111,981 research outputs found
Evaluation of agri-environmental participatory extension programmes
Get PDFDue to negative impacts on the environment, such as emission of greenhouse gases and pollution
of surface and ground water, the agricultural sector has come under increasing scrutiny by wider
society. A range of environmental policies and regulations have been developed to create a more
environmentally sustainable farming culture, but successful implementation is complex due to
the biophysical, economic and social heterogeneity of farms. Therefore, change towards more
environmentally sustainable farming has been partially reliant on policies that stimulate
voluntary change, such as participatory (research and) extension programmes (PEPs). In PEPs,
farmers are participants in knowledge generation and practice change by introducing practices
via experimentation on farm and subsequently demonstrating and scrutinising these in
discussion groups with peers, experts and researchers.
Given the public investment in PEPs, the increasing requirement for accountability by policy
makers and funding bodies, and the uncertainty around the contribution to environmental
targets, it is important that these programmes are reliably evaluated. This thesis addresses the
topic of evaluation by: i) presenting a literature review of the current state of PEP evaluation; ii)
conducting a mixed-method ex-post evaluation of an agri-environmental PEP in Scotland; iii)
conducting an explanatory study on farmer decision-making regarding the uptake of
environmental practices in New Zealand; and iv) studying the change within the culture of
farming in New Zealand and Scotland due to environmental pressures and the role of PEPs in
that change.
The findings show that quantitative and qualitative methods are required to comprehensively
assess the effect of PEPs beyond practice adoption, as well as longitudinal data collection to
correctly quantify the effect of PEP participation. Furthermore, heterogeneity in decision-making
factors is observed amongst farmers, which has to be taken into account when designing a PEP.
Moreover, achieving sustained environmental change requires more than practice change, such
as redefining the values and beliefs guiding farming culture. PEPs can be instrumental in
achieving change beyond practice adoption, but additional policy tools, such as regulation and
market-based instruments, are required to achieve successful change. The contribution of this thesis is four-fold: i) it presents one of the first evaluations of climate
change PEPs in peer-reviewed literature; ii) it contributes to the development of a mixed
methods approach for evaluation; iii) it provides insight into farmer decision-making around
water quality issues in countries with low regulation; and iv) it considers PEP evaluation from a
novel institutional logics perspective
Science education practitioners' views of research and its influence on their practice
No full textResearch report of project 4 of the Evidence-based practice in science education (EPSE) research network funded by ERSC TLRP This report presents the findings of an interview and focus group study which explored perceptions of educational research and its use amongst teachers of science and others engaged in science education. The rationale for the study arose from the significant and ongoing international debate about the claim that evidence should play a more significant role in the professional practice of teachers and others involved in shaping educational policy and practice
author-bios-SRD-19-0063.R1 – Supplemental material for The Network Structure of Police Misconduct
No full textSupplemental material, author-bios-SRD-19-0063.R1 for The Network Structure of Police Misconduct by George Wood, Daria Roithmayr and Andrew V. Papachristos in Socius</p
Influence of climate stress on technical efficiency and economic downside risk exposure of EU dairy farms
Get PDFThis paper assesses the influence of heat and drought stress on the economic performance of the European dairy sector. Climatic data from the Gridded Agro-Meteorological data in Europe were combined with dairy enterprise data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network, resulting in a data set of 4412 farms in 22 European Union (EU) countries over the period 2007-2013. Since the performance of dairy farms is influenced by the context in which they operate, farms were grouped into areas representing similar climatic conditions through the use of a latent class analysis. Technical efficiency (TE) and economic downside risk were used as performance indicators against which the effect of climatic stress factors was evaluated. TE was estimated using a 'true-fixed' effect stochastic frontier model. Economic downside risk was based on gross margin deviations. Regression analysis suggests a significant negative effect of drought and heat stress on both TE and the downside gross margin difference in most climatic classes, with few exceptions. Results imply that both drought and heat stress-related issues need to be considered when designing adaptation strategies to address threats to the economic performance of the EU dairy sector
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Evaluating the use of marginal abatement cost curves applied to greenhouse gas abatement in the UK agriculture
Get PDFClimate change is arguably the most important global societal challenge. Developing ‘low-carbon
societies’, i.e. reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapting to a changing
climate, is becoming a policy goal across the globe. Agriculture plays an important role in
this transformation. The sector is highly vulnerable to climate variability, and is a significant
source of emissions. At the same time, it has potential for reducing GHG emissions and also
provides opportunity for carbon sequestration in soils and crop biomass.
Policy support for mitigating GHG emissions is being informed by scientific evidence on the
effectiveness and costs of mitigation opportunities. This information is frequently depicted in
marginal abatement cost curves (MACCs), an assessment tool which can help to visualise
the hierarchy of technical measures and their cumulative level of abatement. Similarly to
other assessment tools, MACCs’ suitability to provide information has certain limitations.
Furthermore, different derivations of MACCs are appropriate to answer different questions.
In order to draw both informative and reliable conclusions for policy decisions, the
characteristics of the MACCs and the resulting limitations have to be presented clearly.
