This book offers a detailed investigation of breakdowns in traffic and transportation networks. It shows empirically that transitions from free flow to so-called synchronized flow, initiated by local disturbances at network bottlenecks, display a nucleation-type behavior: while small disturbances in free flow decay, larger ones grow further and lead to breakdowns at the bottlenecks. Further, it discusses in detail the significance of this nucleation effect for traffic and transportation theories, and the consequences this has for future automatic driving, traffic control, dynamic traffic assignment, and optimization in traffic and transportation networks. Starting from a large volume of field traffic data collected from various sources obtained solely through measurements in real world traffic, the author develops his insights, with an emphasis less on reviewing existing methodologies, models and theories, and more on providing a detailed analysis of empirical traffic data and drawing consequences regarding the minimum requirements for any traffic and transportation theories to be valid. The book - proves the empirical nucleation nature of traffic breakdown in networks - discusses the origin of the failure of classical traffic and transportation theories - shows that the three-phase theory is incommensurable with the classical traffic theories, and - explains why current state-of-the art dynamic traffic assignments tend to provoke heavy traffic congestion, making it a valuable reference resource for a wide audience of scientists and postgraduate students interested in the fundamental understanding of empirical traffic phenomena and related data-driven phenomenology, as well as for practitioners working in the fields of traffic and transportation engineering.

This book focuses on ethical and methodological issues faced by researchers working with young language learners in formal school contexts. It uncovers and explicitly discusses a range of ethical dilemmas, challenges and experiences that researchers have encountered and grappled with, in studies of all kinds from large scale, experimental studies to ethnographic studies focused on just a handful of children. The chapters are written by researchers working with children in different classroom contexts around the world and highlight how ethical dilemmas and tensions take on a complex form in child-focused research, requiring researchers to pay particular attention to the social and cultural norms of the different communities within which children are educated as well as their school-based experiences. The book comprises three sections, with the first part focused on involving children as active participants in research; part two on ethical challenges in multilingual contexts and part three on links between teacher education and researching children. The book includes a critical discussion of the opportunities and challenges associated with applying the UNCRC (1989) document in second language research with children which will be of use to any researcher working in this area.

This volume offers insights into contemporary trends and perspectives in psychobiographical research. It applys new theoretical and methodological frameworks and presents discourses on psychobiography from transdisciplinary backgrounds and various socio-cultural contexts, displaying the new state-of-the-art, new trends and themes in psychobiography. The book outlines psychobiography's outstanding contribution to psychology from 36 internationally reputable authors. It also presents the ideas of five outstanding psychobiographers through interview excerpts. This book is a must for researchers, lecturers and practitioners in the field of psychology and social sciences interested in the use of new psychological theories and methodologies in life-span research.

Based on extensive analysis of surveys from recent decades, this book provides a detailed study of the attitudes of religious groups in Britain. It looks at continuity and change in relation to party support, ideology, abortion, homosexuality and gay rights, foreign policy, and public opinion towards religion in public life.

This book investigates how mental health in South Africa is conceptualised and constructed in public policy. Critiquing embedded assumptions within existing policy documentation, the book advocates for policy solutions centred on poverty alleviation and economic development.

Mental health in South Africa has historically been neglected within the health-care system, a stark reality underscored by the Life Esidimeni tragedy, which exposed widespread mismanagement, negligence, and insufficient resources in mental health-care services. While South Africa has enacted progressive mental health policies, their effective implementation remains hindered by systemic challenges. This book investigates the dominant problems represented in mental health policies, including the segregation of mental health from general health services, inadequate intersectoral collaboration in mental health care, community disconnection from mental health services, the association between poverty and mental health issues, and infringements upon the rights of individuals with mental health problems. Overall, the book underscores mental health as a socio-economic issue, requiring new policy solutions.

This book will be an essential read for mental health professionals and policy makers in South Africa, as well as for researchers working on the good governance of mental health, both within the country and at global and multilateral levels.

This book explains, with case examples, a variety of social science research methods suitable for studying the unconscious components of irrational social and political actions in world affairs, which can be defined as those that are intensely destructive, self-destructive, or extremely bizarre. The book argues that they are driven in part by feelings and fantasies that are outside of conscious awareness. Meyers explores the role of empathy in clinical understanding, as well as the value of exposing assertions to empirical disconfirmation. With a variety of research methods such as survey research, content analysis, and narrative analysis, and case examples such as studies of 'irreal' statements by authoritarian leaders, fabricated newspaper articles and climate change denial, this book sheds light on how to conduct research on psychodynamic matters in a scientifically valid and credible way.

