The Psychology of Survey Response


Book Description

This valuable book examines the complex psychological processes involved in answering different types of survey questions. Drawing on both classic and modern research from cognitive psychology, social psychology, and survey methodology, the authors examine how survey responses are formulated and they demonstrate how seemingly unimportant features of the survey can affect the answers obtained. The book provides a comprehensive review of the sources of response errors in surveys, and it offers a coherent theory of the relation between the underlying views of the public and the results of public opinion polls. Topics include the comprehension of survey questions, the recall of relevant facts and beliefs, estimation and inferential processes people use to answer survey questions, the sources of the apparent instability of public opinion, the difficulties in getting responses into the required format, and the distortions introduced into surveys by deliberate misreporting.




WHO Housing and Health Guidelines


Book Description

Improved housing conditions can save lives, prevent disease, increase quality of life, reduce poverty, and help mitigate climate change. Housing is becoming increasingly important to health in light of urban growth, ageing populations and climate change. The WHO Housing and health guidelines bring together the most recent evidence to provide practical recommendations to reduce the health burden due to unsafe and substandard housing. Based on newly commissioned systematic reviews, the guidelines provide recommendations relevant to inadequate living space (crowding), low and high indoor temperatures, injury hazards in the home, and accessibility of housing for people with functional impairments. In addition, the guidelines identify and summarize existing WHO guidelines and recommendations related to housing, with respect to water quality, air quality, neighbourhood noise, asbestos, lead, tobacco smoke and radon. The guidelines take a comprehensive, intersectoral perspective on the issue of housing and health and highlight co-benefits of interventions addressing several risk factors at the same time. The WHO Housing and health guidelines aim at informing housing policies and regulations at the national, regional and local level and are further relevant in the daily activities of implementing actors who are directly involved in the construction, maintenance and demolition of housing in ways that influence human health and safety. The guidelines therefore emphasize the importance of collaboration between the health and other sectors and joint efforts across all government levels to promote healthy housing. The guidelines' implementation at country-level will in particular contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals on health (SDG 3) and sustainable cities (SDG 11). WHO will support Member States in adapting the guidelines to national contexts and priorities to ensure safe and healthy housing for all.




Benchmarking Water Services


Book Description

Benchmarking has become a key tool in the water industry to promote and achieve performance targets for utilities. The use of this tool for performance improvement through systematic search and adaptation of leading practices, has expanded globally during the past decade. Many ongoing projects worldwide aim to address different needs and objectives, in varying contexts, with outstanding results and impact. Benchmarking Water Services provides valuable information to everyone interested in benchmarking in the water industry. The text is aimed at utilities considering joining a benchmarking project, experienced practitioners in charge of organizing a benchmarking exercise, consultants, regulators and researchers. The document is presented with a clear practice oriented approach and can be used as a how-to-benchmark guide presented from different perspectives (participants, organizers, supervising bodies). Readers will gain practical insight on real life benchmarking practices and will benefit from the experiences gained in some of the leading benchmarking projects of the water industry (including the IWA-WSAA benchmarking efforts, the European Benchmarking Co-operation and the several benchmarking projects carried out in Austria and Central Europe). The manual also presents the new IWA Benchmarking Framework, which aims to harmonize the terms used to describe benchmarking and performance indicators practices in the water industry, guaranteeing a more fluent and efficient communication. This Manual of Best Practice is edited by the IWA Specialist Group on Benchmarking and Performance Assessment, and co-published by AWWA and IWA Publishing. Praise for Benchmarking Water Services: "The continual trend of conceptual to specifics throughout the book provides for an educational experience each time the book is either casually perused or carefully studied." "The authors (Cabrera, Haskins and Fritiz) diligently pursue the focus of improvement." "Benchmarking Water Services is an in depth and practical ‘must have’ guide for any utility currently engaged in or planning to develop a benchmarking process" - Gregory M. Baird (2012) Benchmarking: An International Journal 19:2. More information about the book can be found on the Water Wiki in an article written by the author: http://www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Articles/TheNewIWABenchmarkingFramework A Spanish language version of this book is available as a free eBook: http://www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Articles/eBookTitlesfromIWAPublishingFreetoDownload-Volume2#HBenchmarkingParaServiciosdeAgua




Qualitative approaches to research on plurilingual education / Enfocaments qualitatius per a la recerca en educació plurilingüe / Enfoques cualitativos para la investigación en educación plurilingüe


