Evaluating and Valuing in Social Research


Book Description

Much applied research takes place as if complex social problems--and evaluations of interventions to address them--can be dealt with in a purely technical way. In contrast, this groundbreaking book offers an alternative approach that incorporates sustained, systematic reflection about researchers' values, what values research promotes, how decisions about what to value are made and by whom, and how judging the value of social interventions takes place. The authors offer practical and conceptual guidance to help researchers engage meaningfully with value conflicts and refine their capacity to engage in deliberative argumentation. Pedagogical features include a detailed evaluation case, "Bridge to Practice" exercises and annotated resources in most chapters, and an end-of-book glossary.




Valuing Nature


Book Description

As the world faces unprecedented challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss, the resources needed far outstrip the capabilities of nonprofits and even governments. Yet there are seeds of hope—and much of that hope comes from the efforts of the private sector. Impact investing is rapidly becoming an essential tool, alongside philanthropy and government funding, in tackling these major problems. Valuing Nature presents a new set of nature-based investment areas to help conservationists and investors work together. NatureVest founder William Ginn outlines the emerging private sector investing opportunities in natural assets such as green infrastructure, forests, soils, and fisheries. The first part of Valuing Nature examines the scope of nature-based impact investing while also presenting a practical overview of its limitations and the challenges facing the private sector. The second part of the book offers tools for investors and organizations to consider as they develop their own projects and tips on how nonprofits can successfully navigate this new space. Case studies from around the world demonstrate how we can use private capital to achieve more sustainable uses of our natural resources without the unintended consequences plaguing so many of our current efforts. Valuing Nature provides a roadmap for conservation professionals, nonprofit managers, and impact investors seeking to use market-based strategies to improve the management of natural systems.




Valuing


Book Description

In his second collection, Christopher Kondrich navigates the link between what we see as our inner value and the external world that supplies it. Valuing’s deeply personal poems explore faith, love, ethics, and mortality from a variety of angles and through a variety of poetic forms as a means of questioning the origination of one’s own value system. Does it come from the belief in a god, from the love one gives or receives, or from the diminution of the self and its desires? If “you cannot sneak through your life,” as the speaker of one of Valuing’s poems proclaims, then how might one ensure that the noise a life inevitably makes is an echo of the values one holds dear?




Valuing U.S. National Parks and Programs


Book Description

This book provides the first comprehensive economic valuation of U.S. National Parks (including monuments, seashores, lakeshores, recreation areas, and historic sites) and National Park Service (NPS) programs. The book develops a comprehensive framework to calculate the economic value of protected areas, with particular application to the U.S. National Park Service. The framework covers many benefits provided by NPS units and programs, including on-site visitation, carbon sequestration, and intellectual property such as in education curricula and filming of movies/ TV shows, with case studies of each included. Examples are drawn from studies in Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Everglades National Park, and Chesapeake Bay. The editors conclude with a chapter on innovative approaches for sustainable funding of the NPS in its second century. The framework serves as a blueprint of methodologies for conservationists, government agencies, land trusts, economists, and others to value public lands, historical sites, and related programs, such as education. The methodologies are relevant to local and state parks, wildlife refuges, and protected areas in developed and developing countries as well as to national parks around the world. Containing a series of unique case studies, this book will be of great interest to professionals and students in environmental economics, land management, and nature conservation, as well as the more general reader interested in National Parks.




The Market Approach to Valuing Businesses


Book Description

Your Best Approach to Determining Value If you're buying, selling, or valuing a business, how can you determine its true value? By basing it on present market conditions and sales of similar businesses. The market approach is the premier way to determine the value of a business or partnership. With convincing evidence of value for both buyers and sellers, it can end stalemates and get deals closed. Acclaimed for its empirical basis and objectivity, this approach is the model most favored by the IRS and the United States Tax Court-as long as it's properly implemented. Shannon Pratt's The Market Approach to Valuing Businesses, Second Edition provides a wealth of proven guidelines and resources for effective market approach implementation. You'll find information on valuing and its applications, case studies on small and midsize businesses, and a detailed analysis of the latest market approach developments, as well as: A critique of US acquisitions over the last twenty-five years An analysis of the effect of size on value Common errors in applying the market approach Court reactions to the market approach and information to help you avoid being blindsided by a litigation opponent Must reading for anyone who owns or holds a partial interest in a small or large business or a professional practice, as well as for CPAs consulting on valuations, appraisers, corporate development officers, intermediaries, and venture capitalists, The Market Approach to Valuing Businesses will show you how to successfully reach a fair agreement-one that will satisfy both buyers and sellers and stand up to scrutiny by courts and the IRS.




Valuing Children


Book Description

Nancy Folbre challenges the conventional economist's assumption that parents have children for the same reason that they acquire pets--primarily for the pleasure of their company. Children become the workers and taxpayers of the next generation, and "investments" in them offer a significant payback to other participants in the economy. Yet parents, especially mothers, pay most of the costs. The high price of childrearing pushes many families into poverty, often with adverse consequences for children themselves. Parents spend time as well as money on children. Yet most estimates of the "cost" of children ignore the value of this time. Folbre provides a startlingly high but entirely credible estimate of the value of parental time per child by asking what it would cost to purchase a comparable substitute for it. She also emphasizes the need for better accounting of public expenditure on children over the life cycle and describes the need to rethink the very structure and logic of the welfare state. A new institutional structure could promote more cooperative, sustainable, and efficient commitments to the next generation.




Valuing Health for Policy


Book Description

How stringent should environmental and occupational safety regulations be? How far should Medicaid support go? Should funding for research on Alzheimer's disease be increased? Should more money be spent on programs to discourage smoking? What are appropriate ways to determine damages in wrongful injury or death suits? Toward answering such questions, this volume examines various models of health valuation, including the cost-of-illness, preventive-expenditures, and quality-adjusted-life-year approaches. The authors favor a willingness-to-pay approach grounded in individual preferences.




Valuing Life


Book Description

Abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, war, genetic engineering and fetal experimentation, environmental and animal rights--these topics inspire some of today's most heated public controversies. And it is fashionable to pursue these debates in terms of the negative query "Under what conditions may life be disregarded or terminated?" John Kleinig asks a different, more positive question: What may be said in behalf of life? Looking at the full range of appeals to life's value, he considers a variety of issues. Is livingness as such to be affirmed and respected? Is there an ascending order of plant, animal, and human life? Does human life possess a distinctive claim, or must we discriminate between humans that do and humans that do not have claims on us? Kleinig shows that assertions about valuing life camouflage a complex normative vocabulary about worth, reverence, sanctity, dignity, respect, and rights. And "life," too, is subject to an assortment of understandings. Sensitive to the frameworks informing diverse appeals to life's value, this comprehensive work will interest readers concerned with the environment, animal rights, or bioethics. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.




Valuing Managerial Flexibility


Book Description




Valuing Water, Valuing Livelihoods


Book Description

The aim of Valuing Water, Valuing Livelihoods is to give decision-makers, health professionals and analysts a comprehensive view of the arguments and challenges associated with establishing the value of drinking-water interventions. The experts who have contributed to this publication provide guidance on assessing the benefits from improving access to safe drinking-water and from reducing the burden of water-related diseases. They show how to compare the value of these benefits to the costs of interventions, with special reference to small-scale drinking-water systems. Valuing Water, Valuing Livelihoods provides decision-makers, health professionals and analysts with the tools to promote improved access to safe drinking-water, especially for small and vulnerable communities in developing countries, by presenting comprehensive coverage of principles and practice, technology and economics, health, livelihoods and ethics.