Concept Of Equity Research Articles

From texts to enacting practices: defining fair and equitable research principles for plant genetic resources in West Africa

Collaborative research practices in the field of plant genetic resources must follow the principles of fairness and equity as defined in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). In this context the concepts of fairness and equity generally refer to the substantive and procedural dimensions associated with sharing the benefits of this research. But neither term is clearly defined by these international treaties, and the meanings attributed to the concepts vary among different societies. This paper looks at the question of how to account for the diversity among value systems when conducting research that implicates diverse stakeholders and respects the requirements of fairness and equity. We incorporated an auto-ethnography method developed as part of a multi-stakeholder network involved in research projects on plant genetic resources in West Africa. A theatrical device was used as a framework for testing the principles of fairness and equity, helping us to collectively identify feelings of injustice, and explore the conditions for making collaborative research practices more ethical in ways that respect the perspectives of different stakeholders. In an environment of extensive political and socio-cognitive inequality, this approach makes it possible to explain the criteria relating to interactional justice and expectations in terms of socio-political and socio-emotional benefits. It also invites us to consider the principles of fairness and equity in a framework of ethical competence that goes beyond international directives.

Sovereign Investors as Trustees of Environmental Intergenerational Equity

Do governmental investors such as sovereign wealth funds (‘SWFs’) have a legal duty to protect the natural environment for future generations? After providing a background on SWFs, the paper examines the relevant international law paradigms, with a particular focus on the concept of intergenerational equity – the notion that the state must preserve access to environmental resources for future generations. The article asserts that SWFs, as state actors, have a legal responsibility under international treaties and customary international law, as well as the evolving rules on complicity in international jurisprudence and general principles of international human rights law (which the author posits form the basis for intergenerational equity and environmental rights), to adopt environmental intergenerational equity as an overarching investment policy and implement the principle through shareholder activism and ESG screening. Sovereign Wealth Funds, intergenerational equity, international law, international environmental law, human rights law, shareholder activism, ESG screening

Exploring sources of voter-based political human brand equity

Drawing on the branding and leadership theory, this paper explores the sources of political human brand equity from the voters’ perspective as a representation of the value that citizen–voters ascribe to a political leader. Following a critical realist mindset, the study adopts a qualitative research design, based on interviews with citizen–voters to explore the sources of political human brand equity from their perspectives. The study proposes the adaptation of four established dimensions of brand equity, suggesting awareness, associations, loyalty, and perceived leadership quality as core dimensions of the voter-based political human brand equity construct. The exploration of the sources underlying each dimension suggests that this adaptation may lead to a better understanding of the functionalities and prognosis of human brand opportunities in political environments. Voter-based political human brand equity can be applied to support the strategic building of political brands, to complete election forecasts, and to structure communication processes in political surroundings. The study proposes for the first time the concept of voter-based political human brand equity and develops a conceptual framework to aid its understanding and future measurement.

The Flint, Michigan Water Crisis as a Case Study to Introduce Concepts of Equity and Power into an Analytical Chemistry Curriculum

This work developed the Flint, Michigan water crisis as a modular case study for teaching traditional analytical chemistry concepts through the medium of environmental justice, power, and equity. A...

Segmentação de mercado e dimensões do store equity: um estudo no varejo da construção civil

This study has its bases on the concept of store equity developed by Hartman and Spiro (2005) and in the empirical model of Teixeira, Oliveira and Pires (2006), which identifies four dimensions: loyalty, memory, quality and image. The objective was to apply and test the dimensions of the model in four distinct retail brands of the building and construction segment of São Paulo, compare their store equity and segment the consumers. In each store (160 total), forty interviews were conducted. By exploratory factor analysis, it was possible to observe five dimensions related to the store equity construct: loyalty, store image, customer satisfaction, and customer care and service conformity. Through cluster analysis, respondents were classified into three different groups of consumers according to the five dimensions identified and received the categories of Unprepared, Demanding and Accustomed. Theoretical and managerial implications reinforce the possibility of applying the store equity as a customer segmentation variable in the construction retail segment.

