1,720,987 research outputs found
Evaluating to Learn: Monitoring & Evaluation Best Practices in Development INGOs
No full textUSAID Forward has spurred development assistance implementers to consider how USAID’s new priorities will impact international non-governmental organizations (INGOs)’ monitoring and evaluation (M&E) practices. The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to determine for the client whether INGOs have changed their M&E practices in response to USAID Forward’s Evaluation Policy. Second, the report identifies best practices of development INGOs in implementing M&E. Interviews were conducted with nine M&E staff members from eight different INGOs. The results of the analysis show mixed responses regarding the influence of USAID Forward’s Evaluation Policy on M&E, and revealed six best practices. The study includes recommendations that IRD apply the best practices outlined in this report to enhance its own M&E activities, for several reasons. Functioning M&E systems enable INGOs to achieve mission, improve programs, and attract resources, at the program and agency levels. INGOs can leverage their value add as implementing agencies to preserve their role in development assistance despite USAID and the international community’s emphasis on local capacity building
Contributing Factors to Persistent Poverty in North Carolina Appalachia
Full text linkExecutive Summary
Policy Question (p.1)
Why have the North Carolina (NC) Appalachian counties of Graham, Swain, and Rutherford remained “distressed” while certain other NC Appalachian counties improved their economic conditions over the last several decades? Can actions taken in NC Appalachian “success stories” be replicated in the three current distressed counties?
Contributing Factors to Poverty in Appalachia (p.6)
We found that poverty is persistent in Appalachia due primarily to geographic isolation. We found that geographic isolation in NC Appalachia is especially problematic and leads to:
• Poor access to education.
• Limitations on trade with other communities.
• Limited or nonexistent access to quality healthcare, leading to poor health outcomes.
The Distressed Counties (p. 14)
Congressional legislation formed the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) in 1965. At that time the ARC found that 25 of the 29 NC Appalachian counties were distressed. The NC Appalachian Counties that were distressed when Congress established the ARC almost 50 years ago and are now currently distressed are:
• Graham County, NC
• Rutherford County, NC
• Swain County, NC
Methodology (p.20)
We compared per capita market income of each of these 25 counties over the last fifty years in roughly ten year intervals (1959, 1969, 1979, 1989, 2007, and 2010). Per capita market income is defined as the mean money income received in the past 12 months computed for every man, woman, and child in a geographic area, usually denoted in a metropolitan city, county, state, or nation. It is computed by dividing the total income, less transfer payments (i.e. welfare payments, other entitlement monetary compensation) of all people 15 years old and over in a geographic area by the total population in that area. We noted that income is not collected for people under 15 years old even though those people are included in the denominator of the per capita income calculation. By comparing these averages we could clearly establish along a single dimension what counties experienced the most substantial growth in earnings since the ARC implemented economic development policies in the region.
We wanted to discover which NC Appalachian counties sustained substantial per capita income growth over the life of ARC (1965 to present). We selected multiple counties and conducted qualitative research to see what, if any, economic development initiatives or growth-model incentives occurred in these prosperous counties and how successful they were.
Success Stories to Emulate (p.23)
We found that the three counties that experienced the most per capita market income growth relative to their base position in 1959 are:
• Macon County, NC
• Madison County, NC
• Watagua County, NC
Findings/Recommendations (p.29)
We found that the three common themes in the research suggested the following:
• Access to quality education helps per-capita market income progression.
• Health outcomes and persistent poverty exist in parallel.
• Consider revising ARC’s economic classification system.
