Suchergebnisse

This study examines the relationship between female managers' presence in audit firms and audit firms' characteristics. In line with the employment rates obtained from POA, it is observed that gender inequality in the audit sector started from employment. In the research part, 90 audit companies' data that published transparency reports in 2018 were used. It has been determined that there are very few female managers in the sector; in fact, 47 of 90 companies do not have a female partner, board member, or responsible auditor. It is also analyzed that in the older audit firms, the audit firms that earn more revenue and big four firms, the number of female managers is significantly higher than in other firms. The study is essential in revealing that women's employment in the audit sector is a crucial problem and detects the positive relationship between corporate governance and female managers.

The article is devoted to the disclosure of the scientific potential of the study of tax liability as an institution of tax law. The emphasis is placed on the need to transform the concept of tax liability, as well as on the development of elements of its structure and implementation features under the influence of interdependent processes of digitalization and globalization, as well as taking into account the trends in the tax system in Russia in the context of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Methodological approaches to further research and practical problems of legal regulation of the institution of tax liability in the context of the development of the digital economy are indicated. A conclusion is made about the theoretical and practical value of further comprehensive study of various fiscal parameters of tax liability.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the role of Australian climate scientists in advancing the state of knowledge about the causes and mechanisms of climatic change and variability in the Southern Hemisphere during the 1970 and 1980s.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses the methods and insights of environmental history and the history of science to analyse archival and published data pertaining to research on atmospheric pollution, the Southern Oscillation and the regional impacts of climate change.FindingsAustralia's geopolitical position, political interests and environmental sensitivities encouraged Australian scientists and policymakers to take a leading role in the Southern Hemisphere in the study of global environmental change.Originality/valueThis article builds on critiques of the ways in which planetary and global knowledge and governance disguise the local and situated scientific and material processes that construct, sustain and configure them.

Contends that poverty research stands at a critical juncture where the technological revolution is transforming its object of inquiry. The potential for the Internet to close racial & economic gaps in social capital, employment, & housing is briefly explored. Steven Durlauf's (2001) treatment of the memberships theory of poverty is drawn on to illustrate how Internet access can ameliorate neighborhood, peer, & local role model effects as well as offer expanded access to job referral networks. In addition, how the Internet can reduce housing discrimination is discussed, drawing on personal experience house hunting via the Web. Attention turns to how the Internet can also exacerbate racial & economic inequality particularly in terms of access, ie, the digital divide. Closing the digital divide requires providing access across the board, creating interest in the Internet for people, & reducing people's fear of the Internet. J. Zendejas

The identity of political science, its tenuous orthodoxies and continuing divisions, is bound up with its history. The historical subject of this essay is the rise of one particular orthodoxy, the socio-psychological model of opinion research and voting behaviour originally associated with the University of Michigan. This rise helps constitute a conservative defence of American liberal democracy in the early cold war, owing much to the peculiar politics of that era. The contemporary payoff of this historical reconstruction is an identification of the vulnerabilities and invulnerabilities of the model as highlighted by its struggles with the understandings it superseded and the contingent political context of these struggles. The substantial legacy for the discipline as a whole merits careful critical scrutiny, especially given changes in the political context since the 1950s, and the end of the cold war.

"This is not a standard guide to writing a dissertation, thesis, project report, journal article or book. Rather, this book will help researchers who are dissatisfied with the typical recipe approaches to standardised forms of writing-up and want to explore how academic writing can be used to greater effect. Writing Research Critically shows that writing up is not just about 'presenting findings' as if the facts would speak for themselves. As the authors show there are certain vital skills that any writer needs to develop within their academic writing, such as the ability to: - develop critical understanding and a personal academic voice - question assumptions and the status quo - frame the background and transgress the frame - read between the lines when reviewing the literature - strengthen interpretations and construct persuasive arguments - challenge and develop theory and explanations - develop ideas that create possibilities for realistic action Packed with examples from a range of writing projects (papers, dissertations, theses, reports, journal articles and books), this book provides a practical and refreshing way to approach and present research. Through case studies the authors offer a step by step guide from the early stages of planning a writing project, whether an undergraduate paper or a professional publication, to the polishing processes that make the difference between a merely descriptive account to an argument that intends to be critical and persuasive. Written in a clear accessible style this book will inspire a wide range of researchers from undergraduates to postgraduates, early career researchers and experienced professionals working across a wide range of fields, and demonstrate how research can have more impact in the real world"--