Book Description

This handbook is a guide for researchers in plurilingual education. It introduces notions of collaborative research, action-research, ethnography, conversation analysis and mediated discourse analysis. It also discusses ethics, how to collect and organize plurilingual and multimodal corpora, and write up research papers.Aquest manual és una guia per a la recerca en educació plurilingüe. S'hi introdueixen conceptes de recerca col·laborativa, recerca-acció, etnografia, anàlisi de la conversa i anàlisi del discurs mediat. També s'hi discuteixen qüestions d'ètica, maneres de recopilar i organitzar corpus plurilingües i multimodals, i d’escriure textos de recerca.Este manual es una guía para la investigación en educación plurilingüe. Se introducen conceptos de investigación colaborativa, investigación-acción, etnografía, análisis de la conversación y análisis del discurso mediado. También se discuten cuestiones de ética, maneras de recopilar y organizar corpus plurilingües y multimodales, y de redactar textos de investigación.




Finding What Works in Health Care


Book Description

Healthcare decision makers in search of reliable information that compares health interventions increasingly turn to systematic reviews for the best summary of the evidence. Systematic reviews identify, select, assess, and synthesize the findings of similar but separate studies, and can help clarify what is known and not known about the potential benefits and harms of drugs, devices, and other healthcare services. Systematic reviews can be helpful for clinicians who want to integrate research findings into their daily practices, for patients to make well-informed choices about their own care, for professional medical societies and other organizations that develop clinical practice guidelines. Too often systematic reviews are of uncertain or poor quality. There are no universally accepted standards for developing systematic reviews leading to variability in how conflicts of interest and biases are handled, how evidence is appraised, and the overall scientific rigor of the process. In Finding What Works in Health Care the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends 21 standards for developing high-quality systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research. The standards address the entire systematic review process from the initial steps of formulating the topic and building the review team to producing a detailed final report that synthesizes what the evidence shows and where knowledge gaps remain. Finding What Works in Health Care also proposes a framework for improving the quality of the science underpinning systematic reviews. This book will serve as a vital resource for both sponsors and producers of systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research.




VOLUNTARY GUIDELINES ON NATIONAL FOREST MONITORING


Book Description

National information needs on forests have grown considerably in recent years, evolving from forest area and growing stock information to key aspects of sustainable forest management, such as the role of forests in the conservation of biodiversity and the provision of other ecosystem services. More recently, information on changes in carbon stocks, socio-economic aspects including the contribution to livelihoods and poverty reduction, governance and broader land use issues has become critical for national planning.




Randomised Controlled Trials


Book Description

The contributors to this study present a balanced view of the strengths and weaknesses of randomised controlled trials in the medical setting. They cover all the essential issues without using statistics.




Statistical Analysis of Human Growth and Development


Book Description

Statistical Analysis of Human Growth and Development is an accessible and practical guide to a wide range of basic and advanced statistical methods that are useful for studying human growth and development. Designed for nonstatisticians and statisticians new to the analysis of growth and development data, the book collects methods scattered throughout the literature and explains how to use them to solve common research problems. It also discusses how well a method addresses a specific scientific question and how to interpret and present the analytic results. Stata is used to implement the analyses, with Stata codes and macros for generating example data sets, a detrended Q-Q plot, and weighted maximum likelihood estimation of binary items available on the book’s CRC Press web page. After reviewing research designs and basic statistical tools, the author discusses the use of existing tools to transform raw data into analyzable variables and back-transform them to raw data. He covers regression analysis of quantitative, binary, and censored data as well as the analysis of repeated measurements and clustered data. He also describes the development of new growth references and developmental indices, the generation of key variables based on longitudinal data, and the processes to verify the validity and reliability of measurement tools. Looking at the larger picture of research practice, the book concludes with coverage of missing values, multiplicity problems, and multivariable regression. Along with two simulated data sets, numerous examples from real experimental and observational studies illustrate the concepts and methods. Although the book focuses on examples of anthropometric measurements and changes in cognitive, social-emotional, locomotor, and other abilities, the ideas are applicable to many other physical and psychosocial phenomena, such as lung function and depressive symptoms.




Innovating with Concept Mapping


Book Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Concept Mapping, CMC 2016, held in Tallinn, Estonia, in September 2016. The 25 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 135 submissions. The papers address issues such as facilitation of learning; eliciting, capturing, archiving, and using “expert” knowledge; planning instruction; assessment of “deep” understandings; research planning; collaborative knowledge modeling; creation of “knowledge portfolios”; curriculum design; eLearning, and administrative and strategic planning and monitoring.