Meta-analysis and research synthesis in education

This bibliography begins with this introduction followed by a general overview of meta-analysis and research synthesis methods in education. The third section cites references to illustrate how the concept of statistical integration of research findings dates back to early 20th century. Citations in the fourth section highlight early calls from educational researchers to recognize the process of synthesizing research as a scholarly endeavor in its own right. As evident from the citations in the fifth section, it was in the 1980s when monographs exclusively devoted to research synthesis methods started to be published. Since then, a number of books have been published on research synthesis methods. The sixth section cites some of the most comprehensive books on research synthesis methods and includes contributions from key players of meta-analysis current at the time. The citations in the seventh section illustrate how meta-analysis has become very popular over time. Several large organizations have been set up and software developed to support systematic reviews of research. These are cited in the eighth section. Citations in the ninth section illustrate critiques of systematic reviews. As qualitative research is becoming popular in education, sophisticated discussions of issues associated with synthesizing qualitative research have also been published, some of which are cited in the tenth section. The eleventh section presents a methodologically inclusive account of current developments in research synthesis methods. The final section cites examples of journals exclusively devoted to publishing research reviews and exemplary research synthesis with different methodologies. Individual methods of research synthesis are discussed chronologically as they became popular in educational research. Accordingly, this bibliography starts with a discussion of statistical methods of integrating research that parallels the dominance of quantitative research in education until the 1970s. As the popularity and diversity of qualitative research methods have been increasing in educational research, more methodologically inclusive discussions of research synthesis methods are becoming popular as described in the later sections of this bibliography.

Broadband futures : content, connectivity and control

This introduction to the Broadband Futures: Content, Connectivity and Control special issue begins with the claim that we are at the start of a new period of debate and analysis about network infrastructure and use that declares government failure and reinvigorates the drive to a free-market solution in Australia and New Zealand. But questions remain about the effectiveness and social value of network developments, regardless of the degree of government investment and regulation. As canvassed in this introduction, and the articles that make up the special issue, we can only move forward, both in research and practical implementation, if we accept the intricate weaving together of past, present and future interactions between governments, service providers and their consumers in broadband development

Corporate social responsibility programs of big food in Australia: a content analysis of industry documents

OBJECTIVE: To examine Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) tactics by identifying the key characteristics of CSR strategies as described in the corporate documents of selected 'Big Food' companies. METHODS: A mixed methods content analysis was used to analyse the information contained on Australian Big Food company websites. Data sources included company CSR reports and web-based content that related to CSR initiatives employed in Australia. RESULTS: A total of 256 CSR activities were identified across six organisations. Of these, the majority related to the categories of environment (30.5%), responsibility to consumers (25.0%) or community (19.5%). CONCLUSIONS: Big Food companies appear to be using CSR activities to: 1) build brand image through initiatives associated with the environment and responsibility to consumers; 2) target parents and children through community activities; and 3) align themselves with respected organisations and events in an effort to transfer their positive image attributes to their own brands. IMPLICATIONS: Results highlight the type of CSR strategies Big Food companies are employing. These findings serve as a guide to mapping and monitoring CSR as a specific form of marketing.

Overcoming data scarcity of Twitter: using tweets as bootstrap with application to autism-related topic content analysis

Notwithstanding recent work which has demonstrated the potential of using Twitter messages for content-specific data mining and analysis, the depth of such analysis is inherently limited by the scarcity of data imposed by the 140 character tweet limit. In this paper we describe a novel approach for targeted knowledge exploration which uses tweet content analysis as a preliminary step. This step is used to bootstrap more sophisticated data collection from directly related but much richer content sources. In particular we demonstrate that valuable information can be collected by following URLs included in tweets. We automatically extract content from the corresponding web pages and treating each web page as a document linked to the original tweet show how a temporal topic model based on a hierarchical Dirichlet process can be used to track the evolution of a complex topic structure of a Twitter community. Using autism-related tweets we demonstrate that our method is capable of capturing a much more meaningful picture of information exchange than user-chosen hashtags.

Facebook content analysis: a study into Australian banks' social media community engagement

Understanding the motives that encourage users to adopt social media to communicate with businessesis very important. This research study was conducted with Australian banks and adds to the developmentof empirically tested social media adoption model consisting of technological and social communicationaspects (Senadheera, 2015). This chapter presents the findings of the research study based on analysisof wall posts gathered from Australian banks’ Facebook presence in the year 2013. The research studyinvolves a thematic analysis of frequently used words by Australian banks in their respective Facebookwall posts following an outcome of a word frequency test conducted using NVivo. This analysis wasconducted with the proposed adoption model as the basis to determine whether banks’ Facebook contentaddresses the basic user requirements driving them to adopt social media to communicate with Australianbanks. The results strengthens the robustness and the applicability of the social media adoption model.