Draft blog post for AEA365 July 27, 2020 social research This is a blog post I’m working on for the AEA365 blog, we’re going to do a series on the Theories of Evaluation TIG. Hi, I’m Steve Powell, a Better ways to present country-level data on a world map: equal-area cartograms February 1, 2019 r & social research I’m just working on a report for the IFRC. There is lots of data from 190 different Red Cross Red Crescent National Societies around the world1. Beaufort and Rubrics January 12, 2017 evaluation & research & outcome-mapping & social research A quick post about the Beaufort scale for wind speed, see below, as paradigm of a rubric. Rubrics are really important in evaluation. The Beaufort Judea Pearl June 1, 2016 evaluation & research & social research I only just came across the work of Judea Pearl (which shows how ignorant I am because he won the Turing Prize in 2011). I think his work is Everything should be evidence-based - if only the evidence would make up its mind already May 18, 2016 twitter & evaluation & Theories of Change & social research This question came up on an Evaluation mailing list and was forwarded to non other than Andrew Gelman, and for our purposes it can be boiled down Emerging evaluation questions February 29, 2016 research & social research I am just now completing a team evaluation which involved us all applying a standard set of outline questions. Even without getting into the problem Assumptions and Context in Logic Models November 1, 2014 research & evaluation & social research How to distinguish assumptions and context in logic models? Here is one attempt. It isn’t quite right yet … A potential assumption in a logic model 10-years after: A follow-up study on war-traumatized civilians in Bosnia December 10, 2013 Bosnia-Herzegovina & ptsd & social research Rita Rosner presented our 10 years after study in Boston at ISTSS this summer Social Capital article published at last July 2, 2013 research & socialCapital & volunteering & social research International Journal of Internet Science Volume 8, Issue 1 http://www.ijis.net/ijis8_1/ijis8_1_bosancianu_et_al.html Social Capital and Pro-Social Haiti: Request for Qualifications for research teams to conduct an impact evaluation of the Integrated Neighborhood Approach (INA) February 22, 2013 evaluation & Haiti & impact & social research Very proud and happy to see that this idea, which we developed while I was in Haiti with the IFRC, is nearing fruition: 3ie will be issuing a Multi-stage sampling together with hierarchical/ mixed effects models: which packages? November 5, 2012 social research Dear R experts, I sent this question to the r-help list but didn’t get much response, probably because it is more of a stats question. But as this Annual Meeting of INURED in Port-au-Prince July 20, 2012 Haiti & social research Had the pleasure and honour to attend part of the Annual meeting of INURED, an inter-university research network in Haiti. Listened to a very Outcome Mapping book chapter just out March 6, 2012 development & evaluation & research & outcome-mapping & social research Powell, Steve, Joakim Molander, and Ivona Čelebičić. ‘Assessment of Outcome Mapping as a Tool for Evaluating and Monitoring Support to Civil Society Did poverty cause the England riots? Guardian graphic fails to correct for population density December 6, 2011 research & dataviz & social research via guardian.co.uk Great idea in principle. The yellow dots show where the accused live, and the redder districts are the poorest. But I guess these Smoking in cars: some evidence November 18, 2011 research & policy & social research The BMA (British Medical Association) Board of Science in the UK just kicked up a fuss by suggesting a complete smoking ban in cars. It is worth Authority is not losing out to democracy, but to change. October 8, 2011 social research http://books.google.com/ngrams/chart?content=angry%2Csorry%2Chappy%2Cjoy%2Csad%2Cpleasure%2Cdepression&corpus=6&smoothing=3&year_start=1740&year_end=2 angry, sorry, happy, joy, sad, pleasure, depression - which do you think is most popular in 2011? October 8, 2011 social research Thanks to google’s mind-blowing ngram engine, now we know. So happy reigned supreme until about 1800, from when pleasure took over. Just before Democracy support pays off in the end, at least from the perspective of USAID, even in Egypt August 22, 2011 development & democracy & social research A pretty comprehensive quantitative study of the effectiveness of democracy support (Finkel et al 2007& 2008) found that, when controlling for a Roma parents’ views on participation in education in B&H. July 10, 2011 Bosnia-Herzegovina & education & reproducibleResearch & Roma & social research Our OSI funded project on parental participation in schools in B&H in 2009, which employed a representative face-to-face survey of 1143 parents, Another example of why research should be reproducible. July 10, 2011 reproducibleResearch & social research via nytimes.com If only the original journal had made them submit their data and source code for peer inspection. It wouldn’t stop this kind of What helped the the Egyptian revolution the most: Twitter, or the government switching it off? April 21, 2011 development & social research I have been really interested in the “meme” that the Egyptian revolution was “the first social media revolution” and have tolerated infographics United Nations Volunteers: Citizens’ contributions essential to Tajikistan’s national development goals: UN Report April 18, 2011 development & volunteerism & social research Понимание Добровольчества в Целях Развития в Юго-Восточной Европе и Содружестве Независимых Государств: Уроки, Направленные на Расширение Fairer Calls for Proposals in international development. A simple way to stop the bias! April 14, 2011 development & social research International development aid can shoot itself in the foot and end up making things worse. When Calls for Proposals for work in a particular country My first Reproducible Research Compendium December 14, 2010 evaluation & research & social research I have just completed my first Reproducible Research Compendium “Analysis of the combined survey datasets from the American Red Cross Tsunami Also in Bosnia & Herzegovina, satisfied parents are those who believe their school representatives are effective November 11, 2010 Bosnia-Herzegovina & education & ggplot & research & social research In the mixed effects regression for all 10 countries in the research I mentioned previously on this blog Volunteering, the flip side of work? November 1, 2010 research & volunteerism & social research Just been to a meeting in Istanbul on the “state of the worlds volunteerism”, where there was a lot of talk about the definition of volunteerism and State of the World’s Volunteerism - neatly balanced, maybe? November 1, 2010 Balkans & research & volunteerism & social research Just got back from Istanbul (actually an industrial estate outside Istanbul) to take part in a regional meeting to contribute to the State of the Value and measurability in development October 19, 2010 development & evaluation & research & social research There is an interesting discussion on the xceval mailing list right now about value and measurability in development. Seems to me there are four Which parents are satisfied with their child’s education? Those who know their class representative well. Especially in poor schools. October 14, 2010 education & ggplot & research & social research Another result from our OSI / ESP survey of nearly 11000 parents in ten countries. Dots are individual parents. The y-axis is individual parents’ Students in predominantly ethnic minority classes want segregated education very much. The others don’t. October 7, 2010 Bosnia-Herzegovina & education & ggplot & research & social research I just did this for what will hopefully be a book chapter on our Divided Education - Divided Citizens research project with NEPC. Explanation What is wrong with this graph? September 28, 2010 ggplot & psychology & social research This is a graph from our surveys with the University of Munich in B&H about ten years ago. In previous presentations (but not in peer-reviewed Unending frustration with the anonymous style required in academic documents September 23, 2010 social research For the work I have been doing this year for the American Red Cross, I enjoyed being encouraged to write in the first person, using a direct style The most controversial of all psychiatric diagnoses just won’t lie down: and giving the problem to a committee just didn’t help. September 22, 2010 psychology & ptsd & social research 309.81 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ==================================== Updated August-20-2010 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder * A. The Three days, six people, three pages, one google doc September 21, 2010 collaboration & development & evaluation & tech & social research Just got back from Geneva where we - the four authors of the meta-evaluations of the ARC Tsunami Recovery Program - spent three days writing a