This book analyzes the effects of wives' employment on the economic status of families, using both descriptive and empirical research. The historical and socio-economic causes of change in the employment status of wives and husbands are detailed. The empirical studies respond to some basic questions about dual-earner families: How does having an employed wife influence family lifestyles? What effects do dual-earners have on the finances of their households and on the distribution of income? What policy changes are needed to recognize the economic importance of dual-earner families? In Working Wives and Dual-Earner Families, one-earner and dual-earner families are differentiated, with particular attention to the impact of wives' employment status (full-time or part-time) on household decision making. Among the most interesting research findings are: total family income or tax bracket and the cost of child care are among the critical determinants of dual-earner employment; married-couple families at the same level of income have very similar expenditure patterns regardless of whether the wife is employed; full-time working wives make the distribution of income less equal, but part-time working wives generate greater equality in the distribution of income; families with full-time working wives have higher income, but they do not save more or have greater financial assets than other families; families with part-time employed wives are similar to those with non-employed wives and differ from families with full-time employed wives. The authors conclude that the real incomes of dual-earner families will continue to grow, as one-earner real income remains the same or declines. Household planning and decision making will increasingly be predicated upon having two earners, which will be perceived as the norm. Dual-earner families, based on amenities, mobility, growing families, and demands for public goods, will drive private markets and public policy.

The purpose of this book is twofold. First, this book is an attempt to map the state of quantitative research in Asian tourism and hospitality context and provide a detailed description of the design, implementation, application, and challenges of quantitative methods in tourism in Asia. Second, this book aims to contribute to the tourism literature by discussing the past, current and future quantitative data analysis methods. The book offers new insights into well-established research techniques such as regression analysis, but goes beyond first generation data analysis techniques to introduce methods seldom - if ever - used in tourism and hospitality research. In addition to investigating existing and novel research techniques, the book suggests areas for future studies. In order to achieve its objectives the analysis is split into three main sections: understanding the tourism industry in Asia; the current status of quantitative data analysis; and future directions for Asian tourism research.

This volume examines pluralism in light of recent music education research history and pluralistic approaches in practice. Pluralistic research holds the potential to blend frameworks, foundations, methods, and analysis protocols, and leads to a sophisticated understanding of music teaching and learning. This blending could take place in a range of contexts that may span an individual study to a lifelong research agenda. Additionally, pluralistic ideals would guide the addressing of questions as a community. The volume also illuminates the work of innovative music education researchers who are constructing pluralistic research studies and agendas, and advocate for the music education profession to embrace such an approach in order to advance shared research goals. The ramifications of this transformation in music education research are a subject of discussion, including the implications for researcher education and the challenges inherent in conducting and disseminating such research.

"Understanding Complex Urban Systems" takes as its point of departure the insight that the challenges of global urbanization and the complexity of urban systems cannot be understood let alone managed by sectoral and disciplinary approaches alone. But while there has recently been significant progress in broadening and refining the methodologies for the quantitative modeling of complex urban systems, in deepening the theoretical understanding of cities as complex systems, or in illuminating the implications for urban planning, there is still a lack of well-founded conceptual thinking on the methodological foundations and the strategies of modeling urban complexity across the disciplines.

Bringing together experts from the fields of urban and spatial planning, ecology, urban geography, real estate analysis, organizational cybernetics, stochastic optimization, and literary studies, as well as specialists in various systems approaches and in transdisciplinary methodologies of urban analysis, the volume seeks to advance the discussion on multidisciplinary approaches to urban modeling. While engaging with the state of the art in their respective fields, the contributions are specifically written for both experts from a broad range of disciplines as well as for urban practitioners who feel the need for new approaches given the uncertainty of current developments.

Show business is a multimillion dollar business, and its celebrities and sports figures are the most famous people on earth. Yet, most entertainers are neither rich nor famous. In "Life upon the Wicked Stage," author Jacqueline Boles provides an academic portrait of live performers and offers insight into their unique world.