This dissertation seeks to answer the general question whether the agricultural MACCs can
be improved so that they provide more comprehensive and tailored information to policy
makers. In particular five limitations of the MACCs are discussed: the lack of representation
of wider effects, the issue of cost-effectiveness of policy instruments and the inclusion of
transaction costs, the uncertainty in the MACCs, the boundaries and the heterogeneity of the
analysis. Theoretical frameworks are developed and case study examples are provided for
these limitations, and the frameworks are assessed in terms whether they achieve the goal of
providing more comprehensive information to policy makers than a conventional MACC.
Furthermore, the dissertation summarises the available methodologies and applications in
agriculture to enhance the MACCs and provides guidelines for researchers and policy
makers about the choice of methods and the communication of the results in order to
improve the use of MACCs in the policy process
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
A Framework for Analyzing Tariffs and Subsidies in Water Provision to Urban Households in Developing Countries
Get PDFThis paper aims to present a basic conceptual framework for understanding the main practical issues and challenges relating to tariffs and subsidies in the water sector in developing countries. The paper introduces the basic economic notions relevant to the water sector; presents an analytical framework for assessing the need for and evaluating subsidies; and discusses the recent evidence on the features and performance of water tariffs and subsidies in various regions, with a special focus on Africa. The discussion is limited to the provision of drinking water to urban households in developing countries.water, access to water, tariffs, subsidies, urban development
Understanding Music’s Theological Significance: A Kantian Approach
Get PDFJeremy Begbie speaks of music as ‘theologically loaded’: as conveying a sense of intrinsic theological significance. This thesis explores the possibility that music is theologically loaded in an epistemological sense: that music is dependent on knowledge of God. Modern epistemologies, in which knowledge is constructed by the individual human mind, pose a challenge to such a conclusion, since even if divine knowledge is possible it would appear irrelevant for our understanding of objects, such as music, that can be known directly through experience. Because Immanuel Kant presents a particularly stringent theory of human-mind-dependent knowledge, we can use his aesthetic theory as an analytical tool both to assess the epistemological content of our aesthetic judgements as they relate to musical beauty, and to consider whether theological knowledge can be relevant to these judgements.
Applying Kant’s aesthetic theory to musical beauty, we find that from within, music seems sublime — defying our ability to understand its form or predict its structure — while from without it remains clearly intelligible. This unique construction makes our judgements of musical beauty particularly dependent on what Kant calls a ‘common sense’: a principle that, although outside our cognition, nevertheless plays a constitutive role in our aesthetic judgements by ensuring their universal validity. The dependence of our aesthetic judgements on this common sense allows for the possibility that musical beauty is dependent on knowledge of God — even when considered within a human-mind-dependent epistemology — and thus enables us to give an account of music’s theological significance that is consistent with modern theories of knowledge. Considered within a Christian perspective, this common sense forms the basis for a grammatical understanding of beauty, in which beauty represents the distance between our awareness of divine providence and our limited knowledge of God’s purposes
Využití sociálních médií v B2B prodeji
No full textTato diplomová práce se zabývá tím, jak mohou B2B obchodníci využívat sociální média v prodeji. Na základě systematické rešerše literatury, autor zjistil, že akademici, zkoumající danou problematiku, navrhují další výzkum, a to: v kterých konkrétních krocích se dají využít sociální média v prodeji (Salo, 2017). Autor se na základě toho rozhodl zjistit, jaké sociální sítě, různé technologie a pluginy se dají využít v B2B prodeji - tzv. social sellingu. Social selling se v této práci týká primárně procesu akvizice a okrajově péčí o stávající zákazníky. Autor si vybral kvalitativní průzkum pomocí 10 hloubkových polo-strukturovaných rozhovorů, aby odhalil jak, která sociální média to jsou, tak i motivaci prodejců, proč tato média používat/nepoužívat. Aby autor dodržel správnost vyhodnocení výsledků, data byla analyzována pomocí Tématické analýzy, která v této studii vykrystalizovala 2 hlavní strategické přístupy v social sellingu. Tyto přístupy (tzv. Push a Pull strategie) obsahují praktické příklady a konkrétní aktivity, které mohou prodejci využívat v každodenní praxi. Tyto výsledky jsou prezentovány s důrazem na praktičnost a jednoduchost implementace. Tvoří proto hlavní přínos autorovo výzkumu. V poslední části autor zmiňuje výzvy a manažerská doporučení, které mohou obchodníci využít v každodenním pracovním životě.This diploma thesis focuses on social media usage in B2B sales. Based on the systematic literature review conducted by the author, he has found out that recent researchers (Salo, 2017) suggest further research in the area of how and in which sales phase should various social networking sites, technologies and plugins used. To further fill this research gap, author decided to identify these social media and their usage among B2B salespeople in the so-called social selling process. The social selling process in this thesis applies mainly to acquiring new prospects and tangentially to taking care of existing clients (follow-up step). Author has chosen a qualitative research method via conducting 10 in-depth semi-structured interviews to reveal these instruments as well as motivation of a sales person on why to use social media in the selling process. The collected data was analyzed using Thematic analysis to ensure the right procedure and to identify main themes which crystalized into 2 main strategic approaches in social selling. These approaches (Push and Pull) include practical examples of concrete activities which sales people can use in their daily jobs and are presented with focus on practicality and ease of implementation. These also form the main contribution of author`s research. In the last part, author mentions challenges in social selling and recommended managerial implications for salesforce
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