Although there is a considerable amount of writing on both group work and social work with the elderly, there is surprisingly little about applying this practice method to this specific age group. Group Work and Aging: Issues in Practice, Research, and Education fills this gap by presenting penetrating articles about a mutual aid approach to working with diverse groups of older adults with varied needs. Respected experts and gifted researchers provide case studies, practice examples, and explanation of theory to illustrate this practice method with aging adults, their families, and their careg

"Evidence-Based Counselling and Psychological Therapies assesses the impact of the international drive towards evidence-based health care on NHS policy and the provision of psychological services in the NHS. A range of contributors provides an overview of evidence-based health care and the research methods that underpin it, demonstrating its effect on policy, provision, practitioners and patients. Evidence-Based Counselling and Psychological Therapies is for mental health professionals and trainees concerned with this movement which is having, and will continue to have, a huge impact on the purchasing, provisions and practice of health care."--Jacket

In A Tale of Two Cultures, we propose that the qualitative and quantitative research traditions are associated with distinctive procedures and practices as well as contrasting values, beliefs, and norms -- that is, they are distinct cultures. Like most cultures, they are loosely integrated, internally contested, and ever changing. Nevertheless, they feature many important and readily identifiable differences. In the 14 chapters of the book, we explore these differences through a series of short (i.e., about 10-12 pages) essays that address specific methodological topics. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

The Research and Mapping for MCEECDYA Project: Student Academic Engagement has been funded by the Australian Government and project managed by the Department of Education Western Australian (DOEWA), in consultation with a nationally convened Steering Group of jurisdictional and non government school authorities' representatives. Researchers at the School of Education, Edith Cowan University have conducted the project through tender with the DOEWA. Purpose: The purpose of the project was to examine the characteristics of schools with a low Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) from all jurisdictions that were identified to be making a difference to student academic achievement, and to identify the key drivers and characteristics of successful models of practice for increasing and sustaining student academic engagement. In defining 'student academic engagement' this research has built on the definition used in the Pipeline project by Angus, McDonald, Ormond, Rybarcyzk, Taylor and Winterton, (2009, p 101-102): 'the product of the student's attention, effor t, emotions, cognitive investment and participation in learning and teacher actions that encourage participation and the development of competence in learning'. This was extended to include school leadership and other factors supporting school change in low ICSEA contexts. Key Research Questions: The study had two broad research questions, related to the issues of student academic engagement in low ICSEA schools. These questions were: What are the key drivers and characteristics of 1. successful models of practice for increasing and maintaining student engagement? What are the policy implications of these findings 2. for effective, sustained reform at the jurisdiction and national levels? Methodology: The study examined a sample of low ICSEA schools from across Australia. It was conducted just three years after the Commonwealth Government established its Education Revolution for Australian schools and established the Smarter Schools National Partnerships reform agenda. A review of the targets and initiatives that have been instituted by the State and Territory Departments of Education was also undertaken to provide a broader contextual framework for the study. State and Territory Departments of Education all require schools to monitor and report on aspects of student attendance, student performance and the quality of schooling in line with the national agenda. A case study approach was used to explore school practices in the area of student academic engagement in order to identify which strategies had been successfully employed. The study also incorporated an analytical theory of student academic engagement, supplemented by consideration of recent literature. Seventy-three schools were nominated by all education jurisdictions across Australia as low ICSEA primary and secondary schools whose national reporting data indicated they had made a significant, sustained improvement in students' academic engagement. A desktop audit of these schools identified 25 potential case studies. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the leadership teams of the identified schools, and school policies and performance data were examined. Twelve of these schools were selected and developed as case studies, to provide a sample of a range of low ICSEA Australian school contexts. Significantly, eleven of the twelve case study schools were National Partnership schools and their innovations were strongly supported by National Partnership funding. In total 40 of the 73 (or 55%) of the schools nominated for selection in this study were National Partnership schools despite this not being a criteria for nomination or selection as a case study school.

