The introductory chapter in the book Opinion Polls and the Media addresses the issues of (re)conceptualisation of the key dimensions of public opinion in relation to the normative-critical conceptualisation of public opinion, which occurred under the influence of the development of (public) opinion polls, and their implications for theories of public opinion, as perceived by proponents and opponents of opinion polling.
COBISS.SI-ID: 31285341
European Union programmes in the field of education and training demand regular evaluation. However, due to several conceptual and measurement issues, the validity of evaluation results is put into question. The paper proposes to assess the programmes from a refined perspective of impact, calling for the clarification of some key methodological issues. Two groups of problems for the validity of evaluation research in the field of educational programmes are identified, one referring to causality and second to the absence of proper conceptualisation and operationalisation.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4506839
Active involvement in discussion-based communities is nowadays a firm part of people's online activities. The measurement of communication ties and networks between contributors to such domains is thus becoming a relevant research question in social sciences. However, especially in web forums, very often almost no direct relational information exists that would indicate the presence of communication ties among contributors. In contrast with the reply-to structure of Usenet newsgroup or mailing list conversations that contain explicit relational information created by the contributors, some web forums only enable participants to add new posts to threads or to quote preceding posts in threads. When discussions emerge, it is difficult to identify who is replying to whom. Drawing on the social network studies dealing with the conversational patterns in Usenet and web forums, this paper presents an alternative approach to identifying the ties between authors of posts. Several assumptions are discussed, and different measures are developed and empirically evaluated. The findings provide a starting point for the development of a standardized methodology for studying social networks in online communities where only limited direct information about communication ties is available.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30132573