scholarly journals Towards defining and advancing ‘Made in Africa Evaluation’

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oladayo Omosa ◽  
Thomas Archibald ◽  
Kimberly Niewolny ◽  
Max Stephenson ◽  
James Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Delphi Technique ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Study And Teaching ◽  
Practice Study ◽  
Development Outcomes ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Key Steps ◽  
Concise Definition ◽  
Made In

Background: Most evaluation in Africa is rooted in dominant neoliberal Western approaches. Imported Western evaluation frames may lack multicultural validity and can lead to wrong conclusions and poor development outcomes. They may also reinforce subjugation and cultural hegemony through neo-imperialism and colonisation of the imaginations of those concerned. The Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE) concept has received attention in recent years as a way to address this challenge. As a relatively nascent construct, however, interested scholars and professionals continue to seek to define and operationalise MAE more effectively.Objective: The objective of this study is to provide a working definition of MAE.Methods: We used the Delphi technique to solicit informed views from expert evaluators working in Africa. We interviewed two additional experts to triangulate and test the validity of those findings. We also tested the Delphi derived definition of MAE through the analysis of six illustrative evaluation reports. Finally, we asked the same panel of experts to complete a survey aimed at clarifying next key steps to advance the construct.Results: The results of our efforts to elucidate a concise definition of MAE yielded the following definition: Evaluation that is conducted based on African Evaluation Association (AfrEA) standards, using localised methods or approaches with the aim of aligning all evaluations to the lifestyles and needs of affected African peoples whilst also promoting African values.Conclusion: We posit that this working definition, however tentative, has the potential to influence the practice, study, and teaching of evaluation in Africa.

Mental Health in an Indian Rural Community

1971 ◽  
Vol 118 (546) ◽  
pp. 499-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. N. Elnagar ◽  
Promila Maitra ◽  
M. N. Rao
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Incidence Rates ◽  
Expert Committee ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
The Government ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Made In

The difficulties of organizing mental health services in developing countries are made all the greater by inadequacy of information about the extent of illness and disability. Some beginnings have been made in India, particularly under the sponsorship of the All India Institute of Mental Health, Bangalore. The Mental Health Advisory Committee of the Government of India (1966) suggested a probable prevalence of mental illness of 20 per 1,000 population in general, 18 per mille for semi-rural and 14 per mille for rural areas. These figures are much lower than the 72 per 1,000 suggested by Sethi et al. (1967). Ganguli (1968) estimated a prevalence rate of 140 per 1,000 in industrial workers near Delhi. Incidence rates have been much less studied than prevalences (Lin and Standley, 1962). A WHO Expert Committee on mental health convened in 1960 suggested as a working definition of a case of mental illness:

Exploring the Heart: Entrepreneurial Emotion is a Hot Topic

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa S. Cardon ◽  
Maw–Der Foo ◽  
Dean Shepherd ◽  
Johan Wiklund
Keyword(s):  
Future Research ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Entrepreneurial Process ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Made In

Entrepreneurial emotion refers to the affect, emotions, moods, and/or feelings—of individuals or a collective—that are antecedent to, concurrent with, and/or a consequence of, the entrepreneurial process, meaning the recognition/creation, evaluation, reformulation, and/or the exploitation of a possible opportunity. In this paper, we explore this working definition of entrepreneurial emotion, what it means, and some important advances the field has made in this area of research. We also highlight fundamental avenues for future research that are sorely in need of study. Finally, we introduce the seven papers in this special issue on the Heart of Entrepreneurship and how they move the conversation on entrepreneurial emotion forward.

A Working Definition of Mind

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (25) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Farr
Keyword(s):  
Working Definition ◽  
Definition Of

Need of Human Rights as a Better Way of Life

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 72-83
Author(s):  
Tushar Kadian
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Labour Unions ◽  
The People ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Made In

Actually, basic needs postulates securing of the elementary conditions of existence to every human being. Despite of the practical and theoretical importance of the subject the greatest irony is non- availability of any universal preliminary definition of the concept of basic needs. Moreover, this becomes the reason for unpredictability of various political programmes aiming at providing basic needs to the people. The shift is necessary for development of this or any other conception. No labour reforms could be made in history till labours were treated as objects. Its only after they were started being treating as subjects, labour unions were allowed to represent themselves in strategy formulations that labour reforms could become a reality. The present research paper highlights the basic needs of Human Rights in life.

Establishing a Working Definition of User Experience for eHealth Interventions: A Scoping Review of Self-Reported User Experience Measures and Delphi Consultation with eHealth Researchers and Adolescents (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda S Newton ◽  
Sonja March ◽  
Nicole D Gehring ◽  
Arlen K Rowe ◽  
Ashley D Radomski
Keyword(s):  
User Experience ◽  
Scoping Review ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Intervention Development ◽  
Health Condition ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Perceived Impact ◽  
Behavioural Factors ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Ehealth Intervention

