How does qualitative data collection modality affect disclosure of sensitive information and participant experience? Findings from a quasi-experimental study

Quality & Quantity - Focus groups (FGs) and individual interviews (IDIs) can be conducted in-person or in several different online contexts. We conducted a quasi-experimental study and assessed...     

Living under value chains: The new distributive contract and arguments about unequal bargaining power

In the 1980s and 1990s, during the high-water mark of Washington Consensus development, rural sociologists and geographers critical of contract farming described contract as a legal fiction—one that imagines formally equal and voluntary relations between large firms and small farmers and hence that functions purposefully to obscure unequal social relations. Today, however, development planners, who argue for contract farming as an integral part of value chain agriculture, describe unequal bargaining power as a problem for rural development to solve. Our article analyzes how proponents have domesticated what was once a radical critique of contract farming—a phenomenon that we suggest tells of value chain development more broadly. Via a qualitative case study of India, we describe how a range of actors—development planners, state officials, and farmers—now all make arguments about unequal bargaining power and yet hold disparate understandings of what bargaining inequalities mean and what reforms should therefore follow. More specifically, we show how and why common reform proposals—for contract regulation and farmer aggregation—remain constrained by the inequalities they would challenge and thus why farmers themselves speak different possibilities to the problem of unequal bargaining power.     

Using systems thinking to understand the evolving role of technology in the design process

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - Many teaching in higher education whose fields rely heavily on processes using technology can be overwhelmed by the pace of developments,...     

An in-depth investigation of student information gathering meetings with stakeholders and domain experts

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - Information gathering activities in engineering design projects play an important role in the identification and definition of stakeholder...     

Do uninformed traders move prices? Evidence from the Bank of Japan's ETF purchasing program

Using the Bank of Japan (BoJ) ETF purchasing program as an exogenous shock to stock demand, we find that stocks with a higher BoJ demand experience higher positive abnormal returns on BoJ ETF purchase dates, which only partially revert in the long term. Our findings support the hypothesis that stocks have a downward-sloping demand curve, implying that uninformed traders can cause a permanent shift in price.