Reagan Administration Proposes Sharp Cut-Back in Federal Support for Social Science Research

1981 ◽  
Vol 14 (02) ◽  
pp. 262-263
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Mann

By now most of you are aware of the severe cuts in federal funding for the social and behavioral sciences and for the humanities proposed by the Reagan Administration.At the National Science Foundation, while support for the natural sciences is slated to increase, the proposed budget for the social and economic sciences calls for a 65 percent reduction.At the National Institute of Mental Health (ADAMHA), the Administration proposes toeliminateall social research, which is expected to include research on the family, socialization of children, effects of separation and divorce, evaluation of prevention efforts with children, effects of mass media on behavior of children. In addition, the definition probably will include social policy research, research on race and ethnic relations, studies of community structure and change and studies of social institutions.

Author(s):  
Rosemary L. Hopcroft

This chapter provides an overview of The Oxford Handbook of Evolution, Biology, and Society. Chapters in the first part of this book address the history of the use of method and theory from biology in the social sciences; the second part includes chapters on evolutionary approaches to social psychology; the third part includes chapters describing research on the interaction of genes (and other biochemicals such as hormones) and environmental contexts on a variety of outcomes of sociological interest; and the fourth part includes chapters that apply evolutionary theory to areas of traditional concern to sociologists—including the family, fertility, sex and gender, religion, crime, and race and ethnic relations. The last part of the book presents two chapters on cultural evolution.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (8-9) ◽  
pp. 943-947 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Soler ◽  
Aitor Gómez

Social science research has been attacked by neoliberal thinkers who allege that such research lacks economic objectives. In the face of neoliberal and positivist criteria for evaluating the social impact of social science inquiry, social science researchers are developing qualitative evaluation methodologies through which we can have direct contact with citizens. These qualitative methodologies declare our social responsibility as social researchers in addressing relevant problems, especially those affecting the most vulnerable people. From these qualitative methodologies, the most vulnerable groups are included in the assessment of the social impacts of social research. Some examples of people who have participated in this qualitative evaluation include women, youth, immigrants, and Roma organizations. Participants perceived social science researchers as being far from their social reality, but in this research, they began to overcome their skepticism that social science research can help to solve those problems affecting their everyday lives.


Impact ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (9) ◽  
pp. 83-84
Author(s):  
Lucy Annette

The Open Research Area (ORA) for Social Sciences is an international initiative that provides social science research funding and support. It was founded in 2010 by members of the Bonn Group and based on agreement by European social science funding bodies The Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), France, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK, and the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada, later joined, as well as the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) as an associate member. ORA facilitates collaborative social sciences research by bringing together researchers from participating countries. Researchers from the partner countries who fulfil the eligibility criteria of their national funding organisation apply to the ORA office handling the year's applications and Japanese researchers submit their applications to JSPS Tokyo. ORA accepts applications from all areas of the social sciences and there is a key focus on supporting young researchers at the beginning of their careers, helping them to extend the reach of their work and network on an international scale. Ultimately, ORA exists to drive forward high-quality research and strengthen international collaboration in social sciences research. So far, five rounds of ORA have been successfully completed, with more than 60 international collaborative proposals funded across diverse social sciences fields, including political science, economics, empirical social science, psychology, geography, urban planning and education science.


Author(s):  
Peter Murray ◽  
Maria Feeney

Chapter 5 returns the focus to the social sciences. The injection of resources into Ireland’s scientific research infrastructure at the end of the 1950s created two new social science research producers – the Rural Economy Division of An Foras Taluntais and the Economic Research Institute. In the former rural sociology took a recognised place alongside a variety of other agriculture-relevant disciplines. In the latter the distinction between the economic and the social was a blurred and indistinct one. During the first half 1960s the unenclosed field of social research was to be the subject of a series of proposals from actors located within the Catholic social movement to a variety of government departments for the creation of research centres or institutes. This chapter details these proposals and the fate of consistent refusal with which they met. Empirical social research in Ireland was funded and organised in a manner that effectively excluded the participation of any Catholic social movement actor without a university base when the government approved the transformation of the Economic Research Institute into the Economic and Social Research Institute. This approval for a central social research organisation was crucially linked to the project of extending the scope of government programming to encompass social development as well as economic expansion.


Politics ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Grix

The aim of this article is twofold: first, to present an accessible way of introducing students to the key generic terms of social science research. There is an obvious need for clarifying the generic tools and terminology of the social sciences across the disciplines, as academics argue past each other, using identical terms but attaching different meanings to them. Secondly, this article presents the interrelationship between the core concepts of social science (ontology, epistemology, methodology, methods and sources). This ‘directional’ and logical relationship needs to be understood, if students – and academics – are to engage in constructive dialogue and criticism of each others' work.


