The use of Bayesian statistics has grown significantly in recent years, and will undoubtedly continue to do so. Applied Bayesian Modelling is the follow-up to the author’s best selling book, Bayesian Statistical Modelling, and focuses on the potential applications of Bayesian techniques in a wide range of important topics in the social and health sciences. The applications are illustrated through many real-life examples and software implementation in WINBUGS – a popular software package that offers a simplified and flexible approach to statistical modelling. The book gives detailed explanations for each example – explaining fully the choice of model for each particular problem. The book

The book provides a good introduction to Bayesian modelling and data analysis for a wide range of people involved in applied statistical analysis, including researchers and students from statistics, and the health and social sciences. The wealth of examples makes this book an ideal reference for anyone involved in statistical modelling and analysis.

As the world entered the twenty-first century, global skill shortages in many occupations were evident throughout the world. While these were mitigated by a global recession, there is no generally agreed upon method for measuring these shortages. This book discusses various theories for measurement. Using data collected from 19 developed countries in North and Latin America, Europe, and the Pacific region, the authors explore various aspects of skilled labor shortages, develop a methodology of measuring shortages by occupation, and provide estimates of the likelihood of the occurrence of such shortages. They develop labor market indicators which measure the degree of shortage or surplus in different occupations. The study covers as many as 49 occupational groups, although the number varies by country. The indicators are compared to anecdotal reports about shortages in the countries studied as well as correlated with various economic, political and institutional indicators. Some occupations such as CEO's, health professionals and computer scientists were common across many countries studied and part of a global shortage. Scholars, government officials, students and corporate and union representatives concerned with employment, labor and training policies and issues will find the data and analysis in this book a valuable addition to their knowledge.

This study reflects a growing recognition of the contribution that studies of the post-war "welfare state" can make to contemporary debates about the restructuring of welfare. Drawing on the community care debates from 1971 to 1993, it illuminates contemporary concerns about such key issues as rationing care, the health and social care divide, the changing role of residential care and the growing emphasis on provider competition "From community care to market care?" focuses on the interpretation and development of national policy at local authority level in four contrasting local authorities. The authors outline the development of welfare services for older people from 1971 to 1993, and explore whether service developments in this period were as inadequate as claimed by the proponents of radical change. The continuities and changes in the pre- and post-1990 NHS and Community Care Act systems of community care are also examined The results of the study should make a significant contribution to the community care provision for older people. The book will be of interest to academic, policy and practitioner audiences.

The book is about the history of MI6, also called SIS, from he foundation to the ultimate events.

The diagnosis of social pathologies has long been a central concern for social researchers working within, and on the peripheries of, Critical Theory. As this volume will elaborate, the pathology diagnosing imagination enables a "thicker" form of social critique, fostering research that pushes beyond the parameters of liberal social and political thought. Faced with impending climatic catastrophe, the accelerating inequities of neoliberalism, the ascent of authoritarian movements globally, and one-dimensional computational modes of thought, a viable form of normative social critique is now more important than ever. The central aim of this volume is thus to champion the pathology diagnosing imagination as a vehicle for conducting such timely social criticism.

White educators comprise between 85-92 percent of the current teaching force in the United States, yet in the race toward leaving no child behind, contemporary educational research often invests significant time and energy looking for ways to reach students who represent difference without examining the nature of those who do the work of educating the nation's public school children. Educational research that has looked at racial identity is often void of earnest discussion of the identity of the teachers, how that identity impacts teacher beliefs about students and families, and ultimately how teachers frame their understanding of the profession. This book takes readers on a journey to explore the nature of pre-service teachers' narratives as a means of better understanding racial identity and the way teachers enter the profession. Through a case study analysis approach, Examining White Racial Identity and Profession with Pre-service Teachers examines the nature of white racial identity as seen through the narratives of nine pre-service teachers as well as his own struggles with racial identity. This text draws on racial identity, critical race theory, and discourse and narrative analysis to reveal how participants in the study used discourse structures to present beliefs about race and their own understandings and ultimately how the teachers' narratives display underdeveloped understandings of their choices to become educators. Fasching-Varner also critically examines his own racial identity auto-ethnographically, and ultimately proposes a new, non-developmental model for thinking about white racial identity. This text aims to help teacher educators and teachers to work against the privileges of whiteness so as to better engage students in culturally relevant ways.

A Most Human Enterprise looks at controversial social science research methods and their effects on subjects and researchers. In detailing case studies in which plagiarism was alleged, subjects were mislead or seriously abused, and research denigrated certain demographics, Donald O. Granberg and John F. Galliher demonstrate how social scientists have strayed from the ethical standards of scientific research. Case studies include the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the well-known pseudo-prison work of Philip Zimbardo, the obedience research of Stanley Milgram, and the study of sex in public places by sociologist Laud Humphreys. Many of the studies that were most damaging to human subjects were funded by government, making the current concerns of university Institutional Review Boards seem ironic. A Most Human Enterprise also investigates consequences of plagiarism in the social sciences, the role that whistle blowers can play, and the consequences of their acts. Humans are, of course, capable of lofty and amazing accomplishments. Yet they are, nevertheless, also subject to bias, prejudice, ego involvement, and poor judgment. This book demonstrates the inadequacy of Institutional Review Boards in limiting ethical lapses in the social sciences, and seeks to create a reader more sensitive to the problems and pitfalls that arise in the course of doing social research.

