The Three Evaluations of Social Welfare Programs

As new and innovative social welfare programs are being attempted, there has been an increased concern with evaluating the effectiveness of such programs. To what degree is a new program effective? For which kinds of clients is each type of program effective? What elements are crucial in a program which has been judged to be effective? These are just a few of the questions that evaluators would like to answer. There is a large literature on evaluation research--some of it reporting or reviewing the results of specific evaluations (6, 8, 9, 10, 11) and some of it presenting general discussions, essays or models (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). This literature outlines many important problems and suggests imaginative solutions to a number of those problems. However, in our judgment, some of the literature has viewed all evaluations as alike; insufficient attention has been given to the basic differences between different types of evaluation. The objective of this paper is to clarify this issue. We argue that there are three distinct types of evaluation that can be articulated on the basis of the intent of the evaluation: (1) The evaluation is a test of some basic but general scientific hypothesis that underlies or motivates a proposed intervention. 2) The general scientific hypothesis is found or assumed to be valid, and the evaluation is an assessment of the effectiveness of a particular program that supposedly embodies the hypothesis. (3) After a particular program has been shown to be effective at some point in time, the evaluation is a continuing assessment of the effectiveness of the program. An awareness of these three types is important because the methods of evaluation are partly dictated by the intent of the evaluation. These three types will be referred to, for the nonce, as evaluation as- experiment (testing a scientific hypothesis), evaluation-as-assessment (judging the effectiveness of a particular program), and evaluation-as monitoring (continuously examining the effectiveness of the program). Each of these will be discussed in turn

Loss and assimilation: Lived experiences of Brexit for British citizens living in Luxembourg

Inconsistent political realities are associated with mental health issues such as hopelessness, anxiety, and depression. The psychological impact of Brexit is clearly an important and timely issue, but hitherto has been understudied. This study uses a critical realist approach to qualitatively explore the lived experiences of British citizens living in Luxembourg during the Brexit era. The study reports on semi-structured interviews conducted with 6 British citizens aged 18–65. An experientially focused thematic analysis was conducted, exploring two main themes: Loss (with psychological and broader social implications) and Integration (contrasting the mover’s community with the receiving community). This study demonstrates the psychological impact of Brexit and highlights the urgency for future researchers and mental health practitioners alike — both in the UK and overseas — to consider the human consequences associated with political upheaval. Open access materials for this project can be viewed here: https://osf.io/38rg7/?view_only=b8c04dfc3fe5474f9aff4897e370b3e6

Vegan Killjoys at the Table—Contesting Happiness and Negotiating Relationships with Food Practices

This article reports upon research on vegan transition, which I bring into dialogue with Sara Ahmed’s figure of the killjoy. Ahmed’s work on affect and the feminist killjoy is found to be apt for considering contemporary vegans and their transgression of normative scripts of happiness and commensality in a dominant meat and dairy consuming culture. The decentring of joy and happiness is also found to be integral to the critical deconstructive work of the vegan killjoy. Ahmed’s ideas further complement the frame of practice theory that I draw upon to understand the process of transition especially in the sense of opposing the meanings of dominant practices. Although food and veganism are not commented upon by Ahmed, the vegan subject constitutes, I argue, a potent further example of what she terms an “affect alien” who must willfully struggle against a dominant affective order and community. Drawing upon interviews with 40 vegans based in the UK, I illustrate examples of contestation and negotiation by vegans and those close to them. The article finds in the figure of the killjoy not only a frame by which to partly understand the negotiation of relationships between vegans and non-vegans but also an opportunity for further intersectional labour between veganism and feminism

Investigations Pertaining to Texas Beekeeping.

59 pgEXPERIMENTS IN ARTIFICIAL DIVISION AND SWARM-CONTROL THE LIFE HISTORY AND CONTROL OF THE BEE-MOTH OR WAX-WORM A STATISTICAL STUDY OF TEXAS BEEKEEPIN

Young children’s food brand knowledge. Early development and associations with television viewing and parent’s diet

Brand knowledge is a prerequisite of children’s requests and choices for branded foods. We explored the development of young children’s brand knowledge of foods highly advertised on television – both healthy and less healthy. Participants were 172 children aged 3–5 years in diverse socio-economic settings, from two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland with different regulatory environments. Results indicated that food brand knowledge (i) did not differ across jurisdictions; (ii) increased significantly between 3 and 4 years; and (iii) children had significantly greater knowledge of unhealthy food brands, compared with similarly advertised healthy brands. In addition, (iv) children’s healthy food brand knowledge was not related to their television viewing, their mother’s education, or parent or child eating. However, (v) unhealthy brand knowledge was significantly related to all these factors, although only parent eating and children’s age were independent predictors. Findings indicate that effects of food marketing for un- healthy foods take place through routes other than television advertising alone, and are present before pre-schoolers develop the concept of healthy eating. Implications are that marketing restrictions of un- healthy foods should extend beyond television advertising; and that family-focused obesity prevention programmes should begin before children are 3 years of age