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Edited by Jane Falkingham, Maria Evandrou and Athina Vlachantoni
Rhonda Phillips, Eric Trevan and Patsy Kraeger
Fundamentally, research is the process of discovery and exploration – the outcomes of which range widely from increasing understanding and finding potential solutions to gathering information that may contribute to additional inquiry. Community development as a means of improving the places we live in is a pressing issue more than ever, and further discovery and exploration of it are very much needed. It is our intent to present this volume to spur ideas and innovations in community development. At its most basic, community development is simply about making things better for the people who live there (Musikanski et al., 2019). At its most complex, it is decidedly difficult to identify the most effective or desirable approach as needs, desires, conditions, external and internal influences and confounding factors and resources can vary widely between communities. Community represents agency and solidarity (Bhattacharyya, 1995), and it is critical to understand that community is not only a destination and location but can also include a common set of ideas and values (Trevan, 2016), which inform both research and practice for the co-creation of knowledge. By focusing on research approaches, techniques and applications, we aim to illustrate both the broad complexity of community development and its potential. We hope this will help foster greater understanding of how research contributes to scholarship and to practice, where we see the results of ideas in action.
Edited by Rhonda Phillips, Eric Trevan and Patsy Kraeger
Edited by Keith Townsend, Mark N.K. Saunders, Rebecca Loudoun and Emily A. Morrison
How to Keep your Doctorate on Track
Insights from Students’ and Supervisors’ Experiences
Edited by Keith Townsend, Mark N.K. Saunders, Rebecca Loudoun and Emily A. Morrison
Edited by Nicolina Montesano Montessori, Michael Farrelly and Jane Mulderrig
Kellie Liket
Chapter 10 by Liket discusses how policy-makers, given evaluation and knowledge of what works, combine accountability for decisions with ensuring cost-effectiveness. Liket also points to some main challenges to evaluations, including poor distinctions between performance, monitoring and evaluation, low-quality evaluation questions, and finally problems in data collection.
Bent Greve
The book ends with some conclusions and perspectives related to evidence-based policies in Chapter 26 by Greve. Overall, he points out, the chapters in this book point to three separate, but somehow interlinked issues related to evaluation of social policy: possible ethical issues related to use of evidence; technical issues in doing research and analysis; and finally, the issue of the impact of pressure and interest groups on the gathering of knowledge, and the possible interpretation of that knowledge.
Peter Dahler-Larsen
Chapter 13 on critical perspectives by Dahler-Larsen presents arguments and counterarguments for and against using evidence in social policy. The chapters shows that positions range from those who point to practical implementation problems, to those who question the practical and political relevance of evidence, to those who discuss whether evidence serves specific interests. Thus, the chapter also looks into the dilemmas and pitfalls involved when using evidence.
Morten Balle Hansen, Karen Nielsen Breidahl, Jan-Eric Furubo and Anne Halvorsen
Chapter 23 by Hansen et al. looks at what to be aware of when implementing large-scale policy reforms. They argue in favour of eight crucial attention points based upon evaluation of public sector reforms: indicators of how to use evaluation as an instrument for improving future implementation of large-scale reforms.