Based on the biographies and autobiographies of one hundred and seventeen American show people, "Life upon the Wicked Stage" delves into the lives of entertainers-musicians, singers, dancers, comics, and variety artists. This sociological study first shares the history of show business from its beginnings to present-day, where the public's fascination with entertainers and celebrities is avid. Then, Boles analyzes the entertainers and their family backgrounds, investigates their reasons for choosing entertainment, and explores their career patterns. This study also shows the affects that show business has on family and relationships, and it discusses the costs and rewards of life as a performer.

"Life upon the Wicked Stage" illustrates that live entertainment has changed dramatically over the last one hundred and fift y years while remaining remarkably unchanged. Boles communicates that the show must go on.

In this book, Fattorello addresses the differences between contingent and non-contingent information. The theory is translated into English for the first time and is contextualized and put into a historical framework by Prof. Ragnetti's additional text.

Why do we continue to think about, imagine, and forecast the future despite believing we will probably be wrong? Why do we need to do so? What does the future mean, and how do we relate to it? Is it possible that Western societies condition their members into inability to cope with the future?

These and other fundamental questions are explored in "The Future Is Ours," which is written as an intermediate text for use in future-oriented modules within BA courses in International Business, Management, Urban Planning, and Environmental Politics.

The book studies the existing and potential connections between Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) by showing how standard SNA techniques, usually based on graph theory, can be supplemented by FCA methods, which rely on lattice theory. The book presents contributions to the following areas: acquisition of terminological knowledge from social networks, knowledge communities, individuality computation, other types of FCA-based analysis of bipartite graphs (two-mode networks), multimodal clustering, community detection and description in one-mode and multi-mode networks, adaptation of the dual-projection approach to weighted bipartite graphs, extensions to the Kleinberg's HITS algorithm as well as attributed graph analysis.

The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Ethnography provides an expansive overview of the challenges presented by qualitative, and particularly ethnographic, enquiry. The chapters reflect upon the means by which ethnographers aim to gain understanding, make sense of what they learn and the way they represent their finished work. The Handbook offers urgent insights relevant to current trends in the growth of imprisonment worldwide. In an era of mass incarceration, human-centric ethnography provides an important counter to quantitative analysis and the audit culture on which prisons are frequently judged. The Handbook is divided into four parts. Part I ('About Prison Ethnography') assesses methodological, theoretical and pragmatic issues related to the use of ethnographic and qualitative enquiry in prisons. Part II ('Through Prison Ethnography') considers the significance of ethnographic insights in terms of wider social or political concerns. Part III ('Of Prison Ethnography') analyses different aspects of the roles ethnographers take and how they negotiate their research settings. Part IV ('For Prison Ethnography') includes contributions that convincingly extend the value of prison ethnography beyond the prison itself. Bringing together contributions by some of the world's leading scholars in criminology and prison studies, this authoritative volume maps out new directions for future research. It will be an indispensable resource for practitioners, students, academics and researchers who use qualitative social research methods to further their understanding of prisons.

How to apply statistical methods to survey data—a guide to effective analysis of health surveys.

With large health surveys becoming increasingly available for public use, researchers with little experience in survey methods are often faced with analyzing data from surveys to address scientific and programmatic questions. This practical book provides statistical techniques for use in survey analysis, making health surveys accessible to statisticians, biostatisticians, epidemiologists, and health researchers. The authors clearly explain the theory and methods of survey analysis along with real-world applications. They draw on their work at the National Institutes of Health as well as up-to-date information from across the literature to present:

• The sampling background necessary to understand health surveys.
• The application of such techniques as t-tests, linear regression, logistic regression, and survival analysis to survey data.
• The use of sample weights in survey data analysis.
• Dealing with complications in variance estimation in large health surveys.
• Applications involving cross-sectional, longitudinal, and multiple cross-sectional surveys, and the use of surveys to perform population- based case-control analyses.
• Guidance on the correct use of statistical methods found in software packages.
• Extensive bibliography.

