a Department of Ecology and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, NO-1432 Ås, Norway b School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, 360 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511-2189, USA c Biospheric Sciences Branch, Code 614.4, NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA d Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedis...

A large percentage of farmers do not respond to mail surveys. To gain insight into why farmers do not respond and how to improve response rates, a three-step research design was developed. First, an initial survey, based on in-person interviews with 15 farmers, was sent to 100 farmers. Second, farmers who did not respond to this mail survey were contacted by phone to investigate the reasons for...

Survey estimates of mortality and malnutrition are commonly used to guide humanitarian decision-making. Currently, different methods of conducting field surveys are the subject of debate among epidemiologists. Beyond the technical arguments, decision makers may find it difficult to conceptualize what the estimates actually mean. For instance, what makes this particular situation an emergency? A...

speakers of different languages have paid attention to the phonetics of their language since ancient times. muslim scientists have also taken into consideration the value of phonological studies and among them there are linguists who are not less important than any western ones like saussure, chomsky and jacobson. some of them are even counted more major than westerners; one of these muslim sch...

Computer generated images by default render the entire scene in perfect focus. Both camera optics and the human visual system have limited depth of field, due to the finite aperture or pupil of the optical system. For more realistic computer graphics as well as to enable artistic control over what is and what is not in focus, it is desirable to add depth of field blurring. Starting with the wor...

OBJECTIVE Quality improvement (QI) methods have been fashionable in hospitals for decades. Previous studies have discussed the relationships between the implementation of QI methods and various external and internal factors, but there has been no examination to date of whether the neighbourhood effect influences such implementation. The aim of this study was to use a multilevel model to investi...

We believe that global health practice and evaluation operate with misleading assumptions about lack of reliability of small population-based health surveys (district level and below), leading managers and decision-makers to under-use this valuable information and programmatic tool and to rely on health information from large national surveys when neither timing nor available data meet their ne...

Household surveys play a pivotal role in empirical economics. Cross-section and longitudinal surveys are regularly conducted throughout the globe. A description of survey design and sampling methods provides the foundation for discussing survey errors. These include errors associated with sampling, survey coverage and non response (which includes attrition from panel surveys) as well as errors ...