Social (psychological and sociological) systems present considerable difficulties for modellers due to their complexity, multidimensionality, uncertainty and irreducibility. The book proposes that response functions (MRF) be used as a method of constructing purposeful, credible and integrated social systems' models from data and prior knowledge or information. For case studies the authors have selected the problems usually studied by psychologists and sociologists with statistical procedures, such as investigation of variance and discriminant analysis based on the general linear model or one of its multivariate generalisations (structural equation models, etc.); disordered eating and obesity; subjective well-being and alexithymia. An accompanying CD-ROM contains the demonstration versions of three models that are discussed in the various chapters. The Method of Response Functions in Psychology and Sociology is aimed at Mathematical Psychologists; Mathematical Sociologists; Applied Psychologists; Sociologists and Social Practitioners. It will also be suitable for use on undergraduate as well as graduate and postgraduate courses specializing in these areas.

Zombies are everywhere these days. We are consuming zombies as much as they are said to be consuming us in mediated apocalyptic scenarios on popular television shows, video game franchises and movies. The zombie industry generates billions a year through media texts and other cultural manifestations (zombie races and zombie-themed parks, to name a few). Zombies, like vampires, werewolves, witches and wizards, have become both big dollars for cultural producers and the subject of audience fascination and fetishization. With popular television shows such as AMC s The Walking Dead (based on the popular graphic novel) and movie franchises such as the ones pioneered by George Romero, global fascination with zombies does not show signs of diminishing. In The Thinking Dead: What the Zombie Apocalypse Means, edited by Murali Balaji, scholars ask why our culture has becomes so fascinated by the zombie apocalypse. Essays address this question from a range of theoretical perspectives that tie our consumption of zombies to larger narratives of race, gender, sexuality, politics, economics and the end of the world. Thinking Dead brings together an array of media and cultural studies scholars whose contributions to understanding our obsession with zombies will far outlast the current trends of zombie popularity.

This book acts as an introductory guide to understanding and using the mapping sentence as a tool in social science and humanities research. The book fills the need for a concise text that simply instructs how and when to use a mapping sentence and provides practical examples. Mapping sentences are a major research component and tool of facet theory. The book begins by covering the background to mapping sentence, including the philosophy and theory underpinning it. The following chapter discuss what mapping sentence is, what different kinds of mapping sentences exist, and knowing when and which to use it in a given situation. The book then moves into describing how to write a mapping sentence and how to analyse the information gained from mapping sentence research. It ends with a consideration of the future developments of mapping sentences and their applications across the social sciences and humanities, including in particular psychology, marketing, behavioural biology, art and health.

A volume in International Research on School Leadership Series Editors Alan R. Shoho and Bruce Barnett, University of Texas at San Antonio and Autumn Tooms, University of Tennessee This book series, International Research on School Leadership focuses on how present-day issues affect the theory and practice of school leadership. For the inaugural book, we focused on the challenges facing new principals and headteachers. Because the professional lives of school leaders have increasingly impinged on their personal well-being and resources have continued to shrink, it is important to understand how new principals or headteachers share and divide their energy, ideas, and time within the school day. It is also important to discover ways to provide professional development and support for new principals and headteachers as they strive to lead their schools in the twenty-first century. For these reasons, The Challenges for New Principals in the Twenty-First Century: Developing Leadership Capabilities Through Professional Support is dedicated to exploring the rarely-examined experiences of those who enter the role as new principals or headteachers. By giving voice to new principals and headteachers, we are able to determine what aspects of leadership preparation ring true and what aspects prove to be of little or no utility. Unlike leadership texts that focus on conceptual considerations and personal narratives from the field, this book highlights a collection of empirical efforts centered on the challenges and issues that new principals and headteachers experience during their initial and crucial years of induction. We solicited and accepted manuscripts that explore the multi-faceted dimensions of being a new principal or headteacher in the twenty-first century. Our goal was to create an edited book that examines the commonalities and differences that new principals and headteachers experience from an international perspective. This edited book is comprised of six chapters, each of which contributes an unique perspective on the responsibilities that new principals and headteachers are experiencing at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Entrepreneurial Competition and Industrial Location explores the notion of entrepreneurial competition from its theoretical foundations in early Austrian and contemporary evolutionary economics. Focusing on the structural development of the intangible factors of production such as labour skills, advertising and research and development, the book's empirical implications are tested in a comparative study of competitive performance in the EU, Japan and the USA. Typical mechanisms of external spillovers, shaping industrial location by means of Marshallian cluster formation, highlight the dimension of industrial location. Peneder finally employs the three evolutionary principles of variation, cumulation and selection to establish entrepreneurship, learning and fair markets as the main pillars of modern competitiveness policy. This volume paves the way for a better understanding of the market process, demonstrating the importance of intangible factors as sources of competitive advantage both by conclusive theoretical argument and careful empirical investigation.

