Dorothy M. Daley

Understanding Local Adoption and Implementation of Climate Change Mitigation Policy

Increasingly, local governments are crafting policy to tackle climate change. This article examines why cities develop and implement climate change programs. The authors consider the impact of interest group pressure, political institutions, and problem severity on a city’s decision to develop and implement climate protection programs. Their results suggest that organized interests influence both adoption and implementation of climate mitigation programs. This effect, however, is contingent on political institutions. In general, organized interests are more effective in mayoral as opposed to city manager forms of governments. Interestingly, while financially strapped cities may adopt climate mitigation programs to advance cobenefits or cost savings, fiscal stress also impedes program implementation.

A guide and glossary on postpositivist theory building for population health

This guide and glossary focuses on the role of theory and conceptual models within population health research. Upon discussing the critical need for theory in conducting interdisciplinary research, it provides strategies for crafting theories that can be empirically tested and a glossary of theory building terms that are useful for guiding research. In addition to general concepts, the glossary includes some terminology commonly found in the social sciences, whose well established traditions and practices of formal theory building may be particularly informative for epidemiologists and other population health researchers who have minimal formal social science training, but study social factors in their research.

Theory building on the high seas of population health: Love Boat, Mutiny on the Bounty, or Poseidon Adventure?

The complexity of health is a vast, seductive ocean that beckons us—challenging us to explore, navigate, and often battle against waves of ideas—within ourselves and among others. We thank the three authors for their commentaries on our “Guide and Glossary.” We hoped that our article would stimulate discussion about the importance of theory and theory building for population health, but to be honest, we had no idea how the paper would be received. You can imagine, then, our excitement at being asked by the editors to reply to the three interesting commentaries published herein. As we point out—and Dunn reiterates in his commentary—theory is a topic that regretfully, receives little attention in population health. We have been pleased to see that others share similarly strong opinions regarding the importance of theory. This is evident in all three commentaries. It was also abundantly evident in the review process for our article. We engaged in a lively debate with reviewers—and those exchanges (which were longer than the original manuscript) reinforced our beliefs that population health research could benefit from a more public discussion regarding the role of theory in research. In this essay, we respond to points raised by the commentators as they pertain both to our “Guide and Glossary” and, more broadly, to facilitating theoretically driven research in population health. However, before addressing particular issues, we want to reiterate the specific aims of our “Guide and Glossary,” as each commentary alludes to some misunderstandings about our motivations, arguments, and rationale. Our article has two basic aims. Firstly, we contend that researchers should use theory explicitly—rather than implicitly. Our focus on the explicit use of theory is guided by our shared belief that clearly communicating one’s theoretical approach will more effectively contribute to and advance our shared understanding of population health and …