Research Tools Category Archive
Wed, Nov 14, 2012
Participation Compass
The field of public engagement practice has developed into a rich domain of knowledge and techniques that draw on the “wisdom of crowds” and seek to make shared decisions in effective and just ways. The new website entitled Participation Compass (based in the U.K.) provides a good window into the available processes and resource guides currently available. It extends earlier work done at a site called PeopleandParticipation.net which was created with funding from the UK Department for Justice, the UK Department for Communities & Local Government and the UK Sustainable Development Commission.
The key feature of the site is a search tool that helps you narrow down your tool choices based on the goals you have for your public engagement initiative. Here’s the categories of interest:
Build skills and capacity of participants
Gather individual pre-existing opinions
Gather informed and considered opinions (deliberation)
Generate new ideas (innovation)
Create a shared vision amongst participants
Co-producing services
Reach consensus and overcome conflict
Make a direct decision
Mon, Oct 08, 2012
The Possibility of Popular Justice book viewable online via HathiTrust
I was browsing the HathiTrust Mobile Digital Library this evening for the first time. These are books that were scanned and digitized by the Google Books project. I was excited to see that the excellent edited volume on community mediation and the community boards model entitled The Possibility of Popular Justice: A Case Study of Community Mediation in the United States is available in full view mode. Definitely worth reviewing if you are a fan of community mediation and the history of alternative dispute resolution more generally.
Wed, Sep 19, 2012
Search TV News via the Internet Archive
A new tool from the Internet Archive lets users search the closed caption text from more than 350,000 news broadcasts and then browse video clips from the found results. Pretty amazing stuff. What’s even more exciting is that new content is added within 24 hours of broadcast, letting users follow the current political season in a new way.
Here’s a link to a sample simple search on cyberbullying. You can narrow the search to specific broadcasters if you like. Comedy Central, Fox News, PBS and MSNBC are just a few of the choices available.
Way to go Internet Archive!
Fri, Jun 08, 2012
Peace Accords Matrix
The Peace Accords Matrix housed at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies is a research tool that provides rich data on the comprehensive peace agreements that have been signed since 1989. Twenty-eight accords are currently available in the matrix, with an additional 9 in the pipeline for release in 2012. The accords have been coded on some 50 different themes enabling researchers to compare cases on topics such as electoral reform, power-sharing, ceasefires, demilitarization, use of peacekeeping forces, etc. The full text of each peace accord is provided, as well as a timeline of important dates and events in the conflict and peace process and information on its implementation. Using an interactive map, you can access information on the duration, levels and effects of violence in conflict hotspots across the globe. The project was inspired and motivated by the late John Darby, former Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of Notre Dame. More information on the Peace Accords Matix is available in this 17-page conference paper introducing the project.
Wed, Jun 06, 2012
Database and Timeline of Global Nonviolent Actions
Swarthmore College, under the leadership of George Lakey, is now hosting the Global Nonviolent Action Database (GNAD) providing details on more than 500 examples of nonviolent actions used to protest, protect or change local practices. The database is a great resource for scholars of nonviolence and even better, it has been made available via a Creative Commons license. Recently as I was learning more about the use of Google Refine (a tool for cleaning up and repurposing large datasets) I decided to try using the GNAD dataset to build a timeline. Thanks to another open access project called Timeline.js I was able to produce an interactive timeline built from GNAD data. The timeline gets its data from a google spreadsheet built to serve as the datasource. To change the timeline, you could just update the spreadsheet and it would be reflected in the timeline the next time it is viewed. The timeline.js tool lets you embed the resulting timeline in any website, making the final product shareable in other interesting ways. You can try out the results of my project here.
Sun, Feb 19, 2012
Conflict Resolution Jobs site
Readers of this blog might be interested in some of the job listings displayed at a new site called Conflict Resolution Jobs. It was developed by Cape Cod area mediator Marsha Ostrer. The project provides a portal to job posting provided by a variety of job listing services, filtered as best possible to show only relevant jobs for people in the conflict resolution field. While not perfect, there are plenty of on target listings that are all available in one place. In addition to the broadly-focused conflict resolution page the site has separate pages for listings related to Arbitration, Facilitation, Mediation, Negotiation and Ombudsman opportunities.
Ostrer received support and inspiration to develop the site at a Cape Cod Entrepreneurship Weekend hosted by the Cape Code Chamber of Commerce.
Sat, Dec 17, 2011
Pearltree of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) Links
As part of an online course I’m just finishing up I developed a collection of links on the subject of Technology Assisted Dispute Resolution, more commonly known as ODR. The collection is presented as a “pearltree” which is a kind of mindmap-style organizational tool for web resources. You can view my Online Dispute Resolution Pearltree here.
Sat, Oct 22, 2011
Governance Commons - a new project from the CRInfo team
Guy and Heidi Burgess of the Conflict Information Consortium at the University of Colorado have partnered with the One Earth Future Foundation to produce a new resource portal known as the Governance Commons focused on addressing challenges facing individuals and groups committed to good governance. A prospectus explaining the project is available here as a pdf. The core focus of the project is to provide resources and information to address a number of core challenges that make providing good governance hard work.