Diverse Classrooms: Social Justice, Equity, and Diversity Competencies for Teacher Candidates

This study explored social justice education literature to argue for greater emphasis on equity and diversity courses in teacher education. Global migration has changed the demographics of Western schools, which more than ever are racially, sexually, and culturally diverse, requiring well-prepared teacher candidates who can support their future studentsʼ diverse needs. The author argues that teacher candidates exposed to in-depth social justice, equity, and diversity courses will develop competencies to help them better understand and apply the concepts of social justice, equity, and diversity. Also, teacher candidates will better understand students’ academic progress, the teacher’s role as an agent of change in the classroom, and students’ heightened awareness of power, privilege, and oppression.Keywords: social justice, education, teacher candidates, diversity, equity

Educational equity in Canada: the case of Ontario’s strategies and actions to advance excellence and equity for students

ABSTRACT Canada prides itself for being multi-cultural, valuing diversity, and having educational outcomes that have been identified as excellent and equitable with above average performance and lower than average impact of socio-economic status and immigrant status in PISA. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, plus policies concerning child care, language rights, immigration, and Indigenous people have affected equity. However, there are long-standing and emerging inequities, particularly for Indigenous people. Within this context, this article examines the case of Ontario, a province which has become well-known for educational excellence and equity. Two main strands of system-wide strategies to advance educational equity are discussed. First, a focus on closing the gaps in educational achievement and improving student success. This strategy resulted in improved performance for students overall and reduced gaps in performance for sub-groups of students, including attention to gender, English Language Learners and Special Education Needs. However, these measures did not fully address other demographic factors, systemic inequities and multiple forms of discrimination. A second strand of work was developing strategies and actions to advance an equitable and inclusive education system, including a broader concept of equity to support students and staff with changes in classrooms, schools, districts and the province.

Social vulnerability and equity perspectives on interdependent infrastructure network component importance

Critical infrastructure networks are often described as (i) interdependent in nature for operability, (ii) vulnerable against multiple natural or human-made hazards, and (iii) vital for providing the essential needs and ensuring the functionality of societies. Developing a plan for infrastructure network resilience is enabled by the identification of the most critical components that have the largest impact on the performance interdependent networks, as well as on society in terms of serving its needs. In this work, we propose a component importance measure that is driven by the social aspects of resilience, which quantifies the impact of equitable restoration activities on components of interdependent infrastructure networks. To integrate the social expectations from various perspectives in the restoration scheduling of interdependent infrastructure networks, we combine this component importance measure with multiple social vulnerability measures that define different socio-economic characteristics in a society. Finally, we implement a multi-criteria decision analysis technique to determine the final importance ranking of the components and illustrate our approach with two critical infrastructure networks in Shelby County, TN. To our knowledge, our proposed methodology is the first to incorporate both social equity and social vulnerability concepts with the component importance measures of critical interdependent infrastructure network restoration scheduling.

Mapping the evidence on health equity considerations in economic evaluations of health interventions: a scoping review protocol

BackgroundEquity in health has become an important policy agenda around the world, prompting health economists to advance methods to enable the inclusion of equity in economic evaluations. Among the methods that have been proposed to explicitly include equity are the weighting analysis, equity impact analysis, and equity trade-off analysis. This is a new development and a comprehensive overview of trends and concepts of health equity in economic evaluations is lacking. Thus, our objective is to map the current state of the literature with respect to how health equity is considered in economic evaluations of health interventions reported in the academic and gray literature.MethodsWe will conduct a scoping review to identify and map evidence on how health equity is considered in economic evaluations of health interventions. We will search relevant electronic, gray literature and key journals. We developed a search strategy using text words and Medical Subject Headings terms related to health equity and economic evaluations of health interventions. Articles retrieved will be uploaded to reference manager software for screening and data extraction. Two reviewers will independently screen the articles based on their titles and abstracts for inclusion, and then will independently screen a full text to ascertain final inclusion. A simple numerical count will be used to quantify the data and a content analysis will be conducted to present the narrative; that is, a thematic summary of the data collected.DiscussionThe results of this scoping review will provide a comprehensive overview of the current evidence on how health equity is considered in economic evaluations of health interventions and its research gaps. It will also provide key information to decision-makers and policy-makers to understand ways to include health equity into the prioritization of health interventions when aiming for a more equitable distribution of health resources.Systematic review registrationThis protocol was registered with Open Science Framework (OSF) Registry on August 14, 2019 (https://osf.io/9my2z/registrations).

