Measuring and evaluating school performance: an investigation of status and growth-based achievement indicators

Several school performance indices were evaluated using achievement data from multiple longitudinally matched middle school student cohorts in a large district in the southwestern United States. Measures designed to index the within-cohort achievement status and growth of students as well as the status and growth-based changes that occur over years between different student cohorts were studied. Within- and between-cohort status and growth-based estimates of school performance were generated by applying simple and relatively complex statistical models to the longitudinal time-series data obtained on students. Results indicated that within-cohort status-based estimates were closely related to student demographics and between-cohort estimates were associated with cohort enrollment size and initial performance level. These results suggest that schools may often be rewarded and penalized on the basis of factors over which school personnel have limited or no control. Implications for the measurement and evaluation of school performance are discussed.     

Measuring costs from permitted gaming: concepts and categories in evaluating gambling's consequences

This paper addresses the methodology of cost–benefit analysis as applied to policy alternatives regarding legally sanctioned gambling in its various forms. Existing economic studies regarding the social costs of gambling are reviewed and critiqued. Distinctions are made between definitions of social costs that are defined as actions which result in negative changes in aggregate social wealth (the narrow definition), and those which also include internal nonmarket costs that are borne by individual gamblers and their immediate families and acquaintances (the broader definition). This distinction is important because of its bearing on economic policies that are primarily concerned with economic efficiency versus policies that are more paternalistic, which attempt to protect individuals from self-damage or self-destruction by restricting their ranges of choice. Whether societies choose to prohibit or severely restrict permitted gambling, or allocate substantial resources to mitigate its negative side effects, rests largely on which of these perspectives regarding social costs they find more appropriate. Finally, the issue of social protection through restrictions on the availability of gambling to the entire population, versus a strategy tailored toward identifiable problem gamblers, is discussed.     

Ethnic and gender diversity,process and performance in groups of business students in Sweden

This article investigates the complex interrelation between ethnic and gender diversity, process and performance among groups of business students. The article is based on an empirical survey of business students working on a complex assignment in groups of two to five in a small Swedish university. The results indicate that gender diversity leads to positive group outcomes, while ethnic diversity appears to create negative group outcomes. Intervening process variables, such as group communication, conflict and effectiveness in problem solving, were not found to be influenced by diversity, or to influence group outcomes. While the non‐influence of intervening variables can probably be explained by methodological difficulties, the negative outcome for ethnic diversity indicates a need to help students better manage ethnic diversity in order to reap its benefits.     

The imprecise science of evaluating scholarly performance: utilizing broad quality categories for an assessment of business and management journals

In a growing number of countries, government-appointed assessment panels develop ranks on the basis of the quality of scholarly outputs to apportion budgets in recognition of evaluated performance and to justify public funds for future R&D activities. When business and management journals are being grouped in broad quality categories, a recent study has noted that this procedure was placing the same journals in essentially the same categories. Drawing on journal quality categorizations by several German- and English-speaking business departments and academic associations, the author performs nonparametric tests and correlations to analyze whether this claim can be substantiated. In particular, he examines the ability of broad quality categorizations to add value to governmental, administrative, and academic decision making by withstanding the criticism traditionally levied at research quality assessments.     

The political economy of urban homicide: assessing the relative impact of gender inequality on sex-specific victimization

This research examines the ways in which the changing political economy of urban areas has contributed differently to the homicide victimization rates of females and males across US cities. Recent research, while relatively limited, has presented disparate results regarding the effect of gender inequality on urban sex-specific victimization. Our work further explores this relationship by taking into account relative gender disparities in income, education, labor market opportunities, and politics in an examination of sex-specific homicide victimization in 1990. Key to this current investigation is the evaluation of feminist and lifestyle arguments that suggest that structural gender inequality has a unique effect on female victimization. Overall, our findings reveal gender inequality to be a significant predictor of both male and female urban homicide. While these findings suggest mixed support for theoretical arguments regarding gender inequality, further analyses reveal significant differences in specific types of gender inequality on victimization patterns across genders. These additional results highlight the need for greater attention toward both methodological and theoretical issues when examining the interconnections between gender, political economy, and violence in research.     

