This article examines the interrelations between establishment of territorial quality certification systems (Protected Designations of Origin or PDOs), diffusion of innovations through local agro-food chains, and the role of the institutions overseeing geographical designations. Empirical analysis is applied to olive oil PDOs in Spain and entails…

Nursing home medical-record documentation of daily-care occurrence may be inaccurate, and information is not documented about important quality-of-life domains. The inadequacy of medical record data creates a barrier to improving care quality, because it supports an illusion of care consistent with regulations, which reduces the motivation and…

Assessments such as ranking exercises arguably level the playing field for stakeholders. Quality assurance may remain a challenge for consumers, but "public" assessments do provide a nominal element of independence or autonomy. This article outlines, from a German perspective, the way in which research assessments are frequently subject…

Brigham Young University's Center for Instructional Design (CID) creates online courses and multimedia instructional applications for university faculty. This paper asserts that including usability testing as a part of evaluation improves the quality and effectiveness of computer-mediated instruction. The paper describes the fundamental purpose…

This paper examines some of the ways in which subject review can contribute to the scholarship of teaching. Subject review was a quality assessment process conducted under the auspices of the UK's Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. A preliminary discussion considers the potential and pitfalls of using subject review as a basis for…

Data-driven decision-making (D3M) appears to be the new buzz phrase for this century, the information age. On the education front, teachers and administrators are engaging in data-centered dialog in grade-level meetings, lounges, hallways, and classrooms as they brainstorm toward closing the gap in student achievement. Clearly, such discussion…

When dealing with the issues of quality control and the rights of parents to direct the upbringing of their school-aged children, one of the key factors that affects parental rights is compulsory attendance laws. Put another way, insofar as parents must educate their children, whether in regular public or nonpublic schools or by homeschooling…

Higher education in South Africa has been grappling with the issue of quality assurance since the early 1990s. This paper investigates the relationships or tensions between quality, culture and change as a result of the introduction of quality assurance systems in higher education institutions in South Africa. The imperatives for the introduction…

This study validated a measure of expert clinical consultation and examined the association between consultation, therapist adherence, and youth outcomes in community-based settings. Consultant adherence to the multisystemic therapy (MST) consultation protocol was assessed through therapist reports, and therapist adherence to MST principles was…

Higher education (HE) in the UK is undergoing extensive changes. One key change is the increasing prominence of postgraduate education. Higher demands on employees create the desire for more qualifications and greater skills. This increasingly consumer-oriented focus to postgraduate education has created a need for information about quality and…

Examines interconnections between accountability, power, and control within the British education system, focusing on the 5-18 education. Although some of the structures and processes are very similar to those of the U.S. K-12 system, the British national system is highly centralized and highly market-driven, with a strong emphasis on parental…

The main argument in Loyiso Jita's article is that although both law and convention have established stakeholder participation in higher education quality assurance, it lacks conceptual clarity. The article bravely attempts to develop a theory of "stakeholder identification and salience" by drawing mainly on business and organisational…

This article is a critical overview of the symposium on the contribution of the quality assurance process to democracy recently held at the University of Stellenbosch. It argues that recent symposia and colloquia in which South Africans themselves have attempted to stake out their intellectual credentials are extremely important and that the…

Purpose: This paper seeks to model and compute productivity, including a measure of quality, of a service which does not have marketable outputs--namely public education at the micro level. This application is a case study for Sweden public schools. Design/methodology/approach: A Malmquist productivity index is employed which allows for multiple…

Purpose: The paper aims to investigate the role of educational development centres, and their potential for playing a broader and more central role in quality and organisational development. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on the results of three external evaluations of educational development centres in Denmark and Norway,…