scholarly journals Policy Watch: The 1996 Welfare Reform

1997 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca M Blank

Welfare reform legislation was passed in the summer of 1996. Four key research questions that the new law presents to social scientists are as follows: (1) Can states design and operate better programs than AFDC? This includes questions about the ability of AFDC women to work a significant number of hours; the legislation's effect in areas of concentrated urban poverty; and the extent to which women will be able to improve their families' economic status under the legislation. (2) Will jobs be available? (3) How will the new block grant affect states' fiscal situation? and (4) What new research methodology questions does this legislation introduce?

2022 ◽  
pp. 461-486
Author(s):  
Michela Cavagnuolo ◽  
Viviana Capozza ◽  
Alfredo Matrella

Nowadays the social scientists are called to integrate within their studies new tools that modify and innovate the scientist's typical toolbox. Digital platforms, media, and especially apps pose further challenges to social scientists today, as they are an important place of significant socio-cultural, economic, health, relationships, and entertainment transformations. When studying digital technologies, in fact, it's important to pay attention to both their socio-cultural representations and technological aspects – since even design and data outputs have social and cultural influences. In this context, new research questions arise; among all the possible tools in the digital method toolbox, the walkthrough method is a noteworthy way to answer them. Starting from these considerations, this chapter aims to analyze, through a review of the literature, the birth and development of the walkthrough method in its various meanings to identify the innovative aspects and fields of application.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 689-718
Author(s):  
Jeremy Brown

Abstract The history of the People's Republic of China is now an established discipline, with a built-in theoretical framework—aspirational socialism—and a first draft written by social scientists. The growth of the field of PRC history has been aided by an avalanche of unique grassroots sources. Grassroots documents, many of which are local archives discarded by the state, have prompted new research questions and uncovered hidden dimensions of the Mao years, but they remain inaccessible to the broader research community unless scholars go out of their way to digitize and share them. This solution, however, reveals a deeper crisis facing the field: even though new types of sources will continue to fuel the growth of PRC history, scholars farthest from Xi Jinping's organs of repression can share sources and write about them freely, while academics subject to authoritarian restrictions cannot. There is no easy fix to the two-tier system created by Document Nine's prohibition against evidence-based history research. Nonetheless, collaborative translation projects and vigorously pushing for a more diverse and inclusive field in and outside of China can help PRC history continue to flourish.


Author(s):  
Brian Burgoon

This chapter explores the empirical challenges of understanding the socioeconomic implications of social investment welfare reform. Such understanding is crucial to gauging the pay-offs and pitfalls of social investment, but is also extremely difficult, given the complex character of social investment and its multiple and interacting consequences for work and well-being. Such complexity, the chapter contends, yields an unusually strong tension between relevance and rigour that dooms any dialogue among social scientists and practitioners with clashing methodological commitments. The present study argues in favour of a practical pluralism to facilitate such dialogue. This pluralism entails combining and comparing empirical work across the full spectrum of relevance and rigour. The chapter illustrates the problems and pluralist solutions with a combination of macro-country-year and macro-individual-year analysis of how active labour-market policies (ALMP) affect the poverty of vulnerable citizens.


2019 ◽  
Vol 266 ◽  
pp. 06002
Author(s):  
Ruzaini Zahari ◽  
Mohd Hisham Ariffin ◽  
Noriah Othman

Pierre Bourdieu (1986) introduced the concept of capitals as forms of intangible resources that individual use to advance their socio-economic status. Past relevant researches have not focused on all Bourdieu capitals. This study conceptualises the Bourdieu capitals to empirically determine the intangible resources of Malaysian leader landscape architects. The aim of this study is to determine the type of capitals of leader landscape architects in Malaysian landscape architecture firms. All landscape architecture firms (73 nos.) in the database of the Institute of Landscape Architects Malaysia were chosen for the survey. The firms were given the letter of invitation and questionnaires through the post. Thirty-nine firms responded to the invitation which resulted in 90 subordinates landscape architects and assistant landscape architects as respondents. The subordinates were asked to rate their leaders’ (landscape architects) capitals. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and factor analysis. Factor analysis findings generated 5 factors (capitals). The capitals are social, human, emotional, cultural and design authority. The study findings provide evidence of the validity of scales to measure the intangible resources of the leading landscape architects in Malaysian landscape architecture firms. It also suggests a new research perspective for the Trait Theory of Leadership by replacing the traits with Bourdieu’s forms of capitals.


