A Historical Perspective on the Use of Randomized Trials in Social Science Settings

2000 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Oakley
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Randomized Trials ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Social Experiments ◽  
What Works ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Similar to medicine, social science has historically grappled with controlling for chance and bias in assessing the effectiveness of interventions. Questions about what works and how to evaluate the evidence underlie all areas of policy intervention. In the early years of the 20th century, social science in North America developed an established tradition of quantitative sociology that included experimental studies. This was followed by a number of social experiments from the 1960s to the 1980s. The history of prospective experimental studies with control groups applied to the social domain contains important lessons for experimental social science in the 21st century.

Scientific realism and social science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Keat
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Realist Conception

A central issue in the philosophy of the social sciences is the possibility of naturalism: whether disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, economics and psychology can be ‘scientific’ in broadly the same sense in which this term is applied to physics, chemistry, biology and so on. In the long history of debates about this issue, both naturalists and anti-naturalists have tended to accept a particular view of the natural sciences – the ‘positivist’ conception of science. But the challenges to this previously dominant position in the philosophy of science from around the 1960s made this shared assumption increasingly problematic. It was no longer clear what would be implied by the naturalist requirement that the social sciences should be modelled on the natural sciences. It also became necessary to reconsider the arguments previously employed by anti-naturalists, to see whether these held only on the assumption of a positivist conception of science. If so, a non-positivist naturalism might be defended: a methodological unity of the social and natural sciences based on some alternative to positivism. That this is possible has been argued by scientific realists in the social sciences, drawing on a particular alternative to positivism: the realist conception of science developed in the 1970s by Harré and others.

‘The televising of science is a process of television’: establishing Horizon, 1962–1967

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
TIMOTHY BOON
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
Stable Form ◽  
The Public ◽  
Television Production ◽  
The Social ◽  
Television Programme ◽  
History Of ◽  
Culture Of Science ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Key Participants

AbstractBBC Television's Horizon series, fifty years old on 2 May 2014, despite its significance to the history of the public culture of science, has been little studied. This microhistorical account follows the gestation and early years of the programme, demonstrating how it established a social and cultural account of science. This was a result of televisual factors, notably the determination to follow the format of the successful arts television programme Monitor. It illuminates how the processes of television production, with a handful of key participants – Aubrey Singer, Gerald Leach, Philip Daly, Gordon Rattray Taylor, Ramsay Short, Michael Peacock and Robert Reid – established the format of the programme. This occurred over seventeen months of prior preparation followed by three troubled years of seeking to establish a stable form. This was finally achieved in 1967 when the programme adopted a film documentary approach after extended attempts at making it as a studio-based magazine programme. The story has implications for understanding the social accounts of science that were circulating in the key decade of the 1960s.

A Social History of the Social Science History Association during Its Early Years

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 575-581
Author(s):  
Lynn Hollen Lees
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social History ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Early Years ◽  
University Of Pennsylvania ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University

Social historians formed an important part of the Social Science History Association from its early days, and they widened its intellectual space beyond initial emphases on political history and quantitative methods. Lee Benson and other faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as Charles and Louise Tilly, were particularly influential in attracting a broad mix of scholars to the group. The openness of the association and its interdisciplinarity appealed to younger scholars, and those interested in the “new urban history” were early recruits. A growing number of women, many of whom were social historians, participated in the first conventions and newly organized networks.

Experiments in social science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Experimental Design ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Hawthorne Effect ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Control Factors ◽  
The Social

Within social science the experiment has an ambiguous place. With the possible exception of social psychology, there are few examples of strictly experimental studies. The classic study still often cited is the Hawthorne experiments, which began in 1927, and is used mainly to illustrate what became known as the ‘Hawthorne Effect’, that is, the unintended influence of the research itself on the results of the study. Yet, experimental design is often taken within social research as the embodiment of the scientific method which, if the social sciences are to reach the maturity of the natural sciences, social research should seek to emulate. Meeting this challenge meant trying to devise ways of applying the logic of the experiment to ‘non-experimental’ situations where it was not possible directly to manipulate the experimental conditions. Criticisms have come from two main sources: first, from researchers who claim that the techniques used to control factors within non-experimental situations are unrealizable with current statistical methods and, second, those who reject the very idea of hypothesis-testing as an ambition for social research.

