Suchergebnisse

Transparency and reproducibility are key elements of good science, and this also holds for the process
of data collection in scientific surveys. To conduct analyses based on survey data collected by others,
researchers heavily depend on accurate documentation of all stages in the data collection process, either
for generating new scientific evidence or for reviewing previous research findings (e.g., in replication
studies). In this contribution, we propose documentation guidelines for mail surveys. In doing this,
we not only focus on mail-only surveys but also cover documentation guidelines for self-administered
mixed-mode surveys, thus taking into account their growing importance in the survey landscape.

As recently highlighted in a Connecticut federal court decision, proper documentation of HR actions pay off. Retaliation is unlawful under the National Labor Relations Act, whistleblower and civil rights statutes, and many others. Good documentation can be the key to defeating a claim of retaliation. This is particularly true when it's necessary to terminate someone soon after they have engaged in a protected activity, whether complaining about working conditions or accusing a manager of harassment. Good documentation of the basis for and an explanation of the decision can forestall liability.

On 28 October 2015, BICC hosted its annual international conference entitled "Networks of Organized Violence". This topic was chosen because of a perceived shift from the primacy of the state to the importance of networks in perpetrating organized violence. The aim the conference was to view networks of organized violence from different academic angles and to discuss various methodological approaches to understanding the role of networks. The first panel illustrated the relevance of exploring local dynamics of violent conflicts, including the behaviour of groups and the networks in which they are embedded. The second panel looked at the interconnectedness of structures, systems and people involved in the procurement and application of military technology, using a more classical understanding of networks. The final panel discussed the use of network analysis as a tool for understanding armed actor groups. The conference concluded that while understanding networks of organized violence is critical to limiting its destructive effects, networks should also be examined for their potential to build peace and reduce organized violence.

Sociolinguistic questionnaires often concentrate on the documentation of linguistic practices without considering in details the cultural context into which these linguistic practices are embedded. A cultural linguistics approach to the documentation of language takes a wider perspective including the socio-cultural and the socio-economic aspects of a group in order to design an explanatory background for sociolinguistic data and in order to parameterize corresponding questionnaires. This article discusses some crucial aspects of this approach that are also relevant to a more comprehensive documentation of the linguistic practices of a language community. I will use data stemming from the project Minorities of Armenia–a Sociocultural and Sociolinguistic Survey to illustrate this approach allowing a comparative description of minorities within the frame of a more or less homogeneous majority society.

"How does material culture become data? Why does this matter, and for whom? As the cultures of Indigenous peoples in North America were mined for scientific knowledge, years of organizing, classifying, and cataloguing--hardened into accepted categories, naming conventions, and tribal affiliations --much of it wrong. Cataloguing Culture examines how colonialism operates in museum bureaucracies. Using the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History as her reference, Hannah Turner organizes her study by the technologies framing museum work over 200 years: field records, the ledger, the card catalogue, the punch card, and eventually the database. She examines how categories were applied to ethnographic material culture and became routine throughout federal collecting institutions. As Indigenous communities encounter the documentary traces of imperialism while attempting to reclaim what is theirs, this timely work shines a light on access to and return of cultural heritage."--