Neuroforum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. A183-A195
Author(s):  
Frederike D. Hanke ◽  
Guido Dehnhardt

Summary Summary: Seals and sea lions are well-oriented in their habitat, the coastal regions and oceans, and are, moreover, successful hunters. During their movements between haul-out places and foraging grounds as well as during foraging, the sensory systems of seals and sea lions provide useful information, although the animals, and thus their sensory systems, face considerable challenges in their habitat and due to their amphibious lifestyle. In this review, in the first chapter, we compiled and later (chapter 4) discuss the information on the senses of seals and sea lions in general and their specific adaptations to habitat and lifestyle in particular. We hereby focus on the senses of harbor seals. Harbor seals turned into a model organism regarding the sensory systems due to intensive sensory research of the last decades. In the second and third chapter, the sensory basics are put into the context of orientation, navigation, and foraging. This allows formulating new research questions, such as where and how the information from different senses is integrated.


1998 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth W. Lindsey

Homeless shelter directors in two southern states were surveyed to ascertain their perceptions of factors that help or hinder homeless, mother-headed families in emerging from homelessness. Respondents believed that mothers' attitudes and motivation were the most important factors in getting and keeping housing and that lack of social supports and relationship difficulties were the most significant problems families faced in their attempts to emerge from homelessness. Scarce housing was seen as the most significant barrier within the community. The findings are compared with findings from other studies, and explanations for differing results are presented. The author discusses the implications of the findings for service providers and communities in light of recent welfare-reform legislation.


2021 ◽  

Based on extensive data and analysis of sixty contentious episodes in twelve European countries, this book proposes a novel approach that takes a middle ground between narrative approaches and conventional protest event analysis. Looking particularly at responses to austerity policies in the aftermath of the Great Recession (2008–2015), the authors develop a rigorous conceptual framework that focuses on the interactions between three types of participants in contentious politics: governments, challengers, and third parties. This approach allows political scientists to map not only the variety of actors and actor coalitions that drove the interactions in the different episodes, but also the interplay of repression/concessions/support and of mobilization/cooperation/mediation on the part of the actors involved in the contention. The methodology used will enable researchers to answer old (and new) research questions related to political conflict in a way that is simultaneously attentive to conceptual depth and statistical rigor.


Cataract is a degenerative condition that, according to estimations, will rise globally. Even though there are various proposals about its diagnosis, there are remaining problems to be solved. This paper aims to identify the current situation of the recent investigations on cataract diagnosis using a framework to conduct the literature review with the intention of answering the following research questions: RQ1) Which are the existing methods for cataract diagnosis? RQ2) Which are the features considered for the diagnosis of cataracts? RQ3) Which is the existing classification when diagnosing cataracts? RQ4) And Which obstacles arise when diagnosing cataracts? Additionally, a cross-analysis of the results was made. The results showed that new research is required in: (1) the classification of “congenital cataract” and, (2) portable solutions, which are necessary to make cataract diagnoses easily and at a low cost.


Author(s):  
José-Miguel Fernández-Dols ◽  
James A. Russell

One of the purposes of the present book is to provide an updated review of the current psychology of facial expression and to acknowledge the growing contribution of neuroscientists, biologists, anthropologists, linguists, and other scientists to this field. Our aim was to allow the readers—from lay to practitioners to research scientists—to discover the most recent scientific developments in the field and its associated questions and controversies. As will become obvious, the most fundamental questions, such as whether “facial expressions of emotion” in fact express emotions, remain subjects of great controversy. Just as important, readers will find that new research questions and proposals are animating this field.


Author(s):  
Tim D. Bauer ◽  
Kerry A. Humphreys ◽  
Ken T. Trotman

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the ways auditors work and interact with team members and others in the financial reporting process. In particular, there has been a move away from face-to-face interactions to the use of virtual teams, with strong indications many of these changes will remain post-pandemic. We examine the impacts of the pandemic on group judgment and decision making (JDM) research in auditing by reviewing research on auditor interactions with respect to the review process (including coaching), fraud brainstorming, consultations within audit firms, and parties outside the audit firm such as client management and the audit committee. Through the pandemic lens and for each auditor interaction, we consider new research questions for audit JDM researchers to investigate and new ways of addressing existing research questions given these fundamental changes. We also identify potential impacts on research methods used to address these questions during the pandemic and beyond.


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