Troutville: Where People Discuss Fairness Issues

Context. Public engagement efforts in health policy have posed many value-laden questions, yet those that appreciate the complexity and diversity of the concept of health equity are rare. We introduce the Fairness Dialogues, a new method for deliberating health equity among the general public. We provide its theoretical underpinning and present its empirical illustration and qualitative assessment. Methods. Primarily informed by the scholarship of deliberation, we designed the Fairness Dialogues, featured by reason-giving and inclusive group deliberation using a hypothetical scenario (the town of Troutville) that presents carefully designed, simple, open-ended cases focusing on a chosen equity and fairness issue. To assess whether the Fairness Dialogues encourages reflective views, we conducted a qualitative investigation by focusing on fairness and unfairness of inequalities in life expectancy. Findings. Our results revealed the complex intuitions that people have and their curiosity, patience, and willingness to scrutinize them in-depth through a small group dialogue. Intuitions shared by our study participants are similar to those presented in the scholarly philosophical literature. Conclusions. The Fairness Dialogues is a promising method to incorporate the public’s views into policy-making involving value judgment and to develop the capacity of the public to discuss value-laden questions in a reflective and inclusive manner.

CONCEPT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: A LEGAL PERSPECTIVE

The concept of Sustainable Development is today becoming the guiding principle in the entire environment versus development debates and is generally seen as solution to this stalemate situation. The concept of sustainable development is structured on two forms of equity i.e. Inter-generational equity and intra-generational equity. This concept of Inter-generational equity initially evolved in the International Environmental law, in its mode of rule and management, today find a place in our Environmental law and its interpretation and decisions as well. This paper is an attempt to analyze the understanding and attitude of the Indian Courts towards this valuable principle.

Islamic Capital Markets and Products Managing capital and Liquidity Requirements under Basel II

There are several well-written books published in the last decade on Islamic finance but few books that focus on Islamic capital market. Although Wilson (2008) has a very positive view on Sukuk market, Zulkhibiri (2015) mentioned that research on the Sukuk market is still underdeveloped. Hence the reviewed book “Islamic Capital Markets and Products Managing capital and Liquidity Requirements under Basel III” hopefully fills the unmet demand in academia. The editors of the book, Professor Simon Archer, a well-known expert in Accounting and Finance, Professor Rifaat Ahmed Abdel Karim, a recognized authority in the Islamic finance industry and the contributors of the book have an extensive background on the subject. The book has 15 chapters on various topics including basic concepts of Islamic equity, Islamic capital market development, as well as two interactive case studies on Malaysian and Bahraini Islamic capital markets.

An approach to modeling bike-sharing systems based on spatial equity concept

Efficient and sustainable mobility is becoming a need for emerging metropolitan areas, essential to grant their attractiveness, quality of life and economic power. Among the possible strategies to adopt, shared mobility systems have proven to be a valuable alternative to accommodate the mobility needs of citizens ensuring at the same time sustainability and transport flexibility. In particular, this paper focuses on bike-sharing systems.Despite many studies have recognized the importance of planning processes supported by equity principles, only a few have integrated spatial equity concepts in the planning of a bike-sharing system. With this research, we want to propose an original model to determine the number and layout of bike stations, as well as the number of bicycles and racks for each of them. The suggested approach aims at minimizing the costs associated with the system implementation and operation while balancing the level of service for all the users over the territory. A set of illustrative examples and a sensitivity analysis are provided.