The rise of palm oil as the world's most consumed vegetable oil has coincided with exponential growth in palm oil research activity. Bibliometric analysis of research outputs reveals a distinct imbalance in the type of research being undertaken, notably a disproportionate focus on biofuel and engineering topics. Recognizing the expansion of oil palm agriculture across the tropics and the increasing awareness of environmental, social, and economic impacts, we seek to reorientate the existing research agenda toward one that addresses the most fundamental and urgent questions defined by the palm oil stakeholder community. Following consultation with 659 stakeholders from 38 countries, including palm oil growers, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and researchers, the highest priority research questions were identified within 13 themes. The resulting 279 questions, including 26 ranked as top priority, reveal a diversity of environmental and social research challenges facing the industry, ranging from the ecological and ecosystem impacts of production, to the livelihoods of plantation workers and smallholder communities. Analysis of the knowledge type produced from these questions underscores a clear need for fundamental science programmes, and studies that involve the consultation of non-academic stakeholders to develop "transformative" solutions to the oil palm sector. Stakeholders were most aligned in their choice of priority questions across the themes of policy and certification related themes, and differed the most in environmental feedback, technology and smallholder related themes. Our recommendations include improved regional academic leadership and coordination, greater engagement with private and public stakeholders in Africa, and Central and South America, and enhanced collaborative efforts with researchers in the major consuming countries of India and China.

The article presents approaches to enhance the eficiency of multi-user mode of access to research facilities, research methodologies and to scientiic and technical human resources in research and education organizations Core Shared Research Facility (CSRF), which integrate organization's methodological, human and material resources to provide R&D services, are considered as organizational forms of the multi-user mode of access. The article focuses on the approaches used by CSRF and their back-up organizations to compensate low demand for innovation from economic agents; lack of funds for scientiic equipment maintenance; in-house conlicts resulting from contradictions between a linear organizational structure and the project approach. The abovementioned problems are responsible for the decreasing effectiveness of Core research facilities while their resource capacity is growing. The "response" of CSRF to the problems consists in inding an exceptional market niche and in raising operational effectiveness. The irst CSRF competitiveness factor is based on the comprehensiveness of services achieved through integration of all the types of resources – up-to-date research methodologies, experience of scientiic and technical personnel, present-date equipment. A unique position against competitors and clients enables CSRF to carve out its' own niche in the sphere of intellectual services and to establish an association link between itself and successful solution of speciic R&D tasks. The second CSRF competitiveness factor, i. e. high operational effectiveness, is based on the optimization of general types of activities by means of inding new approaches to their execution, which relieve operational problems. The concluding part presents suggestions as to how to disseminate the examined approaches to the enhancing the eficiency of multi-user research facilities and the government support, and thus to transform CSRF into substantial entry points for engaging research organizations into innovation and manufacturing ...

