a thorough overview of the volume. In general, each author examines race and ethnicity in different research contexts. They all believe the current language of race and ethnicity is of limited use and, in several instances, feel it perpetuates gross social injustices and inequalities. They restate in their own way the view that unexamined class, cultural, or philosophical biases on the part of the researcher lead to research that only averts uncomfortable thoughts and, ironically, genuine and generalizable findings. Foremost, Stansfield and Dennis should be complimented for taking on a complex topic. A volume on the possible epistemological and methodological issues one should examine in race and ethnic research is not an easy task. More volumes of this nature are needed to further the dialogues and inquiries of researchers and other persons interested in improving race and ethnic studies. Stansfield and Dennis state as a central issue that
Books applicable to the broad field ofprogram evaluation are reviewed. Books may be reviewed singly or in groups to illuminate similarities and differences in intent, philosophy, and usefulness. Persons with suggestions of books to be reviewed, or those who wish to submit a review, should contact Perry Sailor (Department of Psychology, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322-2810; phone: 801-797-0090 or e-mail: perrys@cpd2.usu.edu). In general, a review of an individual book should not exceed four double-spaced typewritten pages; groups of books may require additional lengths. In the past, EP policy has been to commission a single review for each book. That will continue to be the practice for most books, but in the future, two reviews will be
This monograph reports on selected findings from a five year international research programme of 30 case studies of decision-making in the planning, appraisal and delivery of mega transport projects (MTPs) in ten developed economies in Europe, USA, and Asia Pacific.1 Undertaken with a view to contributing towards a broader and better understanding of what constitutes a ‘successful’ mega transport project (MTP) in an increasingly uncertain and globalised world, the investigation reports on ‘agent of change’ functions of such projects, and examines these against the more limited project performance criteria usually employed to judge their success – generally restricted to finishing schemes on-time, within budget and to specification (often referred to as ‘the iron triangle’2). The main focus of the findings is on the proclaimed, emergent and actual roles of MTPs and the provision of insights into how these evolved, materialised and ultimately were judged by different project stakeholders and commentators. The analysis exposes widespread differences of understanding as to what are the project boundaries of such investments, a fundamental misunderstanding of their changing objectives over time, a common failure to align short and long-term expectations, significant limitations of conventional formal megaproject planning and appraisal practices, and the need for the employment of more holistic approaches to decision making in all stages of the project lifecycle. The authors of the paper conclude that a ‘successful’ MTP is dependent on how well risks, uncertainties and complexities in decision-making are addressed, and how context-sensitive its decision-making is throughout the project lifecycle. To undertake the development of a successful megaproject, it is also contended that there is a need for a dramatic change of mind-set concerning the way in which such megaprojects are positioned, framed, planned and ultimately judged – and that policy-led multi-criteria analysis (PLMCA) frameworks potentially offer a more effective basis for judging the ‘success’ of such investments.
Trajectory generation methods play an important role in robotics since they are essential for the execution of actions. In this paper we present a novel trajectory generation method for generalization of accurate movements with boundary conditions. Our approach originates from optimal control theory and is based on a second order dynamic system. We evaluate our method and compare it to the state of the art movement generation methods in both simulations and real robot experiments. We show that the new method is very compact in its representation and can reproduce reference trajectories with zero error. Moreover, it has most of the features of the state of the art movement generation methods such as robustness to perturbations and generalization to new position and velocity boundary conditions. We believe that, due to these features, our method may have potential for robotic applications where high accuracy is required paired with flexibility, for example, in modern industrial robotic applications, where more flexibility will be demanded as well as in medical robotics.
fornia’s main welfare-to-work program for recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). The program was designed to provide welfare recipients with job search assistance, basic education, vocational training, post-secondary education, and unpaid work experience to help them prepare for and find employment. Welfare recipients assigned to the program were required to participate in these activities. Those refusing to cooperate without &dquo;good cause&dquo; could have their welfare payments reduced as a penalty. Child care and transportation subsidies were available for those who needed them in order to participate. The primary goals of the program were to increase recipients’ employment and earnings, reduce their use of welfare, and reduce govemment expenses for these individuals. State guidelines were developed for the county-based implementation, but counties had some flexibility in implementing the program. MDRC’s evaluation had four main goals: (1) to learn about the counties’ experiences in turning this ambitious legislation into an operating program and welfare recipients’ participation and experiences in it; (2) to determine GAIN’s effects, or impacts, on recipients’ employ-
A large government market has developed in evaluation over the past few decades. Governments let contracts to conduct evaluation studies, and these contracts shape the studies. Such contracting does not follow the idealized image of open markets. Rather, a few firms conduct most studies because of the dynamics of the contracting process. If we are to have honest, unbiased evaluations, evaluation ethics must take these market factors into consideration. The conditions under which evaluations are produced are as important as House how evaluation results are used.
Analysis of qualitative--usually verbal--information from interview transcripts, field notes, and other sources has required huge amounts of labor. Some critics, moreover, maintain that such analysis is less than reliable, objective and tabula rasa. A new computer program, however, allows precisely repeatable analysis without a priori frameworks and without tedious and subjective categorizing of passages. The program finds repetitive association of words or ideas that characterize the verbal research corpus which evaluators may display and interpret. This article explains the program and illustrates its use in an evaluation of a collaborative botanic education project sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
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Differential item functioning (DIF) is not often seen in the literature on attitude assessment. A brief discussion of DIF and methods of implementation is followed by an illustrative example from a program evaluation, using an attitude-towards-science scale with 1550 children in grades one through six. An item exhibiting substantial DIF with respect to gender was detected using the Mantel-Haenszel procedure. In a second example, data from workshop evaluations with 1682 adults were recoded to a binary format, and it was found that an item suspected of functioning differentially with respect to age groups was, in fact, not doing so. Implications for evaluation practice are discussed.
While there is growing interest in employing mixed methods in evaluation research, there are few documented examples describing how to implement this in practice. This article describes the use of a mixed method approach to evaluate a nonprofit agency that provides organizational consultation and other support services to nonprofit organizations in Israel. It uses conceptualizations proposed by Greene, Caracelli, and Graham (1989) and by Rossman and Wilson (1994) to discuss the unique benefits of such methodology and also addresses the limitations and disadvantages of mixed method evaluation.
