceptual and methodological rigor, and sets forth an agenda for future research intended to advance knowledge on the chosen topic.

This volume follows the publication of Rasch Analysis in the Human Sciences. This new book presents additional topics not discussed in the previous volume. It examines key topics such as partial credit analysis of data, common person linking, computing equating constants, investigating discrimination, evaluating dimensionality, how to better utilize Wright Maps, how to design tests and surveys using Rasch theory, and many more. The book includes activities which can be used to practice the theme of each chapter and to test the reader's understanding of Rasch techniques. Beginning and ending with a conversation between two students, each chapter provides clear step-by-step instructions as to how to conduct an analysis using the chapter theme. The chapters emphasize applications for the beginner learning Rasch and provide guidance for composing a write-up of an analysis for a presentation, paper, thesis or report. This book explores in detail many important yet often rarely discussed topics in Rasch. With its easy-to-read language and engaging format it reaches a wide audience of scientists, clinicians, students, researchers and psychometricians, providing a valuable toolkit for practical users of Rasch analysis. - Dr. Eva Fenwick, Clinical Research Fellow, Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI) Assistant Professor, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore It is an easy to read book and provides immediate guidance for those wishing to conduct a Rasch analysis. The "conversations" between students in each chapter provides a welcome introduction to each topic. - Prof. Maik Walpuski, University Duisburg-Essen, Germany The lessons learned in their first book are extended by providing insightful demonstrations of some of the more complex concepts and techniques used in applying Rasch models. - Dr. Michael R. Peabody, National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, Illinois, USA I am amazed with the ability of these authors to communicate complicated knowledge, and the ability to make this highly complicated knowledge accessible to new learners guiding every step of the way. Through this book we get important knowledge about techniques and the different areas of use for Rasch methods in the human sciences This is truly an important book for students and researchers. - Prof. Charlotte Ringsmose, Aalborg University, Denmark

This book explores the main methods, models, and approaches of food consumer science applied to six countries of the Western Balkans, illustrating each of these methods with concrete case studies. Research conducted between 2008 and 2011 in the course of the FOCUS-BALKANS project forms an excellent database for exploring recent changes and trends in food consumption.

This text explores and celebrates imaginative and creative approaches to youth research, showcasing a wide range of innovative methods including music elicitation, mental mapping, blog analysis and mobile methods.

This book provides a benchmark treatise on the relationship between ethnography and interpretive approaches to research in the social sciences by accomplishing four specific objectives. First, it situates ethnography as a research method within a broader field of methodologies, contrasting ethnography conducted and written within an interpretive methodology against ethnography conducted and written within a positivist methodology. Second, it maps the range of approaches to ethnography within an interpretive methodology with a specific emphasis on the stances interpretive ethnographies implicitly or explicitly take on issues of truth and power. Third, it provides readers of interpretive ethnography with major evaluative criteria while simultaneously offering practitioners of interpretive ethnography guidelines for conducting and writing interpretive ethnography. And fourth, it draws on the unique strengths of interpretive ethnography to advance a series of provocations and questions about broader tendencies in mainstream social science research.

In contrast to other treatments of ethnography that either ignore or conflate the relationship between ethnography as a research method and broader interpretive and/or positivist methodologies, Pachirat explicitly emphasizes the distinction between method and methodology in order to underscore the advantages of conducting ethnography within an interpretive framework. Rather than drawing inspiration primarily from abstract philosophical literature, Ethnography and Interpretation relies throughout on discussions of actual, exemplary ethnographies in the social sciences to illustrate and animate its arguments and propositions. This concise volume will be valuable reading for teachers, students, and practitioners of ethnographic research across the social sciences.

This collection on researching later life and ageing critically reflects upon the qualitative methods used in gaining knowledge of under-researched groups of older people and sets out future research agendas.

This is the eighth volume in a series on research in community and mental health.

This is the tenth volume in a series on research in community and mental health.

Drawing on fieldwork in the Herat area, Afghanistan, this book addresses migration patterns throughout three decades of war. It launches a framework for understanding the role of social networks for peoples responses to war and disaster as well as mobilizing or maintaining material resources for security and gathering information.

This is the 13th volume in the series on "Research in Marketing."

