Global governance: fit for purpose?

This report from the SNS Democracy Council provides a thorough assessment of whether the current system of global governance is fit for purpose. Do current international organizations hold the power required to develop, implement, and enforce global policies? Do these institutions wield this power with sufficient effectiveness to reduce transboundary problems? And do they possess legitimacy as governing bodies in the eyes of citizens and elites? This report explores these themes in a comparative perspective, mapping and analyzing patterns across a broad range of international organizations in areas such as development, finance, health, human rights, security, and trade. As an illustration, the report also offers an in-depth analysis of power, effectiveness, and legitimacy in respect of global climate governance.Security and Global AffairsInstitutions, Decisions and Collective Behaviou

Population normative data for the 10/66 Dementia Research Group cognitive test battery from Latin America, India and China: a cross-sectional survey

Background: 1) To report site-specific normative values by age, sex and educational level for four components of the 10/66 Dementia Research Group cognitive test battery; 2) to estimate the main and interactive effects of age, sex, and educational level by site; and 3) to investigate the effect of site by region and by rural or urban location. Methods: Population-based cross-sectional one phase catchment area surveys were conducted in Cuba, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, China and India. The protocol included the administration of the Community Screening Instrument for Dementia (CSI 'D', generating the COGSCORE measure of global function), and the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) verbal fluency (VF), word list memory (WLM, immediate recall) and recall (WLR, delayed recall) tests. Only those free of dementia were included in the analysis. Results: Older people, and those with less education performed worse on all four tests. The effect of sex was much smaller and less consistent. There was a considerable effect of site after accounting for compositional differences in age, education and sex. Much of this was accounted for by the effect of region with Chinese participants performing better, and Indian participants worse, than those from Latin America. The effect of region was more prominent for VF and WLM than for COGSCORE and WLR. Conclusion: Cognitive assessment is a basic element for dementia diagnosis. Age- and education-specific norms are required for this purpose, while the effect of gender can probably be ignored. The basis of cultural effects is poorly understood, but our findings serve to emphasise that normative data may not be safely generalised from one population to another with quite different characteristics. The minimal effects of region on COGSCORE and WLR are reassuring with respect to the cross-cultural validity of the 10/66 dementia diagnosis, which uses only these elements of the 10/66 battery.Clinical NeurologySCI(E)SSCI17ARTICLEnull

Process-Tracing as a Tool to Analyse Discretion

status: publishe

The impact of social networks on knowledge transfer in long-term care facilities: Protocol for a study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Social networks are theorized as significant influences in the innovation adoption and behavior change processes. Our understanding of how social networks operate within healthcare settings is limited. As a result, our ability to design optimal interventions that employ social networks as a method of fostering planned behavior change is also limited. Through this proposed project, we expect to contribute new knowledge about factors influencing uptake of knowledge translation interventions.</p> <p>Objectives</p> <p>Our specific aims include: To collect social network data among staff in two long-term care (LTC) facilities; to characterize social networks in these units; and to describe how social networks influence uptake and use of feedback reports.</p> <p>Methods and design</p> <p>In this prospective study, we will collect data on social networks in nursing units in two LTC facilities, and use social network analysis techniques to characterize and describe the networks. These data will be combined with data from a funded project to explore the impact of social networks on uptake and use of feedback reports. In this parent study, feedback reports using standardized resident assessment data are distributed on a monthly basis. Surveys are administered to assess report uptake. In the proposed project, we will collect data on social networks, analyzing the data using graphical and quantitative techniques. We will combine the social network data with survey data to assess the influence of social networks on uptake of feedback reports.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>This study will contribute to understanding mechanisms for knowledge sharing among staff on units to permit more efficient and effective intervention design. A growing number of studies in the social network literature suggest that social networks can be studied not only as influences on knowledge translation, but also as possible mechanisms for fostering knowledge translation. This study will contribute to building theory to design such interventions.</p

The qualitative transparency deliberations: insights and implications

In recent years, a variety of efforts have been made in political science to enable, encourage, or require scholars to be more open and explicit about the bases of their empirical claims and, in turn, make those claims more readily evaluable by others. While qualitative scholars have long taken an interest in making their research open, reflexive, and systematic, the recent push for overarching transparency norms and requirements has provoked serious concern within qualitative research communities and raised fundamental questions about the meaning, value, costs, and intellectual relevance of transparency for qualitative inquiry. In this Perspectives Reflection, we crystallize the central findings of a three-year deliberative process—the Qualitative Transparency Deliberations (QTD)—involving hundreds of political scientists in a broad discussion of these issues. Following an overview of the process and the key insights that emerged, we present summaries of the QTD Working Groups’ final reports. Drawing on a series of public, online conversations that unfolded at www.qualtd.net, the reports unpack transparency’s promise, practicalities, risks, and limitations in relation to different qualitative methodologies, forms of evidence, and research contexts. Taken as a whole, these reports—the full versions of which can be found in the Supplementary Materials—offer practical guidance to scholars designing and implementing qualitative research, and to editors, reviewers, and funders seeking to develop criteria of evaluation that are appropriate—as understood by relevant research communities—to the forms of inquiry being assessed. We dedicate this Reflection to the memory of our coauthor and QTD working group leader Kendra Koivu