Category: Media

To be published in Jan 2018. SECOND EDITION. Published by Sage
Stephen P Borgatti – University of Kentucky, USA
Martin G Everett – Manchester University, UK
Jeffrey C Johnson – University of Florida, USA

Publishers blurb: “Designed to walk beginners through core aspects of collecting, visualizing, analyzing, and interpreting social network data, this book will get you up-to-speed on the theory and skills you need to conduct social network analysis. Using simple language and equations, the authors provide expert, clear insight into every step of the research process—including basic maths principles—without making assumptions about what you know. With a particular focus on NetDraw and UCINET, the book introduces relevant software tools step-by-step in an easy to follow way.

In addition to the fundamentals of network analysis and the research process, this new Second Edition focuses on:

• Digital data and social networks like Twitter
• Statistical models to use in SNA, like QAP and ERGM
• The structure and centrality of networks
• Methods for cohesive subgroups/community detection
• Supported by new chapter exercises, a glossary, and a fully updated companion website, this text is the perfect student-friendly introduction to social network analysis.”

Detailed contents list here

by Cass R. Sunstein, Cambridge University Press, 2016

Contents:

1. The age of behavioral science;
2. Choice and its architecture;
3. ‘As judged by themselves’;
4. Values;
5. Fifty shades of manipulation;
6. Do people like nudges? Empirical findings;
7. Green by default? Ethical challenges for environmental protection;
8. Mandates – a very brief recapitulation;
Appendix A. American attitudes toward thirty-four nudges;
Appendix B. Survey questions;
Appendix C. Executive Order 13707: using behavioral science insights to better serve the American people;

Amazon blurb: “In recent years, ‘nudge units’ or ‘behavioral insights teams’ have been created in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other nations. All over the world, public officials are using the behavioral sciences to protect the environment, promote employment and economic growth, reduce poverty, and increase national security. In this book, Cass R. Sunstein, the eminent legal scholar and best-selling co-author of Nudge (2008), breaks new ground with a deep yet highly readable investigation into the ethical issues surrounding nudges, choice architecture, and mandates, addressing such issues as welfare, autonomy, self-government, dignity, manipulation, and the constraints and responsibilities of an ethical state. Complementing the ethical discussion, The Ethics of Influence: Government in the Age of Behavioral Science contains a wealth of new data on people’s attitudes towards a broad range of nudges, choice architecture, and mandates.

Book Review by Roger Frantz (pdf)

Cristina Bicchieri, Oxford University Press, 2016. View Table of Contents

Publisher summary:

1. Presents evidence-based assessment tools for assessing and intervening on various social behaviors
2. Illustrates the role of mass media and autonomous “first movers” as the forefront of wide-scale behavioral change
3. Provides dichotomous models for assessing normative behaviors
4. Explains why well-tested interventions sometimes fail to change behavior

Amazon blurb: “The philosopher Cristina Bicchieri here develops her theory of social norms, most recently explained in her 2006 volume The Grammar of Society. Bicchieri challenges many of the fundamental assumptions of the social sciences. She argues that when it comes to human behavior, social scientists place too much stress on rational deliberation. In fact, many choices occur without much deliberation at all. Bicchieri’s theory accounts for these automatic components of behavior, where individuals react automatically to cues–those cues often pointing to the social norms that govern our choices in a social world

Bicchieri’s work has broad implications not only for understanding human behavior, but for changing it for better outcomes. People have a strong conditional preference for following social norms, but that also means manipulating those norms (and the underlying social expectations) can produce beneficial behavioral changes. Bicchieri’s recent work with UNICEF has explored the applicability of her views to issues of human rights and well-being. Is it possible to change social expectations around forced marriage, genital mutilations, and public health practices like vaccinations and sanitation? If so, how? What tools might we use? This short book explores how social norms work, and how changing them–changing preferences, beliefs, and especially social expectations–can potentially improve lives all around the world.”

3rd Edition by Douglas W. Hubbard (Author)

pdf copy of 2nd edition available here

Building up from simple concepts to illustrate the hands-on yet intuitively easy application of advanced statistical techniques, How to Measure Anything reveals the power of measurement in our understanding of business and the world at large. This insightful and engaging book shows you how to measure those things in your business that until now you may have considered “immeasurable,” including technology ROI, organizational flexibility, customer satisfaction, and technology risk.

Offering examples that will get you to attempt measurements-even when it seems impossible-this book provides you with the substantive steps for measuring anything, especially uncertainty and risk. Don’t wait-listen to this book and find out:

• The three reasons why things may seem immeasurable but are not
• Inspirational examples of where seemingly impossible measurements were resolved with surprisingly simple methods
• How computing the value of information will show that you probably have been measuring all the wrong things
• How not to measure risk
• Methods for measuring “soft” things like happiness, satisfaction, quality, and more

Amazon.com Review Now updated with new research and even more intuitive explanations, a demystifying explanation of how managers can inform themselves to make less risky, more profitable business decisions This insightful and eloquent book will show you how to measure those things in your own business that, until now, you may have considered “immeasurable,” including customer satisfaction, organizational flexibility, technology risk, and technology ROI.