Given the extreme variety of research issues under investigation today and the multi-million-dollar industry surrounding research, it becomes extremely important that we ensure that research involving Indigenous peoples is ethically as well as methodologically relevant, according to the needs and desires of Indigenous peoples themselves. This distinctive volume presents Indigenous research as strong and self-determined with theories, ethics and methodologies arising from within unique cultural contexts. Yet the volume makes clear that challenges remain, such as working in mainstream institutions that may not regard the work of Indigenous researchers as legitimate 'science'. In addition, it explores a twenty-first-century challenge for Indigenous people researching with their own people, namely the ethical questions that must be addressed when dealing with Indigenous organisations and tribal corporations that have fought for - and won - power and money. The volume also analyses Indigenous/non-Indigenous research partnerships, outlining how they developed respectful and reciprocal relationships of benefit for all, and argues that these kinds of best practice research guidelines are of value to all research communities.

Macrocomparative researchers use a variety of methodological approaches. This book features analyses of a single substantive topic, comparative employment performance in affluent countries, using three of the most common macrocomparative techniques: pooled cross-section time-series regression, qualitative comparative analysis, and small-N analysis.

When data consist of grouped observations or clusters, and there is a risk that measurements within the same group are not independent, group-specific random effects can be added to a regression model in order to account for such within-group associations. Regression models that contain such group-specific random effects are called mixed-effects regression models, or simply mixed models. Mixed models are a versatile tool that can handle both balanced and unbalanced datasets and that can also be applied when several layers of grouping are present in the data; these layers can either be nested or crossed. In linguistics, as in many other fields, the use of mixed models has gained ground rapidly over the last decade. This methodological evolution enables us to build more sophisticated and arguably more realistic models, but, due to its technical complexity, also introduces new challenges. This volume brings together a number of promising new evolutions in the use of mixed models in linguistics, but also addresses a number of common complications, misunderstandings, and pitfalls. Topics that are covered include the use of huge datasets, dealing with non-linear relations, issues of cross-validation, and issues of model selection and complex random structures. The volume features examples from various subfields in linguistics. The book also provides R code for a wide range of analyses.

Hardbound. Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary series, drawing on contemporary scholarship in such fields as speech communication, education, anthropology, sociology, history, and English. Papers focus on the intersection of interpretive critical theory, qualitative inquiry, culture, media, history, biography and social structure. This international research publication creates a space for the study of those global cultural practices and cultural forms that shape the meanings of race, ethnicity, class, nationality, and gender in the contemporary world.

The market for residential solid waste management and disposal has experienced dramatic changes over the past 20 years. This collection of outstanding published research examines these changes and thoroughly analyzes the strategies popularized by municipal governments over the past two decades. Kerbside recycling, unheard of in the 1970s, is currently available to 46% of Americans. Thousands of towns across the nation have also implemented user fees requiring households to pay a fee for every bag of garbage they generate. These policy shifts have attracted the attention of environmental economists interested in knowing the best strategy for managing solid waste. The editors, both long-time scholars of these trends, offer theoretical solutions for the optimal pricing of garbage and recycling collection. They provide original data collection and suggest appropriate econometric techniques that correct for statistical biases. A policy focus provides information relevant to municipal governments as well as researchers. This excellent volume will be useful for policymakers, students and scholars in environmental economics.

This edited volume offers state-of-the-art research on the dynamics of contemporary fertility by examining the implications of the economic and social forces that are driving the rapid change in fertility behavior, and the changing context, determinants, and measurement of contemporary human reproduction. The volume explores new theoretical avenues that seek to incorporate uncertainty, examine social contagion effects, and explain the rise in childlessness. Reproductive attitudes are re-examined in chapters that deal with models of parenthood and with the persistence of race-ethnic-nativity differences. A new and important subject of multi-partner fertility is also described by examining it in the context of total fertility and from the usually neglected perspective of men. The impact of divorce on fertility, the measurement of childlessness and the postponement of first births, developments in assortative mating and fertility, and current patterns of interracial fertility are also addressed in this volume. By combining up-to-date research spanning the entire field to illuminate contemporary developments, the book is a valuable source for demographers, sociologists, economists, and all those interested in understanding fertility in today's world.