scatterplot I’ve been active on Twitter regarding the well-publicized study that hurricanes with feminine names kill more people than hurricanes with masculine names.

Wereldwijd houdt een toenemend aantal wetenschappers uit zeer uiteenlopende disciplines zich bezig met filantropie. Deze trend zien we ook in Nederland. Wat is er in de wetenschap bekend over de achtergronden en de impact van filantropie? En hoe ziet het Nederlandse academische landschap eruit? In deze bijdrage geef ik een beknopt antwoord op deze vragen.

The PhD project will focus on characteristics of individual crowdfunders and of crowdfunding projects that influence donation behavior. Specifically, the research investigates the effects of online context characteristics on motivations and giving behavior of crowdfunders as well as the organizational arrangements in which crowdfunding campaigns are embedded.

Often I encounter academics thinking that a high proportion of explained variance is the ideal outcome of a statistical analysis. The idea is that in regression analyses a high R Squared is better than a low R Squared. In my view, the emphasis on a high R2 should be reduced. A high R2 should not be a goal in itself.

Deze bijdrage verscheen op 27 januari op Filanthropium.nl. Dank aan Theo Schuyt voor commentaar op een eerdere versie van dit stuk en aan Sigrid Hemels en Frans Nijhof voor correcties van enkele feitelijke onjuistheden. PDF? Klik hier. De contouren van het toezicht op goededoelenorganisaties in de toekomst worden zo langzamerhand duidelijk.

Academic misconduct figures prominently in the press this week: Peter Nijkamp, a well-known Dutch economist at VU University Amsterdam, supervised a dissertation in which self-plagiarism occurred, according to a ruling of an integrity committee of the National Association of Universities in the Netherlands. The complaint led two national newspapers to dig into the work of Nijkamp.

The Center for Philanthropic Studies at VU University Amsterdam has a new director. As of January 1, 2014, René Bekkers continues the work of the Center’s founder, Theo Schuyt.

Drie nieuwe onderzoeksresultaten verminderen de hoop dat burgers de overheidsbezuinigingen op internationale hulporganisaties zullen compenseren door meer giften: Bezuinigingen verminderen de investeringen van hulporganisaties in fondsenwerving; Mensen geven liever aan doelen die anderen ook steunen; Er zijn meer Nederlanders die zeggen dat ze mee zullen bezuinigen dan Nederlanders die meer zullen geven als de overheid bezuinigt.

To address the needs of people affected by the Super Typhoon Haiyan – locally known as Yolanda – that hit the Philippines on November 8, 2013 international relief organizations in the Netherlands are collectively raising funds on Monday, November 18, 2013. Commercial and public national TV and radio stations work together in the fundraising campaign.

Yes, the incentive structure in the higher education and research industry should be reformed in order to reduce the inflation of academic degrees and research. That much is clear from the increasing numbers of cases of outright fraud and academic misconduct, including more subtle forms of data manipulation, p-hacking, and rising rates of (false) positive publication bias as a result.

Does civic engagement breed trust? According to a popular version of social capital theory, civic engagement should produce generalized trust among citizens. In a new paper accepted for publication in Political Psychology, Erik van Ingen (Tilburg University) and I put this theory to the test by examining the causal connection between civic engagement and generalized trust using multiple methods and multiple (prospective) panel datasets.