100 key research questions for the post‐2015 development agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) herald a new phase for international development. This article presents the results of a consultative exercise to collaboratively identify 100 research questions of critical importance for the post‐2015 international development agenda. The final shortlist is grouped into nine thematic areas and was selected by 21 representatives of international and non‐governmental organisations and consultancies, and 14 academics with diverse disciplinary expertise from an initial pool of 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations based in 34 countries. The shortlist includes questions addressing long‐standing problems, new challenges and broader issues related to development policies, practices and institutions. Collectively, these questions are relevant for future development‐related research priorities of governmental and non‐governmental organisations worldwide and could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaborations.     

Augmenting the Deliberative Method for Ranking Risks

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) characterized and prioritized the physical cross‐border threats and hazards to the nation stemming from terrorism, market‐driven illicit flows of people and goods (illegal immigration, narcotics, funds, counterfeits, and weaponry), and other nonmarket concerns (movement of diseases, pests, and invasive species). These threats and hazards pose a wide diversity of consequences with very different combinations of magnitudes and likelihoods, making it very challenging to prioritize them. This article presents the approach that was used at DHS to arrive at a consensus regarding the threats and hazards that stand out from the rest based on the overall risk they pose. Due to time constraints for the decision analysis, it was not feasible to apply multiattribute methodologies like multiattribute utility theory or the analytic hierarchy process. Using a holistic approach was considered, such as the deliberative method for ranking risks first published in this journal. However, an ordinal ranking alone does not indicate relative or absolute magnitude differences among the risks. Therefore, the use of the deliberative method for ranking risks is not sufficient for deciding whether there is a material difference between the top‐ranked and bottom‐ranked risks, let alone deciding what the stand‐out risks are. To address this limitation of ordinal rankings, the deliberative method for ranking risks was augmented by adding an additional step to transform the ordinal ranking into a ratio scale ranking. This additional step enabled the selection of stand‐out risks to help prioritize further analysis.     

Home run or strikeout: The dynamics of public opinion on new sports facilities

Determinants of political support for new sports facilities are explored. We test to what extent the civic attachment and civic optimism of a respondent promotes support for new facilities. Survey data from the 2005 CBS News/New York Times monthly poll were analyzed to find variables that affected public support for a new stadium for the New York Mets and a new arena for the New Jersey Nets. Whether New Yorkers’ were optimistic about the future of New York and whether they planned to continue living in New York had a significant impact on whether they supported new facilities. Demographic factors that frequently explain political differences did not have a significant effect. Respondents with greater civic attachment and optimism were more likely to support major sports projects. The findings open the door for additional research on how civic attachment and optimism impact the willingness of community residents to support major public projects.