Evaluating mission drift in microfinance: lessons for programs with social mission

The article contributes to a better understanding of implications of scaling up on the social mission of microfinance programs. It proposes a methodology to measure the extent, if any, to which a microfinance program with a poverty alleviation mission drifts away from its mission during rapid scaling up and presents findings from a field research using the proposed methodology at Activists for Social Alternatives (ASA), a microfinance organization that serves poor women in rural India. The findings indicate that mission drift is not a result of deliberate decisions by the management or board but rather is a result of the challenges posed by the scaling-up process. At times, changing trends in social outcomes were not obvious, and management was not aware of the changes indicated by the proposed measures of social performance.     

Death by survey: Estimating adult mortality without selection bias from sibling survival data

The widely used methods for estimating adult mortality rates from sample survey responses about the survival of siblings, parents, spouses, and others depend crucially on an assumption that, as we demonstrate, does not hold in real data. We show that when this assumption is violated so that the mortality rate varies with sibship size, mortality estimates can be massively biased. By using insights from work on the statistical analysis of selection bias, survey weighting, and extrapolation problems, we propose a new and relatively simple method of recovering the mortality rate with both greatly reduced potential for bias and increased clarity about the source of necessary assumptions.     

公司文化:美国高等教育的新威胁

为民主而斗争是一项政治任务,也是一项教育任务.要促进充满活力的民主文化的产生,最根本的就是要认识到,教育必须被作为公共利益来看待.使高等教育沦为公司文化的附庸违反了教育支持和发展包含民主在内的公共空间的重要社会规则.从汤姆斯·杰佛逊到约翰·杜威,再到C.赖特·米尔斯,赞颂教育对于民主公共生活的根本的重要性成为一个悠久的传统.     

人类的自救

在这个过于巨大和复杂的世界中,对数量庞大、形色各异的人群进行有效和严格的控制是行不通的.尽管我们有着最好的专家学者和最精密的电脑辅助,自然灾害仍超出了人类的理解范围.     

亚洲的HIV/AIDS水平将达到撒哈拉以南非洲的水平吗?

尽管对于任何一种致数百万人死亡的疾病都应竭尽所能地予以斗争,对本文标题所提出问题的简短回答却是:"不".我10年以前在<社会科学与医学>(Social Science and Medicine)杂志的社论中第一次阐述了这个问题,至今这一观点没有发生变化,它所依据的是近期的一些相关报告.     

瑞典的知识环境为未来做好准备了吗?

瑞典的知识环境为未来做好准备了吗?瑞典的大学如何与其他国家的大学竞争?未来的大学应该如何管理?这是目前瑞典教学与研究研究院(The Swedish Institute for Studies in Education and Research,SISTER)战略研究所的项目"明日的知识环境"(Uni-Know)正在研究的课题.该项研究已进行了一年有余.     

隐喻的主要理论及指称述评

1.现代隐喻研究的五大流派 亚里士多德开创了隐喻研究的时代.他阐释了不同概念域的两个事物之间的联系,为后来的对比论奠定了基础.顾名思义,对比论就是拿一种事物与另一种事物相比较.据此,"Man is a wolf"相当于明喻"Man is like a wolf",只不过这里的"like"被省略了.因此,隐喻是一个简缩的明喻.