Governance Challenges
In addressing governance failures, the Commons focuses on improving our ability to handle nine often unmet challenges:
- Improving Security
- Limiting Violence and Intimidation
- Protecting Individual and Group Rights
- Providing Basic Human Needs
- Promoting Cooperative Relationships
- Broadening the Sense of Community
- Fostering a Sense of Fairness
- Encouraging Agreement-based Problem Solving
- Assuring Efficiency and Effectiveness
Fri, Sep 30, 2011
Global Nonviolent Action Database
George Lakey and student researchers from Swarthmore College have now launched the Global Nonviolent Action Database. The creative-commons-licensed database is publicly searchable online. The research team has cataloged hundreds of nonviolent campaigns from around the world and across history going back as far as the 12th century BCE. The focus is on completed campaigns rather than ongoing ones, and a great deal of thought has been put into categorizing the cases so that comparative research can be conducted. Issue clusters include campaigns struggling about democracy, economic justice, environment, human rights, national/ethnic identity and peace and coding includes information on location, start year, tactics used, and outcomes. The 198 different tactics that have been coded for correlate with Gene Sharp’s methods of nonviolent resistance. The outcomes scores provided are based on the stated goals of the protagonist with scores provided in three areas: goal attainment, survival and growth. Also included is a listing of primary actors involved in each campaign coded into three groups: leaders, partners and allies. The advanced search features make it easy to dig down into the database on these various criteria. In addition to the database fields for each case, a narrative is provided describing the struggle as an unfolding story.
You can browse for waves of campaigns wherein a series of campaigns were part of a larger ongoing struggle. Currently included waves are:
African Democracy Campaigns (early 1990s) (5 cases)
Arab Awakening (2011) (4 cases)
Asian Democracy Campaigns (1980s) (7 cases)
Colour Revolutions (2000s) (6 cases)
Soviet Bloc Independence Campaigns (1989-) (11 cases)
U.S. Civil Rights Movement (27 cases)
This impressive service learning project has resulted in a great and enduring contribution to the field. Way to go team!
Mon, Sep 05, 2011
International Council on Human Rights Policy working papers
The International Council on Human Rights Policy (ICHRP) is a “forum for applied research, reflection and forward thinking, grappling with the challenge of translating universal human rights principles into policy realities.” Human Rights is at the root of much social conflict and thinking about and developing principles that can apply across a number of different settings makes good sense. Along these line, a number of ICHRP reports address issues that conflict resolution practitioners may be interested in.
The papers that caught my attention include:
- Navigating the Dataverse: Privacy, Technology, Human Rights: A Discussion Paper (pdf)
- Report: Negotiating Justice? Human Rights and Peace Agreements (pdf) - more about this project
- Report: When Legal Worlds Overlap: Human Rights, State and Non-State Law (pdf) - more about this project
- Conflict, Media and Human Rights in South Asia (pdf) - more on this topic
Mon, Jun 06, 2011
Collaboration & Team Science: A Field Guide
The NIH Center for Cooperative Resolution (their ombuds office) has partnered with the NHLBI to create a plain language field guide for folks involved in Team Science. The Team Science Field Guide is designed to help researchers participate in, develop, and lead successful scientific collaborations. The 79-page full-text pdf is available here.
Tue, Feb 01, 2011
Court ADR Across the U.S. - new research tool from RSI
Court ADR Across the US is a new, comprehensive national guide to court-affiliated Alternative Dispute Resolution. The searchable guide features thousands of state-specific resources, and offers visitors a unique, state-by-state view of court ADR systems including local statutes and rules. The guide is a project of Resolution Systems Inc (RSI), (formerly known as the Center for Analysis of Alternative Dispute Resolution Systems - CAADRS) which is affiliated with Chicago’s Center for Conflict Resolution.
Mon, Jan 31, 2011
USIP Glossary of Terms for Conflict Management and Peacebuilding
The United States Institute for Peace has really been ramping up their educational programs and one nice side benefit of the course development work is a new searchable online Glossary of Terms for Conflict Management and Peacebuilding. It was compiled by Dan Snodderly, USIP’s director of publications from 1993 to 2002. He drew on a pretty wide range of publications to create this common set of terms that can be referenced in USIP courses at the new Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding, the education and training arm of the Institute.
Fri, Dec 03, 2010
Bullying explored in the latest Journal of the International Ombudsman Association
The latest issue (Vol 3, No. 2) of the Journal of the International Ombudsman Association features a great set of articles addressing bullying and incivility in higher education and other organizational workplaces. The journal is available online as a pdf.
Here’s the table of contents.
Editorial: Bullying—What Can Ombudsmen Do? by David Miller
Some Things You Need to Know but May Have Been Afraid to Ask: A Researcher Speaks to Ombudsmen about Workplace Bullying by Loraleigh Keashly
Cases Involving Allegations of Workplace Bullying: Threats to Ombuds Neutrality and Other Challenges by Tom Sebok and Mary Chavez Rudolph
Tackling Systemic Incivility Problems: The Ombudsman as Change Agent by Jan Morse
Dealing with Bullying Behaviours in the Workplace: What Works—A Practitioner’s View by Barbara McCulloch
Bullying: A View from the Corporate World by Mim Gaetano
Experience From Japan by Noriko Tada
The Several Purposes of the OO Crystal Ball by Mary Rowe
The Importance of Relationships for Ombudpersons by Tim Griffin
The Organizational Ombudsman as Change Agent for Organizational and Social Capital by Brian Bloch And Nancy Erbe
I Was Just Thinking: Some Thoughts on Bullying in International Organizations by James Lee
Some Considerations for Ombuds Dealing with Allegations of Bullying by Marsha L. Wagner
Recent Developments: A Legal Perspective by Tom A. Kosakowski
Wed, Nov 17, 2010
Spezify - a fascinating web search and browse tool
Spezify is a new research tool that leverages the many forms of media and communication that people use today. You enter a search term and Spezify queries a wide range of sources that includes images, web pages, video, real-time tweets, comments, blog posts, etc. and then displays them in an interactive montage that you can view and click on for more information. Here’s a link to a quick search on the term conflict. See screenshot below. Warning - you may get distracted from other tasks at hand as you explore the results.
