Report on the scoping study for the project on ‘Impact Evaluation Approaches for Collaborative Agricultural Research and Development’

In response to calls for new approaches for evaluating the impact of agricultural research and development programmes, and to the need to improve the impact of these programmes to meet the global demand for greater food security, a scoping study was conducted to provide a basis for a project on ‘Impact Evaluation Approaches for Collaborative Agricultural Research and Development’. Coordinated by the Institutional Learning and Change (ILAC) Initiative, an Inter-Centre Initiative hosted by Bioversity International, in collaboration with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), an Australian university, and Research Into Use (RIU), a programme funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the study sought to follow up on the findings of an international workshop on ‘Rethinking Impact: Understanding the Complexity of Poverty and Change’, held in Colombia in March 2008. Research Into Use provided two small grants totalling $76,000 to support the scoping study and other collaborators provided in-kind contributions for staff time, as well as an additional estimated amount of$10,500 from the ILAC budget (provided through a grant from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs; DGIS) for consultancy fees and travel. High on the list of findings was the need to develop ways of evaluating the impact of complicated programmes that involve a range of institutions, disciplines, situations, methodologies and goals, and complex programmes which are emergent and responsive to changing needs and opportunities. Such programmes are becoming the norm in the field of agricultural research and development, but the approaches used to evaluate their impact tend to be based on those used for the simple programmes predominant in the 1960s and 1970s which usually focused on crop improvement. Within the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), crop improvement programmes now account for only about 25% of the CGIAR research centres’ work, and the need for methodologies suited to evaluating the impact of complex programmes has become imperative. The scoping study for the proposed impact evaluation project lasted from September 2008 to May 2009 and involved conducting a series of activities. These included: • reviewing existing methodologies and other resources • documenting the current status of impact evaluation in the CGIAR system • conducting interviews with key informants • identifying potential donors • identifying and assessing possible case studies • developing a design for the project • preparing a funding proposal to submit to donor agencies A proposal for funding the project, specifically for researching impact evaluation and developing methodologies over a 4-year period, was submitted to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in April 2009. The interest of other donors will continue to be investigated in order to scale up the project activities

Health policy roundtable

Proceedings of a conference organised by the Productivity Commission and the Melbourne Institute of Economic and Social Research held on 7-8 March 2002 to explore key policy issues facing Australia's health sector. The Roundtable drew together thirty leading practitioners and analysts on health policy issues. The topics covered included international developments in health policy, cost pressures in health care systems, access and service delivery, supplier-induced demand and occupational regulation.supplier induced demand - health - access - health care

The impact of spousal bereavement on self-assessed health status: evidence from the Taiwanese elderly population

経済学 / EconomicsBereavement is a grieved and inevitable event in our life. For an aging society, the incidence of spousal bereavement and parental bereavement is higher than the other kinds of bereavement events. This study employs the difference-in-differences (DiD) strategy and the Taiwanese panel Survey of Health and Living Status of the Elderly (SHLSE) to evaluate the impact of losing a spouse on well-being measured by self-assessed health status, depression, and life satisfaction.The results show that spousal bereavement causes substantial depression and loss in life satisfaction. The spousal bereavement impact increases depression by 1.46 CES-D points and reduces life satisfaction by 0.71 points. The decay effect of time is not observed in this study. We also examine the demographic differences of the spousal bereavement impact and find that the gap in life satisfaction between the bereaved who received more than 9 years education and the bereaved who received 9 years or less is 1.43 points, which implies that spousal bereavement causes less impact on more educated people in terms of life satisfaction. The increase in depression for the bereaved in a larger household is smaller than that for those in a small household by 2.75 CES-D points but it is weakly significant.The self-reported health outcomes are the intermediate outcomes between spousal bereavement and societal costs such as healthcare utilisation and death. The association between self-reported health status and mortality and health utilization has been well documented by literature. Thus, our results also provide the policy insight that giving proper interventions on the onset of bereavement may cause less societal costs afterwards.http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/leon_gonzalez_roberto

How Irish design consultancies align with Ireland’s Innovation 2020 priorities: a preliminary study

peer-reviewedThe Government of Ireland has positioned design as integral to the innovation landscape. In particular, it encourages innovations from designers that align with six thematic areas identified in the Innovation 2020 report. Those areas are health & medical, information & technology communications (ITC), food, energy, manufacturing & materials and service & business processes. However, research is yet to show the current contribution of design consultancies and their project outcomes categorised within these six priority thematic areas. This paper presents empirical findings on a review of 571 projects advertised on the websites of 26 design consultancies in Ireland. It shows that just under half of the reviewed design projects fall within the thematic project areas. Furthermore, this paper shows the differences between three design disciplines (product design, user-experience design and branding design) and their contribution of projects to each thematic area. The results of this empirical study are relevant and of use to design practitioners, clients and policy makers. For designers, this research identifies opportunities for new business and innovation within the Government of Ireland key thematic areas. For design clients, this research offers opportunities to seek input from relevant design disciplines according to the thematic alignment of their project. For policy makers, this research offers context of the six key thematic areas within the design disciplines in Ireland. Lastly, the results of this research suggest that across the disciplines of product, user-experience and branding design, preferred priority themes are evident