Podcasting for Teachers is the first volume of a new series from Dr. Kathleen P. King and Mark Gura- Emerging Technologies for Evolving Learners and is based on their successful educational technology podcast, Podcast for Teachers, Techpod (sm). Their podcast work has reached over 600,000 people as of 9/06 and branched into virtual seminars, and additional innovations. This book introduces and explains this important new technology from the perspective of educators. It also provides new insights into the ways that technology can provide solutions to instructional needs that have not been sufficiently addressed until now. Not only does it provide concrete explanations, examples, models, and details about methods and resources that are not currently illustrated in other publications, but it also reveals a new rationale for the use of technology in education. This book helps readers apprehend critical issues essential to understanding and taking advantage of podcasting and related technologies as an educational resource: . What podcasting is . How ""to do"" podcasting . How to plan podcasting-based activities for students . How to create podcasts as teaching resources .How to use podcasting for professional development . Models developed specifically by the authors regarding: . Podcast development . Educators' learning curve in podcasting . Cost/benefit decision making regarding podcasting projects K - 12 school district directors of curriculum and instruction and directors of professional development, as well as classroom teachers, principals, and instructional supervisors across the core curriculum and in the area of Instructional Technology; and teacher educators and other college faculty will find this book a valuable resource. Readers may use the book as part of their own efforts to expand their teaching or staff development practice. It can also be an important resource for Education courses in content instruction and Instructional Technology and serve as a valuable reference for educators interested in educational applications of technology.

Copernicus and Galileo's sun-centered model of the solar system gave us our view of space. Newton and Einstein's mechanical and electromagnetic models of the universe gave us our view of nature. Can the human condition be captured with a similarly universal model? Author Lawrence H. Taub believes so, and he develops three of them-age, sex, and caste-to reveal the deeper currents of history. The models presented in "The Spiritual Imperative" clarify the past, explain the present, and help anticipate the future. Taub uses these models to make insightful forecasts of future discontinuities that answer the major questions facing us today. Some of his predictions include: a regional political-economic block formed in the Far East and what this will mean to the world an alliance between the U.S. and Russia and how this will develop Israeli-Palestinian peace leading to a Pan-Semitic Union that will make the Middle East one of two main world centers of economic, political, and spiritual power in the mid-twenty-first century the replacement of technology with religion and spirituality as the main growth market in the twenty-first century "The Spiritual Imperative" provides insight into where human civilization has been and where it's going.

This edited volume presents examples of social science research projects that employ new methods of quantitative analysis and mathematical modeling of social processes. This book presents the fascinating areas of empirical and theoretical investigations that use formal mathematics in a way that is accessible for individuals lacking extensive expertise but still desiring to expand their scope of research methodology and add to their data analysis toolbox. Mathematical Modeling of Social Relationships professes how mathematical modeling can help us understand the fundamental, compelling, and yet sometimes complicated concepts that arise in the social sciences. This volume will appeal to upper-level students and researchers in a broad area of fields within the social sciences, as well as the disciplines of social psychology, complex systems, and applied mathematics.

"Comparative Social Policy" provides students with an introduction to cross-national social policy research, conveying the fascinating and challenging issues involved in conducting research of this kind. The book examines the theoretical, conceptual and methodological approaches, discusses prevailing concepts and reflects on methodological difficulties. The authors use examples from a wide range of social policy analysis to illustrate what can be gained by conducting comparative social policy research.

The first part of the book provides a broad overview of the growing interest in comparative welfare state research and a discussion of major theoretical and methodological aspects relevant to comparative social research in general. Part II provides readers with an understanding of previous work in the subject, major approaches, important concepts and theories as well as methodological difficulties within comparative research in particular policy fields (health, housing, family policy, social care, social security, labour market policy).

The final section addresses particular themes and issues across these fields and highlights the essential components of comparative social policy research, particularly the need to explore these issues carefully to gain awareness of subtle cross-national differences and thus avoid misleading results.

The book includes differing country samples and sizes and takes examples from Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific region. All the chapters reflect on relevant conceptual and methodological approaches, each is written for the student reader and concludes with a guide to further reading.

This international, edited collection brings together personal accounts from researchers working in and on conflict and explores the roles of emotion, violence, uncertainty, identity and positionality within the process of doing research, as well as the complexity of methodological choices. It highlights the researchers' own subjectivity and presents a nuanced view of conflict research that goes beyond the 'messiness' inherent in the process of research in and on violence. It addresses the uncomfortable spaces of conflict research, the potential for violence of research itself and the need for deeper reflection on these issues. This powerful book opens up spaces for new conversations about the realities of conflict research. These critical self-reflections and honest accounts provide important insights for any scholar or practitioner working in similar environments.