Family and Childhood

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret L. King
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Childhood And Youth ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Annales School

Scholars largely neglected the history of the family until after World War II, when they began to employ theoretical perspectives imported from the social sciences. In the 1960s, two principal figures triggered its study: Philippe Ariès, associated with the French Annales school, and Peter Laslett, cofounder at Cambridge University, England, of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. Since that period, studies have proliferated on the history of family and household in Europe and its subregions and on the related topics of childhood and youth.

The mentally ill and how they were perceived in young Israel

2020 ◽  
pp. 0957154X2096465
Author(s):  
Oded Heilbronner
Keyword(s):  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Early History ◽  
Social Response ◽  
European Origin ◽  
Single Generation ◽  
Sick People ◽  
Number Of Patients ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

The article constitutes a widely researched account of mental patients and their perceptions in the early history of Israel, especially its second decade. It focuses on a single generation, which experienced the traumas of war in Europe, followed by insecurity in Israel’s struggle for independence. The article claims that in the 1960s many suffered from depression, reflected in a record number of patients in mental hospitals and mentally sick people, mostly of European origin. This study describes Israeli society in the 1960s as disturbed, immersed in nightmarish dreams and close to madness; it also discusses the genetic and neurological vulnerabilities which induced the psychosis and the social response that converted it into a chronic illness.

scholarly journals Origins and History of The Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club

2004 ◽  
Vol 118 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Daniel F. Brunton
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Professional Careers ◽  
Club Membership ◽  
Publication Program ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conservation Awareness ◽  
The 1960S

The Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club (OFNC) represents an unbroken chain of organized, non-governmental natural history investigation and education dating back to the early days of the city of Ottawa itself. The Club originated in 1863 with the formation of the Ottawa Natural History Society which became the Natural History branch of the Ottawa Literary and Scientific Society in 1870, from which the OFNC formally separated in March 1879. Since that time, it has grown into Canada’s oldest and largest regional natural history organization and has produced a diverse and internationally recognized publication program. Since 1880 The Canadian Field-Naturalist and its predecessors have constituted the scientific core of the OFNC’s publication program, with Trail & Landscape being an important Ottawa Valley publication since the late 1960s. The importance of both publications to the growth and health of the organization is reflected in the major surges in Club membership experienced when each of these publications was established. The focus of membership activities has changed over the history of the OFNC, with enlightened natural resource management, then original scientific research and local exploration directing energies in the early decades. By the early years of the 20th century the publications program become the raison d’etre of the Club, almost to the exclusion of local field activities. A renewed interest in field discovery and the growth of conservation awareness in the 1960s, however, rekindled local activities and re-established the balance which has sustained the organization throughout its history. Natural environment education has remained a critical theme within OFNC programs and activities. Over and above inspiring the professional careers and private interests of thousands of individuals for more than a century, the OFNC has had an important and lasting impact on the conservation of natural environment features and landscapes in Canada and North America.

scholarly journals L’Église, la femme et l’affect : récits sur la désirabilité du modèle laïc au Québec ou comment fabriquer un projet politique en contexte séculier?

2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-44
Author(s):  
Géraldine Mossière
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equity ◽  
Baby Boomers ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Rapid Phase ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Means And Ends ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

This article is based on life stories collected between 2014 and 2018 among a population of baby boomers of French Canadian descent, whose personal path echoes the social and political history of the province. Following their socialization in a Catholic context, this generation has known a rapid phase of secularization, modernization and diversification that, since the end of the 1960s, have impacted the local social and political landscape of the province. The entanglement between individual and collective experiences shapes a particular rhetoric on the « laïc » (secularist) project in Quebec that hinges on memories of Catholicism, concern for gender equity and pluralist ethics. Drawing on Maclure and Taylor’s model of open and closed secularism, the author discuss the means and ends of the moral principles underlying baby boomers’ narratives.

The Cul-de-Sac of Social Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan M. Wald
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
New York Intellectuals ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Irving Howe ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S

A history of Irving Howe and Dissent magazine is used to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the social democratic alternative that became the Left wing of the New York intellectuals during the 1950s. This is followed by an examination of the life and work of Harvey Swados, which also express the ambiguities that would render this tradition problematic during the era of new radicalization in the 1960s.

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