University of Georgia grad and “Inside Edition” host Deborah Norville had a best-selling book a couple of years ago with “Thank You Power.”

Now she’s back with “The Power of Respect.”

Originally, she wanted to do a follow-up to “Thank You Power” focused on kids. But the book publisher, she said, “wanted a book that was going to have a wider appeal.”

Respect, she said, is “woven into the fabric” of the South. And she read hundreds of academic journals to find proof that respect has a positive effect in relationships, school and work.

She used the same formula as she did with “Thank You Power.” “Ninety eight percent of self-help books don’t prove anything,” Norville said. “They make these pronouncements. I’m a journalist. The old saying is if your mother says she loves you, check it out. That seems to be forgotten way too much nowadays.”

She said when she put “respect” into Google, she got plenty of  references to Aretha Franklin. But once she got into some academic studies, “what I found was pretty potent stuff.”

In business, Norville noted, “even if you work hellacious hours, if you feel appreciated by your superiors, just the fact someone is willing to hear them out, you’re 300 percent less likely to quit. When you figure out the cost of replacing a worker is 150 percent of annual salary, that’s an enormous amount of money.”

Workers, Norville noted, “have more creative ideas when they feel they’re appreciated. If we’re going to get out of this [economic] mess, we have to have every smart person in the room, even the person oiling the machines as well as the boss who’s sitting in the corner office.”

She said people will stay in jobs with lower pay if they are given enough respect. “It’s a great magnet for employee retention,” she said.

A respect-oriented program in 9,000 schools in 35 states is also shown to be amazingly effective. It sounds squishy but she said it can work if everyone buys into it. In one Maryland school, reading and math scores went up and teachers reclaimed 17 days worth of additional teaching time per year thanks to reduced need to discipline students. And teacher turnover dropped to almost nil.

She provides a self respect test in the book. She took it herself. No surprise: she has plenty of self respect. “I’m happy with me,” Norville said. One problem: she lacks spontaneity. “There’s not a lot of frivolity in my life,” she said. She realizes she has to do something for herself once in awhile.

Her book notes that people sense respect is on the decline. And that may be the harried world we live in. Just think of a couple of notable public examples: U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You Lie” to President Obama during his State of the Union address, Kanye West’ breaking into Taylor Swift’s speech at the MTV Video Awards).

Norville unfortunately is not coming on a book tour. “It’s a sign of the times,” she said. “Publishers can’t justify the expense.” But she’d be happy to do a keynote speech if anybody is interested.