Is Instgram is an effective Brand conversation Platform A Study among the young Instagram users in India

Instagram generally perceived to be a brand engagement than brand awareness medium. The research aimed at investigating the most influencing variable among various brand equity concepts such as brand awareness, brand association, brand loyalty and perceived quality of Instagram users in India. Though numerous researches explored Facebook and Twitter users on this context, there is little research on Instagram despite being the emerging visual communication medium. The result of this survey-based research indicates that young users perceive the brand circulated on Instagram as quality, followed by brand loyalty and brand association. The brand awareness had a subtle relationship with overall brand equity, and this result asserts that Instagram is perceived as better of brand engagement tool than brand awareness medium while building brand equity for a product.

Equity Indicators for Health System Performance Assessment

Equity in healthcare is included as a key dimension in the most conceptual frameworks for health system performance assessment. Measuring equity is one of the cornerstones by the assessment. The aim of the study is to identify and systematise the primary indicators used to measure equity by the health system performance assessment. A review of reports from international and national organisations as well as scientific publications is completed. The descriptive analysis of the equity concept in healthcare is complemented by a structured synthesis of the indicators used for its assessment - the outlined indicators are grouped, and the most frequently used are analysed. Plenty of equity indicators are used in different frameworks, depending on how this complex concept is interpreted and the definition adopted in the relevant conceptual framework. The literature review identifies 359 indicators, which, after grouping and removing duplicates and similarities are reduced to 157. The most commonly used concern equity in access to health services for different population groups and equity in financing, including financial protection. The largest number of indicators are identified in the groups related to the quality of health services and health status of the population. Different interpretations of equity result in a large number of indicators for its assessment and the lack of consensus for a standard set of such. Measuring equity is still a challenge in health system performance assessment.

What are they talking about when they talk about equity? A content analysis of equity principles and provisions in state Every Student Succeeds Act plans

Despite numerous education reform efforts, disparities between more privileged students and students from marginalized and minoritized groups still persist in U.S. education. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) passed in 2015 indicates greater commitment of the federal government to advancing equity in education and gives state educational agencies more autonomy and flexibility in policy making. This article analyzes the content of 52 approved state ESSA plans to examine how the concept of equity in education is defined and applied in state-level ESSA policies and provisions. Results of a qualitative content analysis reveal that all but four state ESSA plans adopt a stance on equity centered on equitable access to educational resources—including funding and effective educators —and less than half state plans attend to equity in outcomes. Most of the state plans do not include a clear definition of what they mean by “equity”. In addition, the accountability systems used to evaluate the impact of equity policies in the plans are predominantly outcome-oriented using student standardized test performance as the key indicator. Incoherent policy principles, coupled with the market-oriented, standards-based policy solutions, may exacerbate the structural inequities facing schools and students that these policies aim to ameliorate. Implications for education policy and research are discussed.

Equity in aid allocation and distribution: A qualitative study of key stakeholders in Northern Uganda.

The Sustainable Development Goals have spurred a growing interest in and focus on equitable development. In theory, donors can play an important role in promoting equity within a country by providing services, influencing government policies and incorporating equity into decision-making. However, we know little about whether this actually happens on the ground. We conduct what we believe is the first study to explore the extent to which equity is prioritised in the allocation and distribution of aid, based on in-depth interviews with government officials, bilateral and international donors, and implementing partners operating in Northern Uganda. We find that a broad category of people are perceived to be marginalised/vulnerable, with a substantial segment largely untargeted by major donor programmes. Various stakeholders employ a wide range of strategies to identify the most vulnerable individuals and groups, including the use of available data and statistics, consultation and engagement with relevant stakeholders, and undertaking primary data collection. The strategies used to incorporate equity in aid allocation and distribution include: targeting the regions of Northern Uganda and Karamoja in particular, targeting both refugees and host populations in refugee-hosting districts, prioritising the critically vulnerable in any aid distribution process, and using specific tools and consultants to ensure that major equity issues are addressed in proposals. Challenges undermining the process include poor understanding of the concept of equity among some implementing partners, lack of comprehensively disaggregated data, corruption, and political interference in choice of aid location from government officials and donors.