• Adds even more intuitive explanations of powerful measurement methods and shows how they can be applied to areas such as risk management and customer satisfaction
• Continues to boldly assert that any perception of “immeasurability” is based on certain popular misconceptions about measurement and measurement methods
• Shows the common reasoning for calling something immeasurable, and sets out to correct those ideas
• Offers practical methods for measuring a variety of “intangibles”
• Adds recent research, especially in regards to methods that seem like measurement, but are in fact a kind of “placebo effect” for management – and explains how to tell effective methods from management mythology
• Written by recognized expert Douglas Hubbard-creator of Applied Information Economics

How to Measure Anything, Second Edition illustrates how the author has used his approach across various industries and how any problem, no matter how difficult, ill defined, or uncertain can lend itself to measurement using proven methods.

See also Julia Galef’s podcast interview with the author: http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs-197-doug-hubbard-on-why-people-think-some-things-cant-be.html …

Edited by Stephen Bell and Peter Aggleton. Routledge 2016. View on Google Books

“interpretive researchers thus attempt to understand phenomena through accessing the meanings participants assign to them”

“...interpretive and ethnographic approaches are side-lined in much contemporary evaluation work and current monitoring and evaluation practice remains heavily influenced by more positivist approaches”

“attribution is not the only purpose of impact evaluation”

“Lack of familiarity with qualitative approaches by programme staff and donor agencies also influences the preferences for for quantitative methods in monitoring and evaluation work”

Contents

1. Interpretive and Ethnographic Perspectives – Alternative Approaches to Monitoring and Evaluation Practice

2. The Political Economy of Evidence: Personal Reflections on the Value of the Interpretive Tradition and its Methods

3. Measurement, Modification and Transferability: Evidential Challenges in the Evaluation of Complex Interventions

4. What Really Works? Understanding the Role of ‘Local Knowledges’ in the Monitoring and Evaluation of a Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Project in Kenya

PART 2: Programme Design 5. Permissions, Vacations and Periods of Self-regulation: Using Consumer Insight to Improve HIV Treatment Adherence in Four Central American Countries

6. Generating Local Knowledge: A Role for Ethnography in Evidence-based Programme Design for Social Development

7. Interpretation, Context and Time: An Ethnographically Inspired Approach to Strategy Development for Tuberculosis Control in Odisha, India

8. Designing Health and Leadership Programmes for Young Vulnerable Women Using Participatory Ethnographic Research in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Part 3: Monitoring Processes

9. Using Social Mapping Techniques to Guide Programme Redesign in the Tingim Laip HIV Prevention and Care Project in Papua New Guinea

10. Pathways to Impact: New Approaches to Monitoring and Improving Volunteering for Sustainable Environmental Management

11. Ethnographic Process Evaluation: A Case Study of an HIV Prevention Programme with Injecting Drug Users in the USA

12. Using the Reality Check Approach to Shape Quantitative Findings: Experience from Mixed Method Evaluations in Ghana and Nepal

Part 4: Understanding Impact and Change

13. Innovation in Evaluation: Using SenseMaker to Assess the Inclusion of Smallholder Farmers in Modern Markets

14. The Use of the Rapid PEER Approach for the Evaluation of Sexual and Reproductive Health Programmes

15. Using Interpretive Research to Make Quantitative Evaluation More Effective: Oxfam’s Experience in Pakistan and Zimbabwe

16. Can Qualitative Research Rigorously Evaluate Programme Impact? Evidence from a Randomised Controlled Trial of an Adolescent Sexual Health Programme in Tanzania

Rick Davies Comment: [Though this may reflect my reading biases…]It seems like this strand of thinking has not been in the forefront of M&E attention for a long time (i.e. maybe since the 1990s – early 2000’s) so it is good to see this new collection of papers, by a large collection of both old and new faces (33 in all).

Sharon Brisolara PhD (Editor), Denise Seigart PhD (Editor), Saumitra SenGupta PhD (Editor)
Paperback: 368 pages, Publisher: The Guilford Press; Publication Date: March 28, 2014 | ISBN-10: 1462515207 | ISBN-13: 978-1462515202 | Edition: 1
Available on Amazon (though at an expensive US$43 for a paperback!)

No reviews available online as yet, but links to these will be posted here when they become available

CONTENTS

I. Feminist Theory, Research and Evaluation

1. Feminist Theory: Its Domain and Applications, Sharon Brisolara
2. Research and Evaluation: Intersections and Divergence, Sandra Mathison
3. Researcher/Evaluator Roles and Social Justice, Elizabeth Whitmore
4. A Transformative Feminist Stance: Inclusion of Multiple Dimensions of Diversity with Gender, Donna M. Mertens
5. Feminist Evaluation for Nonfeminists, Donna Podems

II. Feminist Evaluation in Practice

6. An Explication of Evaluator Values: Framing Matters, Kathryn Sielbeck-Mathes and Rebecca Selove
7. Fostering Democracy in Angola: A Feminist-Ecological Model for Evaluation, Tristi Nichols
8. Feminist Evaluation in South Asia: Building Bridges of Theory and Practice, Katherine Hay
9. Feminist Evaluation in Latin American Contexts, Silvia Salinas Mulder and Fabiola Amariles

III. Feminist Research in Practice

10. Feminist Research and School-Based Health Care: A Three-Country Comparison, Denise Seigart
11. Feminist Research Approaches to Empowerment in Syria, Alessandra Galié
12. Feminist Research Approaches to Studying Sub-Saharan Traditional Midwives, Elaine Dietsch
Final Reflection. Feminist Social Inquiry: Relevance, Relationships, and Responsibility, Jennifer C. Greene