News

May 13, 2015

TASCHA kicked off field research for the Regional Study & Resource Center Evaluation project in Namibia in March 2015. Fieldwork is crucial to research success, particularly when performing evaluation work. Principal Investigator Araba Sey and Research Analyst Michelle Fellows visited Namibia to conduct research activities that comprise part of the first component of the project. Over the period of a few weeks, the researchers went to Windhoek, Gobabis, Oshakati, Helao Nafidi, and Eenhana to visit the Regional Study & Resource Centers (RSRCs), conduct interviews, and observe staff and patrons in the RSRCs.

May 7, 2015

During winter quarter 2015, TASCHA held a research seminar open to University of Washington students. The research seminar was originally designed to get students involved with our Information Strategies for Societies in Transition project. So many students registered for the seminar, though, that we expanded the seminar to include other TASCHA projects, like the current evaluation of library-like resource centers in Namibia and our recently launched MOOCs for development project.

January 22, 2015

New regional libraries have been introduced in Namibia. Officially called Regional Study & Resource Centers, the Government of Namibia, with support from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), has launched three of these libraries in different regions of Namibia. The MCC has commissioned TASCHA to conduct an ongoing performance evaluation of these centers. Over the past several months, TASCHA researchers have been developing and refining the project’s research design and evaluation methods (download the evaluation design report here). TASCHA will work closely with local research teams in Namibia to carry out the field research, which will begin in February 2015 and continue through 2017.

February 11, 2010

Although the Global Impact Study’s basic approach remains the same, we’re learning along the way and our thinking is evolving. This post summarizes the updates in the project’s research design, articulated around four basic components: (1) inventory and surveys that provide a big-picture view; (2) focused studies of specific mechanisms through which public access impacts livelihoods; (3) an assessment of indirect and aggregated impacts, which takes the community as the unit of analysis and looks at non-users and alternative information sources; and (4) a look at alternatives and complements to public access, focusing on mobile phones.

July 1, 2008

The Country Research Teams have focused their summer 2008 research activities that will inform the development of research designs for the next phase of the Global Impact Study project. The primary methodology employed for this purpose is information ecology mapping (also known as linkage or social mapping).