Category of Equity in the Context of the Luxury Tax Implementation

The luxury tax is one of the most discussed taxes to make possible the introduction of a policy of social equity, which is extremely relevant and in demand. It is worth noting that the category of is certainly a basic category, which plays a significant role in the formation of the concept within which such a tax policy is implemented. Despite its comprehensive significance, the concept of equity is an important social ideal that helps to realize the luxury tax. One way or another, throughout history and within various forms of state, government and political systems, there have been implemented luxury taxes. Although not every time, the concept of played a decisive role in such a process. However, in the XXI century, it is impossible to imagine the necessity of introducing a luxury tax was accompanied by any other concept than the ideal of equity.

How is equity approached in universal health coverage? An analysis of global and country policy documents in Benin and Senegal

BackgroundEquity seems inherent to the pursuance of universal health coverage (UHC), but it is not a natural consequence of it. We explore how the multidimensional concept of equity has been approached in key global UHC policy documents, as well as in country-level UHC policies.MethodsWe analysed a purposeful sample of UHC reports and policy documents both at global level and in two Western African countries (Benin and Senegal). We manually searched each document for its use and discussion of equity and related terms. The content was summarised and thematically analysed, in order to comprehend how these concepts were understood in the documents. We distinguished between the level at which inequity takes place and the origin or types of inequities.ResultsMost of the documents analysed do not define equity in the first place, and speak about “health inequities” in the broad sense, without mentioning the dimension or type of inequity considered. Some dimensions of equity are ambiguous – especially coverage and financing. Many documents assimilate equity to an overall objective or guiding principle closely associated to UHC. The concept of equity is also often linked to other concepts and values (social justice, inclusion, solidarity, human rights – but also to efficiency and sustainability). Regarding the levels of equity most often considered, access (availability, coverage, provision) is the most often quoted dimension, followed by financial protection. Regarding the types of equity considered, those most referred to are socio-economic, geographic, and gender-based disparities. In Benin and Senegal, geographic inequities are mostly pinpointed by UHC policy documents, but concrete interventions mostly target the poor. Overall, the UHC policy of both countries are quite similar in terms of their approach to equity.ConclusionsWhile equity is widely referred to in global and country-specific UHC policy documents, its multiple dimensions results in a rather rhetorical utilisation of the concept. Whereas equity covers various levels and types, many global UHC documents fail to define it properly and to comprehend the breadth of the concept. Consequently, perhaps, country-specific policy documents also use equity as a rhetoric principle, without sufficient consideration for concrete ways for implementation.

Addressing Health Inequities in Environmental Public Health in Alberta

Environmental health related inequities can occur when environmental hazards or disasters disproportionally impact vulnerable populations, when environmental protection activities place a disproportionate burden on marginalized groups through a lack of inclusion or representation, and through creation of policies or programs that address only the immediate environment rather than the broader structural determinants that have created it ( Gore and Anita, 2013 ). Environmental public health (EPH) practitioners are well positioned to reduce inequities when they are empowered to include an equity lens in their work and identify opportunities to act on the social determinants of health (SDH). This focus group project identified ways in which public health inspectors in Alberta Health Services Calgary zone understand the concepts of equity and SDH as relevant to their work, revealed gaps in understanding and practice, and generated ideas to operationalize the integration of an equity lens into EPH practice. This project helps reinforce the importance of providing health equity education and opportunities for collaboration as a catalyst for action to integrate SDH and health equity into professional competencies and address organizational/operational barriers. Sharing these results will be helpful in moving towards fulfilling the key inequity-reducing role of EPH practice.