Human Development Report

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Please find attached, and below, the Call for Papers for the 2007 Q2 Conference in Hanoi, Vietnam entitled Q-Squared in Policy. Id be grateful if you could forward this on to others who may be interested.

Many thanks,

Paul

Paul Shaffer
Centre for International Studies
University of Toronto
1 Devonshire Place
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 3K7

International Development Studies Program
Trent University
1600 West Bank Drive
Peterborough
Canada K9J 7B8
Ph: 416 885-7721
Fax: 416 652-1678
Email: P.Shaffer@utoronto.ca

Q-squared Project: www.q-squared.ca

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Q-Squared in Policy:

A Conference on the Use of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods of Poverty Analysis in Decision-Making

Centre for Analysis and Forecasting (CAF)
Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences (VASS)
Hanoi, July 7-8, 2007 

CALL FOR PAPERS

The last ten years have seen recognition of the strong complementarities between qualitative and quantitative methods in poverty appraisal. There is a growing consensus that both approaches have much to contribute to understanding poverty. A number of such contributions were presented at the 2004 Q-Squared in Practice Conference at the University of Toronto and appear, with others, on the Q-Squared website (www.q-squared.ca). While the value of mixed methods for understanding and explaining poverty is not in doubt, a remaining question concerns the applied use of such analyses in decision-making.

The Q-Squared in Policy Conference aims to fill this gap by bringing together recent examples of the use of Q-Squared-type work to inform decision-making processes. By decision-making, we mean policy-level or programmatic decisions at national or sub-national levels by governments, NGOs, development organizations, etc. More specifically, we are looking for papers that discuss the use of Q2 analyses of poverty to inform:

• the Understanding of the Nature or Causes of Poverty in a Policy Context; 
• the Formulation or Design of Policies, Programs or Projects;
• Budgeting or Resource Allocation Decisions;
• Evaluation, Monitoring or Impact Assessment of Policies, Programs or Projects.

We are interested in contributions which address the methodology of the Q2 studies as well as the process through which they were able to inform decision-making.

The conference organizers are Ravi Kanbur (Cornell University), Nguyen Thang (CAF/VASS), Ellen Bortei-Doku Aryeetey (Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana) and Paul Shaffer (University of Toronto and Trent University).

Submissions can range from brief policy-oriented notes of 5-10 pages to longer academically-oriented pieces of 25-30 pages (or 3-5 page proposals for such papers). They should be sent electronically to Ravi Kanbur (sk145@cornell.edu) by December 15, 2006. Decisions will be conveyed by February 15, 2007.

The conference will meet the travel costs of one presenter per paper accepted. The papers presented at the conference will in turn be considered for publication in a special issue of a journal or a volume.