Challenges of research in rural poverty: lessons from large field surveys

This practical note highlights lessons learnt during the data collection of two large field surveys as part of the ongoing “Sindh Union Council and Economic Strengthening Support” (SUCCESS) programme in southern Pakistan. The experience is discussed in terms of language barriers, the educational status of households, dealing with people’s expectations and non-cooperation, and the weather conditions. The note also highlights the practice of public sharing of data in real-time to improve the design and implementation of future surveys, especially those measuring poverty and quality of life.     

Violent attacks on education in the tribal areas of Pakistan and the role of NGOs in providing educational services

Education is no longer safe from attacks during times of armed conflict. In many regions of the world, armed groups intentionally target schools, teachers and students and violate the right of children to get an education. Such is the case in Pakistan, where militant violence and continued armed conflict has disrupted the education of hundreds of thousands of children, particularly girls. The present study addresses a call for a better understanding of how non-governmental organisations (NGOs) function and contribute to peace-building and development through the provision of educational services in conflict zones. Based on field research, the study finds that in spite of challenges, NGOs have been playing a vital role in providing educational services to the conflict-affected communities. Disseminating information, solutions for resuming education, improving school enrolment, psychosocial support and promoting quality education lies at the forefront of NGOs’ battle in the tribal areas of Pakistan. However, the state needs a comprehensive policy to protect education from violent attacks.     

Foundations of Relating: Theory and Evidence on the Formation of Street‐Level Bureaucrats’ Workplace Networks

Despite the importance of peers in forming role expectations, fostering group identity, and facilitating job learning, limited theory and empirical evidence exist on the antecedents of street‐level peer relationships. To address this gap, the authors draw on social capital and social exchange theories to develop hypotheses about the micro‐social foundations of street‐level bureaucrats’ peer selection. The hypotheses are tested using a rich data set from an intraorganizational network of teachers in a large urban school implementing a reform that strongly promoted frontline innovation. Both structural and instrumental considerations, such as seeking peers possessing characteristics and resources valued by the reform, figure prominently in the work relations of street‐level bureaucrats. These results imply that the introduction of improvement initiatives requiring frontline participation, in addition to altering work practices, may also alter social networks within the frontline of an organization in a manner that favors some frontline workers over others.     

Political attitude estimation through Facebook like: a South Korean case study

Recently numerous studies are conducted to estimate the human personality from the online social activities. This paper develops a comprehensive model for political attitude estimation leveraging the Facebook Like information of the users. We designed a Facebook Crawler that efficiently collects data overcoming the difficulties in crawling Ajax enabled Facebook pages. We show that the category level selection can reduce the data analysis complexity utilizing the sparsity of the huge like-attitude matrix. In the Korean Facebook users’ context, only 28 criteria (3% of the total) can estimate the political polarity of the user with high accuracy (AUC of 0.82).     

Medical aspects of capital punishment executions

Between 1976 and the middle of 2001, approximately 718 human executions occurred in the U.S. (a small segment of worldwide executions). Data regarding the medical aspects of these executions are not readily available. We searched all public domain data in the U.S. to obtain specific data for all persons executed in the U.S. since 1976. Of the five methods of execution used (lethal injection, lethal gas, electrocution, hanging, and firing squad), significant differences emerged as measured by rate of complications, duration of time spent by the condemned in the "death chamber," as well as duration of time from the onset of execution procedures to pronouncement of death. These data suggest that human executions are difficult to carry out. Human executions are associated with significant physical complications. These data may help inform future discussions on human executions.     

Beliefs about Wife Beating among Medical Students from Turkey

The paper presents a study conducted among 173 Turkish medical students, which examined their beliefs about wife beating through a self-administered questionnaire. An integrative conceptual framework was tested as the basis for explaining the students’ beliefs. The results revealed that between 4.5 and 38.7% of the participants justified wife beating, between 3.5 and 5.3% of them tended to believe that battered women benefit from beating, and between 4.7 and 28.5% of them tended to believe that battered women are responsible for their beating. In addition, between 68.4 and 90.6% of the students expressed willingness to help battered women, and although nearly half of them perceived the violent husbands as responsible for their behavior, only about one-quarter of them supported punishing violent husbands. The results also indicate that significant amounts of the variance in students’ beliefs about wife beating can be attributed to their patriarchal ideology toward family life and to their exposure to family violence during childhood and adolescence. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results for future research, theory development, and training of medical students. Both authors contributed equally to this paper. The order of the names does not indicate seniority of either author.     

Young Chinese consumers' brand perception; the role of mianzi as moderator

The basic purpose of this study was to investigate the role of exposure and past experience on consumers' brand perception, as mediated by three variables (perceived quality, brand recall, and satisfaction) and moderated by mianzi. Using data collected from a survey of 331 customers, brand perception models for two diverse kinds of products (high and low involvement) were tested. SmartPLS structural equation modeling was applied to produce models for both types of products. Exposure and experience significantly influences brand perception in different product categories, which suggests that customers perceive both high and low involvement. Our study also established that mianzi has a significant moderating role in high‐involvement product category. Ultimately, the findings suggest significant differences in the brand perception of product types with respect to mianzi and the mediational role of perceived quality and satisfaction, providing a structure for future research on brand perception.