The “success story” counties had much better educational outcomes (i.e. high school and college attainment rates) and better health outcomes (i.e. access to healthcare, lower incidences of smoking, alcohol dependence, etc.). ARC should expand its classification system from five (distressed, at-risk, transitional, competitive, and attainment) to ten categories that align with ten sets of percentile ranges. By doing this there will be greater distinctions between the levels of economic classifications, and policymakers can tailor specific economic development programs accordingly
The Impact of Reservation Policy on Education in India: An Evaluation of Karnataka's Gram Panchayat Presidency Reservation and Children's Education Attainment for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Households
Full text linkReservation policy in local governments – Gram Panchayats – in India is one of three key means of affirmative action, ensuring lower caste groups are represented fairly in political institutions. Researchers have found local political reservations for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) populations strongly associated with more SC- and ST-friendly policies, increases in welfare spending and investment in infrastructure, as well as lower household poverty levels. This paper explores one potential indirect benefit of reservations, namely improvements in education attainment. The theory of role model effects is applied to the context of political reservations - greater presence of SC and ST presidents in Gram Panchayats could act as a positive role model of stereotype-defying success for SC and ST children, incentivizing more investment in education attainment. The paper tests the relationship between reservation rates and average completed years of schooling in a dose-response regression model at the sub-district level, using a sample of 13,408 SC children and 6,066 ST children ages 5 to 18 in Karnataka. The results of the analysis suggest that more SC and ST presidents in Gram Panchayats are associated with increases in education attainment among SC and ST children. Further research would be valuable to strengthen these findings and expand the literature on indirect benefits of reservations
Establishing a Framework to Assess the Cost-Effectiveness of IIPH's Folic Acid Interventions for Women of Reproductive Age
No full textThere is a very high prevalence of folic acid deficiency in developing countries and women suffering from this deficiency during their pregnancies are at an increased risk of having a child with neural tube defects (NTDs). NTDs affects approximately 400,000 births annually. Newborns affected by neural tube defects suffer lifelong physical and mental handicaps, and in cases of severe NTDs, die. NTDs, however, are preventable with proper folic acid interventions for women of reproductive age, often reducing the risk of having a child with NTDs by 72%. This paper aims to conduct a systematic review in order to understand, formulate and propose a framework for assessing the cost-effectiveness of the Indian Institute of Public Health's (IIPH) prospective folic acid interventions in India. Several limitations to the proposal of such a framework (particularly on efficacy vs. effectiveness) are highlighted alongside key findings on integral components to include when conducting a cost-effectiveness analysis on folic acid interventions. These findings (costs/benefits/effectiveness), best practices, and lessons from a programmatic and post-hoc perspective are reported and discussed in the results section. Findings are succinctly summarized into a framework in the discussion section as a recommended checklist for IIPH to utilize when conducting a cost-effectiveness analysis on their future intervention.</p
Essays in Empirical Development Economics
No full textSocial norms can play an important role in economic decision-making. Individuals face costs if they deviate from cultural norms in their families or communities, and firms seek to preserve reputation in order to bolster their position in their market. In this dissertation, I explore the role of cultural norms and reputation in individual, household, and firm decision-making in developing countries. The first chapter is comprised of information and priming experiments on a job search platform in urban Pakistan identifying the role of social norms and workplace attributes on educated women's job search and occupational choice. The second chapter studies the relationship between gold price in year of birth and household decision-making at adulthood using nationally representative data in India. The third chapter combines a lab-in-field generosity game with field-based measures of healthcare provider effort to document that a sizable proportion of healthcare providers in this setting in rural India exert clinical effort with patients in ways consistent with maintaining reputation in their communities.</p
Risks and Rewards: Three Essays on Political Economy of Indian Democracy During Crises
No full textThis dissertation investigates how politically-expedient decisions and resource constraints create winners and losers on the path toward development, focusing on slum evictions, public recordkeeping, and public health crisis response. This manuscript extends findings from prior scholarship on the politics and consequences of redistribution to understand decision-making in the context of urban informality and Covid-19 crisis response in India. I combine survey data with webscraping and remote sensing techniques to study why some urban slums were evicted while others were left intact; which areas experienced underreporting of Covid-19 mortality; and where government directed limited Covid-19 vaccine stocks. I find evidence that greater local economic activity was associated with evictions, that Covid-19 mortality counts were lower in areas aligned with the ruling coalition, and that Covid-19 vaccination supplies were strategically directed to areas of electoral importance to the ruling coalition. Taken together, these findings show that, even during crises, electoral incentives shape policy. </p
The association between work productivity and physical activity among Singapore full time employees
Full text linkLow work productivity has caused large indirect cost to many employers. Evidence shows that physical activity can improve health status, thus enhancing work productivity. In view of the benefits of physical activities, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a guideline on age-specific physical activity standards in 2010. According to the guideline, two weekly physical activity standards (the WHO standard and the WHO additional standard) have been introduced in order to prevent non- communicable disease and relieve mental pressure. In this study, the association between work productivity and physical activity has been explored. The work productivity is measured by presenteeism and absenteeism together. Presenteeism implies a situation where a mentally or physically sick employee attend to work despite a medical illness that makes their job performance sub-optimal. It is recorded as a self-reported percentage of work efficiency loss in the study. Absenteeism implies having work absence because of medical condition. It is recorded as whether participants have medical absence in the past week. 928 valid responses from Singapore full-time employees have been analyzed using logistic models.Results show that participants who had not met the WHO additional standard are less likely to have medical absence (OR=2.51, PThe findings could be explained by several reasons. First, physically active participants have higher chance of physical injuries, leading to medical absence from work. Secondly, participants who had met the WHO additional standard are more likely to have lower income. Because of the labor leisure tradeoff theory, people who have lower income are less incentivized to trade leisure time for work. Therefore, the participants who had met the WHO additional standard have a lower medical absence rate. Thirdly, findings show that frequent healthy lifestyle is associated with higher work productivity. However, People who had met the WHO additional standard are less likely to have a frequent healthy lifestyle due to the lower social and economic status they have. Therefore, even though they have longer time spent on physical activity, the work productivity is still lower. Lastly, because of the work ethics in Singapore, employees ask for medical absence only due to urgent and serious medication conditions and such urgent and serious medical conditions cannot be prevented by physical activities.</p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“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
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