The challenge of life and literary narrative is the central and perennial mystery of how people encounter, manage, and inhabit a self and a world of their own - and others' - creations. With a nod to the eminent scholar and psychologist Jerome Bruner, Life and Narrative: The Risks and Responsibilities of Storying Experience explores the circulation of meaning between experience and the recounting of that experience to others. A variety of arguments center around the kind of relationship life and narrative share with one another. In this volume, rather than choosing to argue that this relationship is either continuous or discontinuous, editors Brian Schiff, A. Elizabeth McKim, and Sylvie Patron and their contributing authors reject the simple binary and masterfully incorporate a more nuanced approach that has more descriptive appeal and theoretical traction for readers. Exploring such diverse and fascinating topics as 'Narrative and the Law,' 'Narrative Fiction, the Short Story, and Life,' 'The Body as Biography,' and 'The Politics of Memory,' Life and Narrative features important research and perspectives from both up-and-coming researchers and prominent scholars in the field - many of which who are widely acknowledged for moving the needle forward on the study of narrative in their respective disciplines and beyond.

A volume in International Social Studies Forum: The Series Series Editors Richard Diem, University of Texas at San Antonio and Jeff Passe, Towson University With the national push towards inclusion, more students with disabilities are being placed in general education settings. Furthermore, when placed, more students with disabilities are entering social studies classrooms than any other content area. Classroom teachers are being asked to "reach and teach" all students, often with little support. There are numerous texts on the teaching of social studies, an equal number on teaching students with disabilities. Blending best practice in social studies and special education instruction, this book provides both pre - and in-service educators simple, practical strategies that support the creation of engaging, relevant, and appropriate social studies opportunities for all students. Though the strategies presented are useful for all students, they are particularly beneficial for students with disabilities. From Universal Design for Learning, mnemonics, graphic organizers, and big ideas, to co-teaching, screen readers and the Virtual History Museum, this book offers hands-on, practical ideas general educators can use when teaching K-12 social studies in inclusive classrooms.

Edited by David Schwarzer, Montclair State University, Mary Petron, Sam Houston State University, and Christopher Luke, Ball State University A volume in Research in Second Language Learning JoAnn Hammadou Sullivan, Series Editor "Research Informing Practice-Practice Informing Research: Innovative Teaching Methodologies for World Language Educators" is an edited volume that focuses on innovative, nontraditional methods of teaching and learning world languages. Using teacher-research projects, each author in the volume guides readers through their own personal journey and exploration of teaching methods, novelty, risk-taking, and reflection. Chapters include guiding questions, vignettes, and thick descriptions of classroom-based research in an assortment of instructional settings. Theoretical issues and an array of practical applications are presented, as well as additional research opportunities and guidelines for implementation in a variety of teaching and learning venues. While not professing to be a panacea for world language learning, this book provides various lines of theory, research, and practice as they interact with each other through teacher-research narratives. As a well-known African proverb asserts, "It takes a village to raise a child." Similarly, it takes a village to develop a master teacher, and it takes a community to create an exceptional classroom. Throughout this volume, authors share their voices, experiences, and expertise as a means of strengthening the village. They then invite readers to embark on their own methodological journeys. The text thus serves as a stimulus for further discussion and pedagogical development in world language settings. Teachers and researchers are challenged to think critically and reflectively about world language education, encouraged to design innovative methods, approaches, and techniques for their world language classes, and ultimately asked to share their findings with students, parents, peers, communities, and the village.

This book focuses on the latest developments in behaviormetrics and data science, covering a wide range of topics in data analysis and related areas of data science, including analysis of complex data, analysis of qualitative data, methods for high-dimensional data, dimensionality reduction, visualization of such data, multivariate statistical methods, analysis of asymmetric relational data, and various applications to real data. In addition to theoretical and methodological results, it also shows how to apply the proposed methods to a variety of problems, for example in consumer behavior, decision making, marketing data, and social network structures. Moreover, it discuses methodological aspects and applications in a wide range of areas, such as behaviormetrics; behavioral science; psychology; and marketing, management and social sciences. Combining methodological advances with real-world applications collected from a variety of research fields, the book is a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners, as well as for applied statisticians and data analysts.

This volume demonstrates the ways in which a gender perspective has been incorporated into existing themes and methods of migration research and has also led to the development of new areas of interest. It draws together the most important published articles on gender and migration in North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia in order to highlight major theoretical developments relating to employment, gender relations, household organisation, identity, citizenship, transnationalism and migration policy. In the introduction the editors provide an overview of these key developments in gender and migration research, as well as suggesting topics for future research. Gender and Migration will be a valuable resource for demographers, geographers and gender studies researchers.