This commentary introduces the HARPS supplement on getting research into policy and practice in sexual and reproductive health (SRH). The papers in this supplement have been produced by the Sexual Health and HIV Evidence into Practice (SHHEP) collaboration of international research, practitioner and advocacy organizations based in research programmes funded by the UK Department for International Development. The commentary describes the increasing interest from research and communication practitioners, policy makers and funders in expanding the impact of research on policy and practice. It notes the need for contextually embedded understanding of ways to engage multiple stakeholders in the politicized, sensitive and often contested arenas of sexual and reproductive health. The commentary then introduces the papers under their respective themes: (1) The theory and practice of research engagement (two global papers); (2) Applying policy analysis to explore the role of research evidence in SRH and HIV/AIDS policy (two papers with examples from Ghana, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia); (3) Strategies and methodologies for engagement (five papers on Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania and Swaziland respectively); (4) Advocacy and engagement to influence attitudes on controversial elements of sexual health (two papers, Bangladesh and global); and (5) Institutional approaches to inter-sectoral engagement for action and strengthening research communications (two papers, Ghana and global). The papers illustrate the many forms research impact can take in the field of sexual and reproductive health. This includes discursive changes through carving out legitimate spaces for public debate; content changes such as contributing to changing laws and practices, procedural changes such as influencing how data on SRH are collected, and behavioural changes through partnerships with civil society actors such as advocacy groups and journalists. The contributions to this supplement provide a body of critical analysis of communication and engagement strategies across the spectrum of SRH and HIV/AIDS research through the testing of different models for the research-to-policy interface. They provide new insights on how researchers and communication specialists can respond to changing policy climates to create windows of opportunity for influence.

