Addressing Water Conflicts Through Context-Specific Institutional Analysis: A Handbook for Research Projects and Programmes

Sustainability as a guiding idea for societal and economic development causes a growing need for reliable sustainability assessments (SAs). In response, a plethora of increasingly sophisticated, standardizAed, and specialized approaches have emerged. However, little attention has been paid to how applications of SAs in different contexts navigate the challenges of selecting and customizing SA approaches for their research purposes. This paper provides an exploration of the context-specific conditions of SA through a case study of three research projects. Each case study explores the different approaches, methodologies, as well as difficulties and similarities that researchers face in “doing” SA based on the research question “What are common challenges that researchers are facing in using SA approaches?” Our case study comparison follows a most different approach for covering a wide range of SA applications and is structured along with three key challenges of doing SA: (i) Deliberation, learning and assessment; (ii) normative assessment principles; (iii) feasibility, especially regarding data quality/availability. Above all, the comparative case study underlines the role and importance of reflexivity and context: We argue that a more explicit and transparent discussion of these challenges could contribute to greater awareness, and thus, to improving the ability of researchers to transparently modify and customize generic SA methodologies to their research contexts. Our findings can help researchers to more critically appraise the differences between SA approaches, as well as their normative assumptions, and guide them to assemble their SA methodology in a reflexive and case-sensitive way.

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Theorizing Media Productions as Complex Literacy Performances Among Youth In and Out of Schools

Multiliteracies and Technology Enhanced Education ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-673-0.ch009 ◽

2010 ◽

pp. 133-146 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Theresa Rogers

Keyword(s):

Youth Culture ◽

Cultural Work ◽

Media Production ◽

Cultural Critique ◽

Research Projects ◽

New Models ◽

Subject Positioning ◽

Production Form ◽

Context Specific ◽

Community Spaces

In this chapter the author explores the ways media production represents sophisticated identity and cultural work, and therefore complex literacy performances, among youth as they engage in a play of genres and subject positioning in particular social (educational and community) spaces. Two major research projects in which youth participated in media production form the basis for theorizing in this chapter. Four cases illustrate the ways particular youth design new, hybrid multimodal genres, and how they engage in new models of authorship and cultural critique in this process. Although “youth culture” is often referred to as an undifferentiated phenomenon, this work is highly context-specific, revealing multiple and diverse sub-communities in which specific kinds of cultural and critical work are being undertaken. The author concludes with a challenge to transform schools and classrooms to reflect the increasingly multimodal landscapes in which youth reside.

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Institutional Conditions for Inclusive, Flood Resilient Urban Deltas: A Comparative Institutional Analysis of Two International Resilience Programs in Southeast Asia

Water ◽

10.3390/w13182478 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (18) ◽

pp. 2478

Author(s):

Naim Laeni ◽

Margo van den Brink ◽

Jos Arts

Keyword(s):

Comparative Analysis ◽

Institutional Analysis ◽

Mekong Delta ◽

Institutional Transformation ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Institutional Conditions ◽

Context Specific ◽

Institutional Challenges ◽

Institutional Analysis And Development ◽

National Governments

Policy makers in Southeast Asian flood-vulnerable regions are confronted with various institutional challenges when planning for inclusive flood resilience. This paper focuses on the role of international resilience programs and investigates how these programs can enable institutional transformation. The key question is which institutional conditions promote the development and implementation of inclusive flood resilience strategies by international resilience programs. The Mekong Delta Plan in Vietnam (MDP) and the Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities Asia (WaL) program in Semarang, Indonesia, are selected as the cases for a comparative analysis. To structure the comparative analysis of these programs, the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework is adopted and operationalized for the institutional analysis of inclusive flood resilience planning. The findings illustrate that whereas the MDP was able to involve decision makers from the national government and international financial institutions for mobilizing funding and technical support, the strength of the WaL program was its enabling environment for the cocreation of context-specific flood resilience proposals. Overall, this study concludes that the institutional conditions that enable project financing and the implementation of long-term and integrated flood resilience solutions are determined by engagement with national governments and by ownership of the solutions at both the national and local levels.

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Validation of the Procrastination at Work Scale

European Journal of Psychological Assessment ◽

10.1027/1015-5759/a000554 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 36 (5) ◽

pp. 767-776

Author(s):

U. Baran Metin ◽

Toon W. Taris ◽

Maria C. W. Peeters ◽

Max Korpinen ◽

Urška Smrke ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Work Engagement ◽

Discriminant Validity ◽

Psychometric Characteristics ◽

The Czech Republic ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Confirmatory Factor ◽

And Performance ◽

Context Specific ◽

Negative Links ◽

Office Employees

Abstract. Procrastination at work has been examined relatively scarcely, partly due to the lack of a globally validated and context-specific workplace procrastination scale. This study investigates the psychometric characteristics of the Procrastination at Work Scale (PAWS) among 1,028 office employees from seven countries, namely, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. Specifically, it was aimed to test the measurement invariance of the PAWS and explore its discriminant validity by examining its relationships with work engagement and performance. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis shows that the basic factor structure and item loadings of the PAWS are invariant across countries. Furthermore, the two subdimensions of procrastination at work exhibited different patterns of relationships with work engagement and performance. Whereas soldiering was negatively related to work engagement and task performance, cyberslacking was unrelated to engagement and performance. These results indicate further validity evidence for the PAWS and the psychometric characteristics show invariance across various countries/languages. Moreover, workplace procrastination, especially soldiering, is a problematic behavior that shows negative links with work engagement and performance.

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Ambulatory Assessment

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027/1016-9040.14.2.109 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 109-119 ◽

Cited By ~ 66

Author(s):

Ulrich W. Ebner-Priemer ◽

Timothy J. Trull

Keyword(s):

Real Time ◽

Clinical Psychology ◽

Real Life ◽

Ambulatory Assessment ◽

Computer Assisted ◽

Affective Valence ◽

Time Data ◽

Physiological Processes ◽

Context Specific ◽

Questionnaire Studies

Convergent experimental data, autobiographical studies, and investigations on daily life have all demonstrated that gathering information retrospectively is a highly dubious methodology. Retrospection is subject to multiple systematic distortions (i.e., affective valence effect, mood congruent memory effect, duration neglect; peak end rule) as it is based on (often biased) storage and recollection of memories of the original experience or the behavior that are of interest. The method of choice to circumvent these biases is the use of electronic diaries to collect self-reported symptoms, behaviors, or physiological processes in real time. Different terms have been used for this kind of methodology: ambulatory assessment, ecological momentary assessment, experience sampling method, and real-time data capture. Even though the terms differ, they have in common the use of computer-assisted methodology to assess self-reported symptoms, behaviors, or physiological processes, while the participant undergoes normal daily activities. In this review we discuss the main features and advantages of ambulatory assessment regarding clinical psychology and psychiatry: (a) the use of realtime assessment to circumvent biased recollection, (b) assessment in real life to enhance generalizability, (c) repeated assessment to investigate within person processes, (d) multimodal assessment, including psychological, physiological and behavioral data, (e) the opportunity to assess and investigate context-specific relationships, and (f) the possibility of giving feedback in real time. Using prototypic examples from the literature of clinical psychology and psychiatry, we demonstrate that ambulatory assessment can answer specific research questions better than laboratory or questionnaire studies.

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