Open source intelligence, open social intelligence and privacy by design

Ponència presentada a European Conference on Social Intelligence (ECSI-2014)OSINT stands for Open Source Intelligence, (O)SI for (Open) Social Intelligence, PbD for Privacy by Design. The CAPER project has built an OSINT solution oriented to the prevention of organized crime. How to balance freedom and security? This position paper describes a way to embed the legal and ethical issues raised by the General Data Reform Package (GDRP) in Europe into this kind of surveillance platforms. It focuses on the indirect strategy to flesh out Privacy by Design principles (PbD) through Semantic Web Regulatory Models (SWRM). Institutional design, self-regulatory systems, and the possibility to build up a meta-level rule of law are discussed

A comparison of repaired, remanufactured and new compressors used in Western Australian small- and medium-sized enterprises in terms of global warming

Repaired compressors are compared with remanufactured and new compressors in terms of economic andenvironmental benefits. A detailed life cycle assessment has been carried out for compressors under threemanufacturing strategies: repaired, remanufactured and new equipment. The life cycle assessment of the globalwarming potential of repaired compressors varies from 4.38 to 119 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e),depending on the type of components replaced. While greenhouse gas emissions from the remanufacturedcompressors (110 to 168 kg CO2-e) are relatively higher than those from the repaired ones (4.4 to 119 kg CO2-e), anew compressor has been found to produce a larger amount of greenhouse gas emissions (1,590 kg CO2-e)compared to both repaired and remanufactured compressors. Repairing failed compressors has been found to offerend users both dollar and carbon savings in contrast to remanufactured and new compressors. The research alsofound that extended lifetime is more important than the manufacturing processes in terms of greenhouse gasemissions. Since a remanufactured compressor offers a longer life than a repaired compressor, the replacement ofthe latter with the former can avoid 33% to 66% of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with a newcompressor production with a lifetime of 15 to 25 years

Labour markets and wages in Australia 2010

In this article we present data on earnings and hours in 2010 and, using data over a longer time frame, show how the character of the Australian labour market has significantly changed in recent decades. Among other things, we demonstrate a continued shift towards part-time work and, across full-time and part-time labour markets, a change in the distribution of jobs towards more highly skilled occupations. We continue to argue that traditional indicators of labour-market activity, such as headline unemployment and earnings in full-time employment, are only able to partially explain the health of the labour market. There is an urgent need to better understand other dimensions such as underemployment, part-time employment and part-time earnings

Barriers and enablers to delivery of the Healthy Kids Check: An analysis informed by the Theoretical Domains Framework and COM-B model

Background: More than a fifth of Australian children arrive at school developmentally vulnerable. To counteract this, the Healthy Kids Check (HKC), a one-off health assessment aimed at preschool children, was introduced in 2008 into Australian general practice. Delivery of services has, however, remained low. The Theoretical Domains Framework, which provides a method to understand behaviours theoretically, can be condensed into three core components: capability, opportunity and motivation, and the COM-B model. Utilising this system, this study aimed to determine the barriers and enablers to delivery of the HKC, to inform the design of an intervention to promote provision of HKC services in Australian general practice. Methods: Data from 6 focus group discussions with 40 practitioners from general practices in socio-culturally diverse areas of Melbourne, Victoria, were analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Many practitioners expressed uncertainty regarding their capabilities and the practicalities of delivering HKCs, but in some cases HKCs had acted as a catalyst for professional development. Key connections between immunisation services and delivery of HKCs prompted practices to have systems of recall and reminder in place. Standardisation of methods for developmental assessment and streamlined referral pathways affected practitioners' confidence and motivation to perform HKCs. Conclusion: Application of a systematic framework effectively demonstrated how a number of behaviours could be targeted to increase delivery of HKCs. Interventions need to target practice systems, the support of office staff and referral options, as well as practitioners' training. Many behavioural changes could be applied through a single intervention programme delivered by the primary healthcare organisations charged with local healthcare needs (Medicare Locals) providing vital links between general practice, community and the health of young children. © 2014 Alexander et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd