A Social Relations Model for the Colonial Behavior of the Zebra Finch

A social relations model was developed for 5 years of behavioral recordings from a captive colony of Zebrafinches (Taeniopygia guttata). A quantitative ethogram was applied, using one-zero focal animal sampling on an ethologically comprehensive checklist of 52 behavioral items (Figueredo, Petrinovich, Ross, 1992). Of the 9 ethological factors previously identified, only 4 of the 6 social factors (Social Proximity, Social Contact, Social Submission, and Social Aggression) were used. Major results were as follows: (1) Individual finches showed systematically different response dispositions that were stable over a 5-year period as both subjects and objects of behavior; (2) Interactions between finches differed systematically by the sexes of both the subjects and the objects of behavior; (3) Behavioral interactions between finches and their mates differed systematically according to the subjects' sex, but also differed systematically from those with other members of the objects' sex; (4) Behavioral interactions between finches and their relatives differed systematically between different discrete categories of relatives, but did not vary as a systematic function of either graded genetic relatedness or familiarity due to common rearing; and (5) Behavioral interactions between finches and their relatives showed an overall bias towards preferential interactions with male relatives.   DOI:10.2458/azu_jmmss_v1i1_figuered

Program evaluation:principles, procedures and practises

This chapter provides a review of the current state of the principles, procedures, and practices within program evaluation. We address a few incisive and difficult questions about the current state of the field: (1) What are the kinds of program evaluations? (2)Why do program evaluation results often have so little impact on social policy? (3) Does program evaluation suffer from a counterproductive system of incentives? and (4) What do program evaluators actually do? We compare and contrast the merits and limitations, strengths and weaknesses, and relative progress of the two primary contemporary movements within program evaluation, Quantitative Methods and Qualitative Methods, and we propose an epistemological framework for integrating the two movements as complementary forms of investigation, each contributing to different stages in the scientific process. In the final section, we provide recommendations for systemic institutional reforms addressing identified structural problems within the real-world practice of program evaluation