EXPECTATIONS AND CAPACITY OF PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN NGOs IN THE DEVELOPMENT CONTEXT

There are many obstacles to promoting learning as an outcome of performance measurement in non‐governmental organizations (NGO) social service providers, especially in less developed countries. Building upon a conceptualization of accountability as a multifaceted set of relationships through which funders, or principals, and non‐profit providers, or agents, jointly shape organizational learning, and performance, this study expands our understanding of how accountability mechanisms affect learning within service providers. This paper explores the role that funders play in shaping performance measurement, or monitoring, practices within NGOs serving disadvantaged children in developing countries. We examined the experience of service providers in Egypt and Colombia to assess how the barriers to use of performance data and learning may be addressed. We conducted interviews using the same protocols with program managers in six non‐profit providers in each country that provide services to children, and we also interviewed major donors in the arena of children's services in the USA. We probed the NGO managers' experiences with performance measurement to identify obstacles and potential solutions to improve the use of the data to promote learning. Our findings support previous research about the potential for upward accountability mechanisms to influence internal learning. We suggest that funders should be held accountable for how the incentives and disincentives they provide to grantees affect their internal learning about how to improve their services. This notion of ‘reverse accountability’ means that funders need to be strategic and intentional when they design reporting mechanisms that affect the learning behaviours within their grantees. In line with our call for reverse accountability, we offer a model demonstrating our notion of the two‐way flow of accountability and we offer recommendations to help improve the performance reporting environment for NGOs who are addressing complex problems with less than adequate capacity. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Revalorizing the Political: Towards a New Intellectual Agenda for African Civil Society Discourse

Who needs civil society? What is civil society useful for? While the foregoing and similar dilemmas dominated the early civil society literature on sub-Saharan Africa, this was soon followed by a steady shift to the analysis of non-governmental organizations. The shift foreshadowed the recent methodological approach to civil society research which emphasizes ‘measuring’ and ‘surveying’ civil society. In this essay, I contend that this approach, to the extent that it seems to totalize civil society as component voluntary associations that can be measured, deepens the crisis of understanding which it aspires to transcend. Yet, although I critique—and reject—this approach, I argue nonetheless that it ought to be seen as an opportunity to reinstate a more theoretically robust and politically driven imagination of civil society, one that problematizes, not just civil society organizations that are, ultimately, only an aspect of civil society, but the civil domain as a whole. While conceding that ‘measuring’ civil society has its own merits, I insist that it comes with a real danger of, first, reducing civil society to organizations, especially organizations that can be measured; and second, distracting students of African societies from the politicality that underpins much of the continent's socio-economic woes.     

The Assessment of School Bullying

Abstract

This article examines the conceptual basis for and methods used to assess school bullying, including the core bullying behavior elements of repetition, intentionality, and power differential and instruments needed to foster comparability across studies and to improve the precision of intervention capacity. Common bully self-report procedures (Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire, Olweus, 2004; Reynolds Bully Victimization Scale, Reynolds, 2003; The Bully Surveys, Swearer, 2001) are examined for the thoroughness with which they assess these core elements that distinguish bullying from other forms of peer victimization. It is concluded that bullying assessment can be enhanced by systematically including all core bully behaviors, more thoroughly examining sources of power differential between bullies and victims, and giving more attention to the dynamic nature of the bullying process.     

两岸经济相互依存的概念与度量方法

基于对现有研究文献的分析归纳,已有研究对于两岸经济相互依存性的度量可划分为四个层次：对两岸经贸交流相对规模的度量,对两岸经贸交流直接经济效益的度量,对两岸经贸交流总体经济效应的度量,以及基于动态系统要求所进行的度量;而不同度量方法对应于两岸经济相互依存概念的不同外延。关于两岸经济相互依存的概念应当从两岸经济相互依存系统的输入层、作用层和输出层分别加以界定,相应的度量方法也需予以适当拓展。     

心理测量在教育中应用存在的问题与对策

随着教育学和心理学的发展,心理测量在教育领域的应用越来越广泛。目前,心理测量在教育中应用存在测验选择不当、施测过程控制不当、测验结果解释不科学、量表编制不当及对心理测量结果认识存在偏颇等问题。在教育中,应有针对性地选择测验、规范施测过程、科学解释测验结果、提高测验的信度和效度及客观看待心理测验结果。     

Getting elections right? Measuring electoral integrity

Holding elections has become a global norm. Unfortunately, the integrity of elections varies strongly, ranging from “free and fair” elections with genuine contestation to “façade” elections marred by manipulation and fraud. Clearly, electoral integrity is a topic of increasing concern. Yet electoral integrity is notoriously difficult to measure, and hence taking stock of the available data is important. This article compares cross-national data sets measuring electoral integrity. The first part evaluates how the different data sets (a) conceptualize electoral integrity, (b) move from concepts to indicators, and (c) move from indicators to data. The second part analyses how different data sets code the same elections, seeking to explain the sources of disagreement about electoral integrity. The sample analysed comprises 746 elections in 95 third and fourth wave regimes from 1974 until 2009. I find that conceptual and measurement choices affect disagreement about election integrity, and also find that elections of lower integrity and post-conflict elections generate higher disagreement about election integrity. The article concludes with a discussion of results and suggestions for future research.     

Conceptualizing and measuring subnational democracy across Indian states

India is often credited for its success as the world’s largest democracy, but variation in subnational democracy across its states has not been systematically incorporated into scholarship on subnational regimes. This paper develops a conceptualization of subnational democracy based on four constitutive dimensions – turnover, contestation, autonomy and clean elections – and introduces a comprehensive dataset to measure each of the dimensions between 1985 and 2013. The inclusion of India – an older parliamentary democracy with a centralized federal system – broadens the universe of cases for the study of subnational regimes, and reveals variation across constitutive dimensions that has not yet been theorized. The paper shows that threats to subnational democracy come from multiple directions, including the central government and non-state armed actors, that subnational variation persists even decades after a transition at the national-level, and that subnational democracy declines in some states in spite of the national democratic track record.     

The Challenge of Measuring Media Exposure: Reply to Dilliplane,Goldman, and Mutz

Political communication research has long been plagued by inaccurate self-reports of media exposure. Dilliplane, Goldman, and Mutz (2013) Dilliplane, S., Goldman, S. and Mutz, D. 2013. Televised exposure to politics: New measures for a fragmented media environment. American Journal of Political Science, 57: 236–248. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] propose a new survey-based measure of “televised exposure to politics” that avoids some of the features that lead to self-report error and that has already been adopted by the American National Election Study. Yet the validity of the new measure has not been independently tested. An analysis reveals several weaknesses. First, construct validity of the new measure is low because it does not attempt to measure the amount of exposure to news programs, news channels, or news overall. Second, its convergent validity is poor by several different criteria. For example, the new measure shows barely any increase in news exposure as the 2008 presidential election approached. Third, the authors' criterion for predictive validity is neither necessary nor sufficient. Dilliplane, Goldman, and Mutz are right that measuring the media exposure of survey respondents in a valid and reliable way is critical for progress in political communication research. But given the inability of many respondents to report their own exposure, it is necessary to monitor the media use of survey respondents automatically.     

Where to draw the line? From degree to dichotomy in measures of democracy

While there is much debate about the merits of dichotomous versus continuous measures of democracy, surprisingly little attention is paid to the question as to how to go from degree to dichotomy. This study identifies no less than 38 different ways in which Freedom House and Polity scores have been used to distinguish between democracies and non-democracies. The analysis shows that it is difficult to draw the line in measures of democracy, even for Freedom House and Polity themselves. These problems are illustrated with the help of a recent study on democratization in Africa. The conclusion formulates some guidelines for good practice and points at the potential of disaggregated scores to distinguish between democracy and dictatorship.