The science of impact and the impact of agricultural science

Research impact and its measurement are of increasing importance. This is particularly significant for agricultural science, which is expected to produce solutions to future challenges that will arise from population growth, climate change and ecosystem degradation. Much econometric effort has been devoted to analysis of investment in agricultural research and its effects on farm productivity. This analysis, reviewed here, has produced a consensus suggesting that returns are high, although they are achieved only after long lags. However, policymakers perceive the occurrence of impacts as too few, and poorly targeted with respect to their needs. An attribution gap between the outcomes of agricultural research and how they reach farmers has motivated evaluation of the process of transmission and translation of agricultural research outputs into ultimate impacts. This gap can be narrowed by Participatory Impact Pathway Analysis, implemented mostly so far in low income countries. However, it is a costly and cognitively complex approach. Content analysis of the UK’s 2014 REF Impact Case Studies uncovers the mind set of researchers and their managers regarding the description of impact and how it is supposed to occur. This reveals a nascent conservatism that focuses on research that can be shown to have impact, rather than research impact itself. From the overall discussion it can be concluded that the impact evaluation of agricultural science raises more profound issues than either efficiency or transparency. Confirmation bias threatens impact evaluation, principally by distracting from other important stories about how and why the ultimate effects occur, but also by transforming the nature of the process itself. Methodological pluralism, with greater integration and triangulation between different evaluation approaches, is a promising means of resolving these problems

Individual and Social Influences on Students’ Attitudes to Debt: a Cross-National Path Analysis Using Data from England and New Zealand

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This study examines the construction of debt attitudes among 439 first-year undergraduates in England and New Zealand. It works from a conceptual model that predicts that attitudes will be partly determined by a range of social factors, mediated through personality and ‘financial literacy’. Path analysis is used to explore this model. The proposed model was found to be basically sound, with some notable negative findings. Socio-economic status was found to have a negligible role in determining debt attitudes, while the role of financial literacy was limited to reducing the likelihood of seeing debt as useful for lifestyle expenditure. Debt anxiety was found to be higher among students with a general predisposition to anxiety and inversely related to viewing student debt as a form of educational investment. It is concluded that student debt attitudes are multidimensional and individualised, challenging simplistic ideas of debt aversion in earlier literature

Ensuring the right to education for Roma children : an Anglo-Swedish perspective

Access to public education systems has tended to be below normative levels where Roma children are concerned. Various long-standing social, cultural, and institutional factors lie behind the lower levels of engagement and achievement of Roma children in education, relative to many others, which is reflective of the general lack of integration of their families in mainstream society. The risks to Roma children’s educational interests are well recognized internationally, particularly at the European level. They have prompted a range of policy initiatives and legal instruments to protect rights and promote equality and inclusion, on top of the framework of international human rights and minority protections. Nevertheless, states’ autonomy in tailoring educational arrangements to their budgets and national policy agendas has contributed to considerable international variation in specific provision for Roma children. As this article discusses, even between two socially liberal countries, the UK and Sweden, with their well-advanced welfare states and public systems of social support, there is a divergence in protection, one which underlines the need for a more consistent and positive approach to upholding the education rights and interests of children in this most marginalized and often discriminated against minority group

Development and evaluation of an intervention providing insight into the tobacco industry to prevent smoking uptake: a mixed-methods study

Background Smokers who start smoking at an early age are less likely to quit and more likely to die from their habit. Evidence from the US Truth® campaign suggests that interventions focusing on tobacco industry practices and ethics may be effective in preventing smoking uptake. Objectives In an exploratory study, to develop, pilot and provide preliminary evidence of the acceptability and effectiveness of Operation Smoke Storm, a school-based intervention based on the premise of the Truth® campaign, to prevent smoking uptake. Design Mixed-methods, non-randomised controlled study. Component 1 was delivered to Year 7 students, and student focus groups and teacher interviews were conducted to refine the lessons and to develop components 2 and 3. The revised Year 7 lessons and accompanying family booklet were delivered to new Year 7 students 1 year later in one school only; Year 8 students in both schools received the booster session. Setting and participants Students in Years 7–8 (aged 11–13 years) in two UK schools. Intervention A three-component intervention comprising (1) three 50-minute classroom-based sessions in Year 7 in which students acted as secret agents to uncover industry practices through videos, quizzes, discussions and presentations; (2) an accompanying family booklet containing activities designed to stimulate discussions about smoking between parents and students; and (3) a 1-hour interactive classroom-based booster session for Year 8 students, in which students learnt about tobacco marketing strategies from the perspectives of an industry executive, a marketing company and a health campaigner. Main outcome measures Odds ratios to compare the self-reported prevalence of ever smoking and susceptibility to smoking in Year 8 students after the delivery of the booster session in study schools compared with students in local control schools. Qualitative data on acceptability of the intervention. Results The combined prevalence of ever smoking and susceptibility increased from 18.2% in Year 7 to 33.8% in Year 8. After adjusting for confounders there was no significant difference in the odds of a Year 8 student in an intervention school being an ever smoker or susceptible never smoker compared with controls [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 1.28, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.83 to 1.97; p = 0.263] and no significant difference in the odds of ever smoking (aOR 0.82, 95% CI 0.42 to 1.58; p = 0.549). Students mostly enjoyed the intervention and acquired new knowledge that appeared to strengthen their aversion to smoking. Teachers liked the ‘off-the-shelf’ nature of the resource, although they highlighted differences by academic ability in the extent to which students understood the messages being presented. Use of the family component was low but it was received positively by those parents who did engage with it. Limitations Logistical difficulties meant that students’ responses in Year 7 and Year 8 could not be linked; however, baseline smoking behaviours differed little between intervention and control schools, and analyses were adjusted for confounders measured at follow-up. Conclusions Operation Smoke Storm is an acceptable resource for delivering smoking-prevention education but it does not appear to have reduced smoking and susceptibility. Future work The lack of a strong signal for potential effectiveness, considered alongside logistical difficulties in recruiting and working with schools, suggests that a fully powered cluster randomised trial of the intervention is not warranted

Children as vulnerable consumers: a first conceptualisation

© 2015 Westburn Publishers Ltd. Understandings of consumer vulnerability remain contentious and despite recent developments, models remain unsuitable when applied to children. Taxonomic models, and those favouring a ‘state’- or ‘class’-based approach have been replaced by those attempting to tackle both individual and structural antecedents. However, these are still overly individualistic and fail to progress from an artificial view that these dimensions work separately and independently. In contrast, the new sociology of childhood conceptualises childhood as a hybridised, fluid combination of structure and agency. This paper introduces this approach, new to the consumer vulnerability field, and proposes that it has considerable implications for the way that children’s consumer vulnerability is theorised and researched, and for the formulation of policy