A New Public Tool for Planning Cost-Effectiveness ResearchRigorous research on cost is needed to generate reliable and transparent estimates of cost-effectiveness — but a high quality cost study has to be planned prospectively.CEGA Program Scientist Liz Brown launches a new Costing Pre-analysis Planning template to foster collaboration between cost and impact evaluation research. This work was developed by CEGA's Cost Transparency Initiative and we welcome your feedback.A young woman sells tomatoes in a local market using her mobile phone to process the transaction. | Credit: Confidence Nzewi via Dreamstime.comJust one in five impact evaluations include any type of cost evidence (Brown & Tanner, 2019), which means that decision makers frequently lack key information to compare per beneficiary cost-per-impact across studies. CEGA's Cost Transparency Initiative has developed a new tool for researchers to help generate a rigorous estimate of the cost-effectiveness of an intervention, improve confidence in their findings, and provide actionable costing insights for policymakers. The publicly-accessible Costing Pre-analysis Planning template aligns impact estimates of an evaluation with final cost estimates, generating a rigorous and transparent estimate of cost per impact per beneficiary at the close of the study.CEGA developed and field-tested our cost pre-analysis planning tool on five cash-benchmarking impact evaluations completed in 2023. Throughout this engagement, we encountered wariness about the reliability and reproducibility of cost estimates and uncertainty about the underlying need for cost "research" among academic research economists. CEGA now routinely completes Costing Pre-analysis Planning templates in advance of conducting cost research, with costing-pre analysis plans in place on three active impact evaluations, Lishe Bora, Titukulane, and Takunda.The Costing Pre-analysis Planning template is designed using LaTeX so that it can either efficiently integrate with the pre-analysis plan (PAP) of an impact evaluation or serve as a standalone draft of a costing report that is fit for publication. The tool includes a structured outline and prompts to motivate the cost analysis, define the primary and secondary cost research questions, and identify the cost-relevant features of the intervention design and delivery.Cost pre-analysis plans document cost study designs and transparently share data, methods, and planned empirical analyses. As with PAPs for impact evaluations, costing PAPs minimize the risk of "cherry picking" specifications, such as narrowly-defining cost inclusion criteria that do not reflect the full cost of delivery or that only produce interesting cost-efficiency metrics. The tool improves collaboration around the use of sensitive and highly detailed expenditure data and the chances for better partnerships with decision makers on their cost research questions."Cost Is The Easiest Part" — A Common MisconceptionIt may seem straightforward to calculate the cost-effectiveness of an anti-poverty program: simply divide the total budget of the evaluated program by the number of households served, and compare it to the benefits per household. But there are several drawbacks to this approach:Expenditures in accountancy do not capture all relevant costs. There can be large deviations between budgets and actual expenditures — both in terms of the total cost and how resources are allocated across activities and time. Generally, actuals are the gold standard of cost data. However, the accountancy of the primary implementing partner(s) is a key source of data for this exercise. It has all the hallmarks of administrative data with some well-known advantages and limitations. We find that careful review of the chart of accounts, interviews, and supplementary data are needed to catch mis-classified expenses, to disaggregate "catch-all" categories of cost, and identify incompleteness.The development intervention and the development program may not be identical. Careful identification of treatment activities is needed to align the costing with the intervention that is the subject of the impact evaluation and the specific beneficiary population(s) of the evaluation. For example, our costing of a complex, large scale, bundled program of activities during a five-year intervention targets a subset of activities within the more 'complete' program. This well-established program has its own theory of change and targeting criteria. Our work isolates the costs of the intervention activities apart from the broader program.Different research questions require different cost data. It is not always evident which costs should be included in a cost evaluation. The criteria for inclusion or exclusion will depend largely on the research question at hand. For example, disentangling the cost of bundled intervention activities requires the identification of separate inputs for each component of the intervention. In this case, using the entire program budget as a proxy for cost would bias cost per beneficiary estimates by incorporating costs that are irrelevant to the research questions of concern to decision makers.Cost should match the estimand. To be valid, the estimate of cost per beneficiary should match the estimand that is the focus of the impact evaluation. Attention to the cost implications of sample attrition and non-compliance is needed to improve the accuracy of cost per beneficiary estimates.Implementation fidelity and costing accuracy. The real-world challenges of implementing a randomized evaluation complicates its costing. For example, a common assumption is that control groups incur no cost. However, this assumption fails when there is contamination between treatment and control groups. It is important to proactively plan the costing and track the intervention's implementation fidelity so that we can quickly identify anydata challenges that affect the accuracy of the costing.Variation in cost per beneficiary. A simple estimate of budget per beneficiary ignores a lot of important variation in cost per beneficiary. Beneficiaries who are more remote or more disadvantaged may incur a higher cost to reach. It might also prevent understanding how specific activities contribute to cost. A pre-analysis plan may help to plan out how to identify these differences.A completed costing pre-analysis plan template explains what the costing involves, how it fits with the impact evaluation research, and what data is needed to make it operational. The structure of this tool facilitates coordination not only within evaluation research teams but also with implementing partners and donors.Leaders need cost evidence to support the scale-up of effective interventions. For researchers to provide these data and insights, the field needs to develop and disseminate more open and transparent high quality tools for costing. We hope this new tool accelerates these efforts. Please join us by getting involved in the Costing Community of Practice.A New Public Tool For Planning Cost-Effectiveness Research was originally published in CEGA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Researching law and legal research: introducing the case studies approach / Laura Cahillane and Jennifer Schweppe -- 1. The case for a qualified veto system of adverse possession in Ireland: a doctrinal approach with "Bells and Whistles" -- 2. Who gets to decide on marriage equality? A reflection on comparative research / Conor O'Mahony -- 3. Researching the Irish Free State Constitution: law and history / Laura Cahillane -- 4. Using international law in interdisciplinaryhuman rights research / Clíodhna Murphy, Mary Gilmartin and Leanne Caulfield -- 5. The Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments Project: experiments in feminist legal research / Máiréad Enright and Aoife O' Donoghue -- 6. "Changing Ireland, Changing Law": access to justice and understanding the lived experience / Ivana Bacik and Mary Rogan -- 7. Researching with hard to access communities: understanding the relationship between the Trans Community and An Garda Siochana in Ireland / Amanda Haynes, Jennifer Schweppe and Niamh Dillon -- 8. Capturing cultures of control: some reflections on social research / Claire Hamilton -- 9. Using methodological triangulation to understand illicit drug markets / Johnny Connolly -- 10. Crossing th line: ethnographic fieldwork on crime and justice / Jonathan Ilan -- 11. Researching domestic violence: The INASC Project / Conor Hanly -- 12. Mixed methods inquiry in law: exploring the temporal burdens of medical negligence litigation / Mary-Elizabeth Tumelty -- 13. Research at the Law Reform Commission / Ciarán Burke and Raymond Byrne.