From assessing needs to designing and evaluating programs: Case study of a family support program in Portugal

In the last years, researchers have been emphasizing the importance of promoting needs-led, context-specific, user-centered services in the context of child protection. However, policy-makers and service planners around the world largely depend on US-based research evidence of what is effective in the domain of family support. This work presents, in two studies, the process of design and evaluation of a targeted family support intervention that was developed and implemented in Portugal.Following the Common Language Approach to needs assessment (Dartington Social Research Unit, 2001), in study 1 we screened 100 children and their families attending a generalist child care service for risk and protective factors. Four different clusters of needs were identified. One cluster was selected as target-group for the design of a service to match their needs. Results indicated that families in this cluster had socioeconomical disadvantages, a challenging family environment and inadequate parenting practices. Children were showing signs of problematic social behaviors.In study 2 we describe the theoretical process model and the logic model for the intervention, and experimentally evaluate the program's efficacy. Results from pre–post assessments indicate improvements in the intervention group (N = 20) in several areas of parental empowerment and family relations, comparing with the control group (N = 20).This approach to need-service matching seems to be a viable pathway to design needs-led, context-specific, and user-centered services, and to assess their efficacy, thereby informing policy makers and service planners.     

Multiple business ownership in the farm sector: assessing the enterprise and employment contributions of farmers in Cambridgeshire

Multiple business ownership has become an important theme within the small firms research literature. While early studies emphasised its role in reducing business risk, more recently portfolio entrepreneurship has been recognised as an important growth strategy, particularly in sectors where economies of scale can be achieved at a relatively low level. Research studies specifically examining multiple business ownership are still scarce, but the parallels between portfolio entrepreneurship in non-farm sectors and farm pluriactivity have been noted. Although pluriactivity has been subject to extensive investigation in recent years, analysis has generally focused on farm-centred diversification, rather than the wider entrepreneurial activities of the farmer. Using a survey of nearly 300 farm owners in Cambridgeshire, this exploratory study analyses the incidence of portfolio entrepreneurship in the farm sector and assesses its contribution to enterprise and employment creation. The results demonstrate that a core of farmers have multiple business interests and that these additional business activities make a substantial contribution to both numbers of enterprises and employment creation. While previous studies of pluriactivity have generally used the farm business as the main unit of analysis, it is argued that including the wider business activities of the farm owner enables a more precise estimation of the total contribution of farmers to rural economic development.     

Risky business: emotion,decision-making,and addiction

Although metabolic abnormalities in the orbitofrontal cortex have been observed in substance dependent individuals (SDI) for several years, very little attention was paid to the role of this brain region in addiction. However, patients with damage to the ventromedial (VM) sector of the prefrontal cortex and SDI show similar behaviors. (1) They often deny, or they are not aware, that they have a problem. (2) When faced with a choice to pursue a course of action that brings an immediate reward at the risk of incurring future negative consequences, they choose the immediate reward and ignore the future consequences. Studies of patients with bilateral lesions of the VM prefrontal cortex support the view that the process of decision-making depends in many important ways on neural substrates that regulate homeostasis, emotion, and feeling. Parallel lines of study have revealed that VM cortex dysfunction is also evident in subgroups of individuals who are addicted to substances. Thus, understanding the neural mechanisms of decision-making has direct implications for understanding disorders of addiction and pathological gambling, and the switch from a controlled to uncontrolled and compulsive behavior. On the clinical front, the approach to treat addictive disorders has been dominated by a diagnostic system that focuses on behaviors, physical symptoms, or choice of drugs. The article emphasizes the concept of using neurocognitive criteria for subtyping addictive disorders. This is a significant paradigm shift with significant implications for guiding diagnosis and treatment. Using neurocognitive criteria could lead to more accurate subtyping of addictive disorders, and perhaps serve as a guide for more specific, and potentially more successful, behavioral and pharmacological interventions.     

