Contract farming, a sales arrangement between a farmer and a firm, is popular with government and donors. Contract farming can produce substantial income gains for farmers. Moreover, these benefits may well be required for contract farming schemes to survive.
A Campbell systematic review finds that better-off farmers are most likely to participate in contract farming schemes.
Understanding the development of reading comprehension and its precursors can help us develop hypotheses about what effective instruction must comprise to facilitate well-functioning reading comprehension skills.
Results from a Campbell systematic review suggest that successful instruction for reading comprehension should target a broad set of language skills.
Later school start times may have beneficial effects for student mental health and academic performance. There appear to be some positive effects from later start times, but the evidence base is too weak to have confidence in the findings. A Campbell systematic review finds that additional research is needed.
A Campbell systematic review finds that vocational training had small positive effects on employment, formal employment and earnings. Business training combined with other programme components have positive effects on self-employment, as well as small positive effects on sales or profits. However, these relatively small effects may be insufficient to justify scaling up vocational or business training programmes.
Cash-based approaches have become an increasingly common strategy in humanitarian assistance. Both cash-based approaches and in-kind food assistance can be effective means of increasing household food security among conflict-affected populations and maintaining household food security among food insecure and drought-affected populations. A Campbell systematic review finds that cash transfers are more cost effective than vouchers, which are more cost effective than in-kind food assistance.
A Campbell systematic review finds that school-based interventions cause a small and significant drop in exclusion rates during the first six months after intervention (on average), but this effect is not sustained.
The review finds that interventions seem to be more effective at reducing some types of exclusion such as expulsion and in-school exclusion.
Plain language summaries – now in more languages
A plain language summary (PLS) is a two-page policy-friendly document that highlights the main findings of a Campbell review. Our catalogue of PLSes now includes other languages: French, Norwegian and Spanish. To date, there are 30 Spanish translations availableon the Campbell website.
Use the drop-down selector to find PLSes in the other languages.
New Business and Management Coordinating Group
We are proud to announce a new Campbell Coordinating Group for Business and Management (BMCG), hosted by the Center for Evidence-Based Management (CEBMa). See below for details of a BMCG workshop on systematic reviews, to be held in Amsterdam in March.
From left to right: Julia Littell (interim Editor), Hannah Rothstein (Methods Editor), Eric Barends (Co-chair and Associate Editor), Denise Rousseau (Co-chair)
Meta-Evidence, a new Campbell blog
The Campbell National Centre for UK and Ireland, established and hosted by the Centre for Evidence and Social Innovation at Queen's University Belfast, has launched a blog, featuring interviews and articles about systematic reviewing, evidence synthesis and meta-analysis. The first blog post is an interview with Elizabeth Tipton, associate professor of applied statistics at Columbia University. Click on the image below to read more.
Campbell UK and Ireland is now also on Facebook and Twitter. Follow these accounts to stay informed of new Meta-Evidence articles.
Free workshops and other training opportunities
The next few months are filled with opportunities to attend Campbell training courses. Coming up in March:
17-18 March, Amsterdam, The Netherlands:
free workshop on the creation and use of systematic reviews and meta-analysis
19-20 March, Ottawa, Canada:
free workshop on the creation and use of systematic reviews and evidence and gap maps in social sciences
19-21 March, Mumbai, India:
workshop on evidence-based management: role of systematic reviews and meta-analysis
5-11 August (application deadline 12 March), Chicago, USA:
Meta-Analysis Training Institute, a one-week intensive workshop aimed at researchers interested in conducting IES Goal 1 meta-analyses of important research topics.
Click on the links to find out more about the course content, and for details on how to register.
You are invited to submit an abstract for the Global Evidence and Implementation Summit 2018, taking place in Melbourne, Australia from 22-24 October. The deadline for submissions is 29 April.
Campbell is proud to be a partner-organiser of the Science Technology and Innovation for Development conference in New Delhi, 22-23 March. Click here to find out more about the event.
You can follow the latest developments and news on Twitter: #STI4D.
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