Developing digital interventions: a methodological guide.

Digital interventions are becoming an increasingly popular method of delivering healthcare as they enable and promote patient self-management. This paper provides a methodological guide to the processes involved in developing effective digital interventions, detailing how to plan and develop such interventions to avoid common pitfalls. It demonstrates the need for mixed qualitative and quantitative methods in order to develop digital interventions which are effective, feasible, and acceptable to users and stakeholders

Surveying Persons with Disabilities: A Source Guide (Version 1)

As a collaborator with the Cornell Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Demographics and Statistics, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. has been working on a project that identifies the strengths and limitations in existing disability data collection in both content and data collection methodology. The intended outcomes of this project include expanding and synthesizing knowledge of best practices and the extent existing data use those practices, informing the development of data enhancement options, and contributing to a more informed use of existing data. In an effort to provide the public with an up-to-date and easily accessible source of research on the methodological issues associated with surveying persons with disabilities, MPR has prepared a Source Guide of material related to this topic. The Source Guide contains 150 abstracts, summaries, and references, followed by a Subject Index, which cross references the sources from the Reference List under various subjects. The Source Guide is viewed as a “living document,” and will be periodically updated

Resources and Tools:A Step-by-Step Methodological Guide for Costing HIV/AIDS Activities

Many developing countries have recognized the need for comprehensive national reforms and comprehensive prevention, treatment, and care and support initiatives to reduce future transmission of and to meet the growing demand for HIV/AIDS services. As a part of these national health reform initiatives, governments are exploring ways to allocate resources in the most efficient and effective way to mitigate the HIV/AIDS epidemic. However, many countries lack information on the level and nature of the costs of HIV/AIDS programs. This document provides an introduction to the procedure for calculating and analyzing the costs of HIV/AIDS programs and describes how to measure directly the actual costs of a program that is up and running. The step-by-step guide is intended to provide project managers in the field with a framework for how to do measure costs for a single, recent year in the life of an HIV/AIDS program. An illustrative activities list in the report annex will assist the user to develop an activities-based framework. The information gleaned from the costing framework will enable policymakers and program managers to make informed resource allocation decisions

A Methodological Guide to Multiobjective Optimization

During the last few years, multiobjective optimization has received growing attention: the number of publications related to this subject between 1974 and 1979 exceeds 120. There are many approaches, techniques and tools related to multiobjective decision-making and optimization; however, not all approaches are equally developed, and the resulting tools are often applied because of certain traditions rather than their suitability for solving a given problem. Therefore, this paper is devoted to a comparative evaluation of various approaches and tools. This evaluation is based, however, first on a classification of problems of multiobjective decision making and optimization. Thereafter, the available approaches, methods, techniques and tools are shortly presented and evaluated in terms of suitability for various classes of problems. The final part of the paper presents a broader description of a relatively new approach based on reference objective levels, not fully developed yet but applicable in many classes of problems. A new notion of extended threshold utility functions, other basic theoretical results, applicational examples and directions of further research related to this approach are presented

Impact Evaluation of Productive Use – An Implementation Guideline for Electrifi cation Projects

There is a consensus in the international community that rural electrifi cation and, in particular, the productive use of electricity contributes to poverty alleviation. At the same time, eff orts to evaluate the impacts of development projects have increased substantially. This paper provides a hands-on guide for designing evaluation studies regarding the impacts of productive electricity usage. Complementary to the existing literature on evaluation methods, this guide familiarizes project managers with the concrete steps that have to be undertaken to plan and implement an evaluation. The guide comprises three modules based on enterprise surveys and on anecdotal case studies. For each module, the implementation is described on a step-by-step basis including conceptual issues as well as logistics and methodological questions.Development eff ectiveness; productive electricity use; survey design;monitoring and evaluation

Creative interactions with data: using visual and metaphorical devices in repeated focus groups

This article presents some of the emergent methods developed to fit a study of quality in inclusive research with people with learning disabilities. It addresses (i) the ways in which the methodology was a response to the need for constructive, transformative dialogue through useof repeated focus groups in a design interspersing dialogic and reflective spaces; and (ii) how stimulus materials for the focus groups involved imaginative and creative interactions with data. Particular innovations in the blending of narrative and thematic analyses and data generation and analysis processes are explored, specifically the creative use of metaphor as stimulus and the playful adaptation of I-poems from the Listening Guide approach as writing and performance. In reflecting on these methodological turns we also reflect on creativity as an interpretive lens. The paper is an invitation for further methodological dialogue and development

Methodological guidelines for LCA of French agricultural products

This article outlines the methodological guidelines that will be applied in the framework of the program Agri-BALYSE in order to compile life cycle inventories for about 110 French agricultural products. Special emphasis will be given on the treatment and the capture of the four main sources of variability for agricultural production systems: Variability due to differing natural production conditions, variability due to different production methods, variability due to different agricultural practices within a given production method and variability due to uncertainty of measurements. The guidelines are compiled in the Agri- BALYSE data collection guide which will be available end of summer 2011. Given the strategic importance of the Agri-BALYSE database, the data collection guide may become a national standard for LCA of agricultural products in France. (Résumé d'auteur

Fundamentals of crude oil and natural gas processing

This training manual includes term project methodical guide on the course "Fundamentals of crude oil and natural gas processing" in English. The main purpose of the training manual is to provide students the theoretical and methodological assistance at performance the term project on the course "Fundamentals of crude oil and natural gas processing". The manual contains the initial data and reference material needed to perform the calculations. The manual is intended for the students of speciality 6.050304 "Oil and gas production" in English