At the intersection of science,technology, engineering,and mathematics and business management in Canadian higher education: An intentional equity,diversity, and inclusion framework

In this study, the authors address the persistent discrimination cis women face in the Canadian science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) higher education context. Pulling on the notion of interrelationships that cross educational faculty boundaries and on intersectionality scholarship to unsettle the structural and disciplinary domains of power, the authors ask, “How can business education and STEM education work together with respect to social considerations, such as gender/race/ethnicity/etc., and social equity and inclusivity, within the Canadian higher education system?” This study aims to build on these interrelationships among diverse, complex individuals who participated in a graduate-level STEM and business management summer institute to provide an evidence-based and intentional equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) framework for STEM higher education contexts. Using a mixed-methods approach, which saw data collection via a survey instrument and semi-structured interviews, the subsequent quantitative analysis points to expanding interrelationships to broader areas beyond STEM and business management programs. The close reading of the collected qualitative data, via antenarrative spirals, elevates the participants' complexities beyond focusing “just” on their intersecting identities to looking at their perceptions of STEM fields, the order that ensues and the potential for the undoing of that order. The findings, results, and analyses of these collected data led to an intentional EDI framework, the main contribution of this study, constructed into three main pillars represented by the figure of a tree: the foundational elements (roots) built on individuals' complexities and experiences of Othering, the interrelationships (trunk) possible across various educational and professional dimensions, and a call to structural change initiatives (branches) with the possibility for growth in other areas. This work then contributes to not only filling a significant literature gap and building awareness regarding EDI concerns in STEM contexts via active interrelationship-building activities but also to unsettling the structural and disciplinary domains of power by embracing a holistic strategy to address systemic discriminatory practices in the Canadian STEM higher education context.     

Measuring the impact of prices on inequality: With applications to Thailand and Korea

This paper develops a new methodology to compute social cost of living indices. These indices indicate whether or not price changes have a favourable (or unfavourable) impact on the welfare of the poor. The indices are derived on the basis of two alternative classes of social welfare functions. The methodology developed in the paper is applied to compute social cost of living indices for Thailand and Korea. The empirical results show that changes in prices have generally affected the poor more adversely than the non-poor.     

Measuring the impact of price changes on poverty

This paper develops a methodology to measure the impact of price changes on poverty measured by an entire class of additive separable poverty measures. This impact is captured by means of the price elasticity of poverty. The total effect of changes in price on poverty is explained in terms of two components, income and distribution effects. The income effect measures the change in poverty when all prices increase uniformly, whereas the distribution effect captures the change in poverty because of changes in relative prices. Using this decomposition, the paper derives an empirically operational index, which reveals whether the price changes have been pro-poor or anti-poor. The paper also derives a new price index for the poor. While this index can be computed for any poverty measures, our empirical analysis applied to Brazil is based on three poverty measures, the head-count ratio, the poverty gap ratio and the severity of poverty. The empirical analysis shows that price changes in Brazil during the 1999–2006 periods have been anti-poor. Nevertheless, during the last 2 to 3 years, the price changes have affected the poor less adversely than the non-poor.     

"Show me your impact": evaluating transitional justice in contested spaces

This paper discusses some of the most significant challenges and opportunities for evaluating the effects of programs in support of transitional justice - the field that addresses how post-conflict or post authoritarian societies deal with legacies of wide spread human rights violations. The discussion is empirically grounded in a case study that assesses the efforts of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and one of its Guatemalan partners to evaluate the effects of a museum exposition that is attempting to recast historic memory and challenge racist attitudes in post-conflict Guatemala. The paper argues that despite the increasing trend to fund transitional justice programs, many international aid donors are stuck in traditional and arguably orthodox paradigms of program evaluation. This is having a negative effect not only upon the administration of aid but also upon how transitional justice research is perceived and valued by local populations. The case study experience indicates that there is no perfect evaluation model or approach for evaluating transitional justice programming - only choices to be made by commissioners of evaluation, evaluators, and those being evaluated. These are profoundly influenced by the extreme politics and moral values that define transitional justice settings as contested spaces in which calls to remember the tragic past must be balanced with aspirations to re-build a hopeful future.     

