This article is developed from the contents from one of the chapters the researcher has written as part of her PhD thesis. It discusses various methodological challenges the researcher had to face during the phase of data collection in the prisons of Kerala, India, and the strategies adopted to overcome these challenges. This article is intended…

Monitoring of clinical trials is important to ensure adherence to protocol, to safeguard the rights of research participants and to achieve compliance with principles of good clinical practice. Recent regulatory changes in India require Ethics Committees to keep an oversight of ongoing clinical trials including on-site monitoring. In this article,…

This article provides an overview of the ethical tensions of preparing for ethnographic research with children in a rural district in Karnataka, India. Such children are at the receiving end of policy and international organisation interest, which alternately frames them as both victims of poverty and conflict and as agents of potential change in…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to undertake a phenomenological study of the working conditions and living standards of private security guards (private police) in New Delhi. The focus here is to bring forth their lived experiences as security guards. Design/methodology/approach: The paper touches briefly upon the theoretical formulations on…

In the late 1980s, I embarked on a "small" project in India to obtain a "bit" of comparative data on Indian women in science and engineering. At that time, there was little cross-cultural research on the scientific gender gap outside of the United States or Europe. As a cultural anthropologist, I initially envisaged a…

Ethnographic research is an emerging research technique in the field of education. Ethnographic research was a procedure usually used in anthropology but now it is getting popular in educational field. This kind of research relies on qualitative data, its perspective is holistic and its procedures of data analysis involve contextualization. Data…

Including all children in large-scale educational studies is a pressing concern. Omitting certain types of children from studies can lead to skewed findings that promote inaccuracies about learning levels or educational quality. Increasingly, assessments are a method for investigating the quality of education systems, but national assessments are…

This paper focuses on the processes by which firms, particularly knowledge intensive firms, can augment their overall knowledge stock by tapping into external sources of knowledge. It is argued that Top Management Teams' (TMTs') social intelligence is a critical learning capability in acquiring external knowledge that leads to strategic change.…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of missing physical activity (PA) data of children and youth. Method: PA data from the Chinese City Children and Youth Physical Activity Study ("N" = 2,758; 1,438 boys and 1,320 girls; aged 9-17 years old) were used for the study. After the data were sorted by the…

Research on disability issues in countries of the South is primarily dominated by a focus on generating large scale quantitative data sets. This paper discusses the many challenges, opportunities and dilemmas faced in designing and undertaking a qualitative research study in one district in India. The Disability, Education and Poverty Project…

This paper is concerned with processes of international enquiry. It focuses upon the relationship between a research problem and access to conduct research in a country. It uses data from an ethnographic study of primary education in a Northern Indian District. Conceptually drawing upon the insider-outsider debate within the sociology of…

This monograph critically examines the emerging discourse on quality associated with Education for All (EFA). It contends that EFA discourse has moved from a welcome and vital commitment to quality to its measurement without adequate consideration of what "quality" entails, particularly in the vital domain of pedagogy. Meanwhile, the…

The study of the Functional Literacy Program in India encountered problems of opposition to evaluation, inappropriate respondents, and difficulties in contacting participants, which point to changes that should be made in the evaluation methods. (SK)

Discusses the lack of a link between quality assurance and research in distance teaching institutions in India and in other developing countries. Focuses on two sets of quality requirements for distance open learning and recommends that institutions focus on research and not only dissemination of existing knowledge. (Author/LRW)

This document is an English-language abstract (approximately 1,500 words) summarizing the findings of the Committee on Social Science Research. Their investigations into student research revealed that whereas there was an increasing rate of registration for a Ph.D. degree, there was a parallel high incidence of dropouts; some 80% of candidates who…