BACKGROUND Across eHealth intervention studies involving children, adolescents, and their parents, researchers have measured users’ experiences to assist with intervention development, refinement, and evaluation. To date, there are no widely agreed-on definitions or measures of ‘user experience’ to support a standardized approach for evaluation and comparison within or across interventions. OBJECTIVE We conducted a scoping review with subsequent Delphi consultation to (1) identify how user experience is defined and measured in eHealth research studies, (2) characterize the measurement tools used, and (3) establish working definitions for domains of user experience that could be used in future eHealth evaluations. METHODS We systematically searched electronic databases for published and gray literature available from January 1, 2005 to April 11, 2019. Studies assessing an eHealth intervention that targeted any health condition and was designed for use by children, adolescents, and their parents were eligible for inclusion. eHealth interventions needed to be web-, computer-, or mobile-based, mediated by the internet with some degree of interactivity. Studies were also required to report the measurement of ‘user experience’ as first-person experiences, involving cognitive and behavioural factors, reported by intervention users. Two reviewers independently screened studies for relevance and appraised the quality of user experience measures using published criteria: ‘well-established’, ‘approaching well-established’, ‘promising’, or ‘not yet established’. We conducted a descriptive analysis of how user experience was defined and measured in each study. Review findings subsequently informed the survey questions used in the Delphi consultations with eHealth researchers and adolescent users for how user experience should be defined and measured. RESULTS Of the 8,634 articles screened for eligibility, 129 and one erratum were included in the review. Thirty eHealth researchers and 27 adolescents participated in the Delphi consultations. Based on the literature and consultations, we proposed working definitions for six main user experience domains: acceptability, satisfaction, credibility, usability, user-reported adherence, and perceived impact. While most studies incorporated a study-specific measure, we identified ten well-established measures to quantify five of the six domains of user experience (all except for self-reported adherence). Our adolescent and researcher participants ranked perceived impact as one of the most important domains of user experience and usability as one of the least important domains. Rankings between adolescents and researchers diverged for other domains. CONCLUSIONS Findings highlight the various ways user experience has been defined and measured across studies and what aspects are most valued by researchers and adolescent users. We propose incorporating the working definitions and available measures of user experience to support consistent evaluation and reporting of outcomes across studies. Future studies can refine the definitions and measurement of user experience, explore how user experience relates to other eHealth outcomes, and inform the design and use of human-centred eHealth interventions.

scholarly journals What is Salience?

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 713-722
Author(s):  
Vincent Boswijk ◽  
Matt Coler
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractA commonly used concept in linguistics is salience. Oftentimes it is used without definition, and the meaning of the concept is repeatedly assumed to be self-explanatory. The definitions that are provided may vary greatly from one operationalization of salience to the next. In order to find out whether it is possible to postulate an overarching working definition of linguistic salience that subsumes usage across linguistic subdomains, we review these different operationalizations of linguistic salience. This article focuses on salience in sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, second-language acquisition (SLA), and semantics. In this article, we give an overview of how these fields operationalize salience. Finally, we discuss correlations and contradictions between the different operationalizations.

In Search of a Standard: References to the Rule of Law in the Case-law of the European Court of Human Rights

ICL Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-69
Author(s):  
Eszter Polgári
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
European Court ◽  
Structured Analysis ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Grand Chamber

AbstractThe present article maps the explicit references to the rule of law in the jurisprudence of the ECtHR by examining the judgments of the Grand Chamber and the Plenary Court. On the basis of the structured analysis it seeks to identify the constitutive elements of the Court’s rule of law concept and contrast it with the author’s working definition and the position of other Council of Europe organs. The review of the case-law indicates that the Court primarily associates the rule of law with access to court, judicial safeguards, legality and democracy, and it follows a moderately thick definition of the concept including formal, procedural and some substantive elements. The rule of law references are predominantly ancillary arguments giving weight to other Convention-based considerations and it is not applied as a self-standing standard.

Defining hormesis: the necessary tool to clarify experimentally the low dose–response relationship

2002 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
G Carelli ◽  
I Iavicoli
Keyword(s):  
Dose Response ◽  
Low Dose ◽  
Experimental Models ◽  
Assessment Criteria ◽  
Response Relationship ◽  
Dose Response Relationship ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Time Specific ◽  
Made In

The authors comment on Calabrese and Baldwin's paper ‘Defining Hormesis’, which, to date, is the first attempt to provide a definition of hormesis that goes beyond the different interpretations of this phenomenon reported in the literature. While appreciating the effort made in this study to place hormesis in a general and at the same time specific context, the authors believe some clarifications are needed as regards the quantitative features of this phenomenon. In this connection, they speculate on whether Calabrese and Baldwin think it appropriate to include hormesis assessment criteria in the document, referring in particular to those reported in a previous paper. The authors share Calabrese and Baldwin's conclusion that future experimental models designed to study hormetic phenomena must necessarily include the time factor, which not only guarantees this phenomenon will be detected, but is also able to detect the specific type of hormesis.

An Evaluation of ‘Process as Product’ in OTI Sri Lanka: A Typology of Community-Level Peacebuilding Activities and Programming Recommendation

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 22-34
Author(s):  
Lee R. Briggs
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
International Development ◽  
Community Setting ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Community Level ◽  
Project Impact ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Programme Development ◽  
Definition Of

This paper presents a set of best practices and lessons learned from a set of 93 impact evaluations conducted on community-level, small grants activities implemented between March 2003 and September 2007 by the Sri Lanka country programme of the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It analyses the change theories that guided programme development and common trends in impact which emerged, and discusses ways in which programme staff can improve project impact. It provides a working definition of ‘process’, a key element of OTI's approach and a key concept used by facilitators to understand the work they do with groups and communities. It also delineates a general typology of peacebuilding projects likely to emerge in the community setting. Finally, it formulates a postulate for predicting and observing generic programme impact based upon the relative richness of process, which is considered useful for informing further research design.

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