Activating diversity: the impact of student race on contributions to course discussions

Racial diversity is understood to play an important role for all students on the college campus. In recent years, much effort has gone into documenting the positive effects of this diversity. However, few studies have focused on how diversity impacts student interactions in the classroom, and even fewer studies attempt to quantify contributions from students of different races. Using Web blog discussions about race and religion, the authors uncover the differences in contributions black and white students make to those discussions. The implications of these findings are important for scholars interested in how diversity impacts student learning, and for policymakers advocating on behalf of affirmative action legislation.     

Network diversity,contact diversity,and status attainment

We propose that diversity in social relations measured by network diversity and cross-race/cross-gender contacts affords job seekers higher contact status that in turn brings better status attainment outcomes. Controlling for traditional strength of tie measures and other confounders, the empirical study confirms that (1) network diversity in race and gender are significantly associated with actual utilization of cross-race/cross-gender contacts in job search, (2) use of cross-race/cross-gender contacts is significantly related to higher contact status for nonwhite and female job seekers, but (3) contact status (activated social capital) partially provides jobs of higher SEI scores for white job seekers. Similarly, male job seekers obtain better jobs through female contacts, but the same does not apply to female job seekers. These findings show relative return deficits of social capital experienced by racial minorities and females even when they exert extra effort to obtain heterogeneous social relations and contacts.     

The reliability of recall measurement in assessing migrant reintegration: Evidence from Ethiopia,Somalia, and Sudan

This article asks whether and under what conditions the use of retrospective or “recall” measurement is reliable. Migration researchers are often forced to retrospectively measure baselines when evaluating the impact of interventions due to the transitory nature of migration, developing country contexts, and hastily assembled policy programmes, a situation exacerbated by Covid-19. This article first theoretically considers the extent to which this approach is reliable and likely to result in biased estimates, as well as its broader advantages, disadvantages, and recommendations for best practice. It then considers the case of the “IMPACT” evaluation of the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration in which 1774 Ethiopian, Somalia, and Sudanese migrant returnees in 2021 were assessed on a range of reintegration measures, 1095 of whom were measured retrospectively. Regression analyses demonstrate that those measured retrospectively give more negative scores on several “Reintegration Sustainability Scores” in line with some theoretical expectations but contrary to others. However, this—mostly non-statistically significant—effect is largely diminished when the small minority who report finding it difficult to remember the baseline period are removed—suggesting that any retrospective measurement effect results from memory bias rather than, for example, consistency bias. No evidence is found to support several theoretically derived interaction effects. Determinants of self-reported memory are demonstrated and recommendations for usage of retrospective measurement are provided, based on these findings.     

The clash between legal and business logic: business groups in the new Israeli corporate law

Planned institutional change presents an uncommon opportunity for institutional entrepreneurs to advance their innovations. The dispute of why the new Israeli corporate law, enacted at the end of 1990s, does not refer to business groups, which form a salient part of Israeli big business, opens a window through which the conflict between two different and competing types of logic may be viewed. The carriers of legal-professional logic were legal academics and state officials, who opposed the inclusion of a special chapter or any other reference to business groups within the new corporate law based on US legal ideas, and especially on the ‘Law and Economics’ perspective. In contrast, the carriers of business logic were interest groups and professional associations that sought to appropriate the legal and economic advantages resulting from organizing business in the form of business groups within the new law, without protecting the rights of minority shareholders and, more importantly, without enabling state agencies to intervene in the governance of their businesses.