2018 ◽  
pp. 227-242

Resumen.-La presencia de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación, así como la gama recursos digitales disponibles, plantea en todos los campos de conocimiento la necesidad de reformular sus habituales referentes y puntos de partida. Entre ellos, destacan: objetos, objetivos, procedimientos, y perspectivas que dan sentido y vigencia al conocimiento en cuanto a sus posibilidades técnicas, cognitivas y epistemológicas. En este trabajo, analizamos desde diferentes enfoques el comportamiento de tal desafío en el caso de la investigación social; de ahí que su contenido gire en torno a tres ejes de análisis: las Tic como herramientas de investigación, como un objeto más de estudio de las ciencias sociales, y como un componente indisociable de una realidad en permanente transformación que afecta a los modos de ver y de reflexionar sobre la actual constitución de los objetos de estudio de lo social. Palabras clave: ciencias sociales, investigación, TIC, recurso técnico, objeto de estudio, uso social. Digital culture and social science research: main challenges Abstract.-The emergence of information and communication technologies, as well as the range of available digital resources, raises the need in all areas of knowledge to reformulate their usual references and starting points. Among them, they highlight objects, objectives, procedures, and perspectives that give meaning and validity to knowledge in terms of its technical, cognitive and epistemological possibilities.In this work, we analyze from different approaches the behavior of such a challenge in the case of social research; for that reason the content of this around three axes of analysis: ICTs as research tools, as an object of study in the social sciences, and as an inseparable component of a reality in permanent transformation that affects the ways of seeing and to reflect on the current constitution of the objects of study of the social. Keywords:social science, research, ICTs, technical resource, object of study, social use.


Impact ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-5
Author(s):  
Lucy Annette

The Open Research Area (ORA) for Social Sciences is an international initiative that provides social science research funding and support. It was founded in 2010 by members of the Bonn Group and based on agreement by European social science funding bodies The Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), France, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK, and the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada, later joined, as well as the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) as an associate member. ORA facilitates collaborative social sciences research by bringing together researchers from participating countries. Researchers from the partner countries who fulfil the eligibility criteria of their national funding organisation apply to the ORA office handling the year's applications and Japanese researchers submit their applications to JSPS Tokyo. ORA accepts applications from all areas of the social sciences and there is a key focus on supporting young researchers at the beginning of their careers, helping them to extend the reach of their work and network on an international scale. Ultimately, ORA exists to drive forward high-quality research and strengthen international collaboration in social sciences research. So far, five rounds of ORA have been successfully completed, with more than 60 international collaborative proposals funded across diverse social sciences fields, including political science, economics, empirical social science, psychology, geography, urban planning and education science.


The Oxford Handbook of Evolution, Biology, and Society explores a growing area within sociology: research that uses theory and/or methods from biology. The essays in this handbook integrate current research from all strands of this new and developing area. The first section of this book has essays that address the history of the use of method and theory from biology in the social sciences; the second section has papers on evolutionary approaches to social psychology; the third section has chapters describing research on the interaction of genes (and other biochemicals such as hormones) and environmental contexts on a variety of outcomes of sociological interest; and the fourth section includes papers that apply evolutionary theory to areas of traditional concern to sociologists-including the family, fertility, sex and gender, religion, crime, and race and ethnic relations. The last section of the book presents two chapters on cultural evolution.


2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-93
Author(s):  
Steven Arnfjord ◽  
John Andersen

Socialforskningen i Grønland har gennem årtier dokumenteret sociale problemer. Populært sagt har socialforskningen i Grønland indtil for nylig kun bestået af beskrivende, kvantitativ elendighedsforskning. Der eksisterer således (modsat fx socialforskning med canadisk inuit) stort set ikke nogen kvalitativ eller deltagerorienteret forskning om vilkår for indsatser og praksis i forhold til at håndtere de sociale udfordringer. Der har således manglet sociologisk og handlingsorienteret praksisviden, der kan understøtte professionel og organisatorisk kapacitetsopbygning i det socialpolitiske felt. Denne artikel handler om empowerment og aktionsforskning med socialarbejdere i Grønland og bygger på Steven Arnfjords ph.d. projekt fra 2014. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Steven Arnfjord and John Andersen: Social Work and Action Research in Greenland Years of social science research in Greenland has documented a range of social problems in the country. However social research in Greenland has been limited to quantitative research that has focused only on misery. Contrary to what we have seen in Canadian Inuit research, there has been no qualitative nor participatory research into the concrete circumstances under which Greenlandic social workers deal with the social challenges they face daily. This article draws on a research project that, for the first time, employed exploratory interviews with social workers. Analysis of these interviews uncovered the social workers’ feelings of despair and their atomised sense of loneliness because of having no references to an external network of professionals (e.g. through a union). The research was then extended to an action research project, which set out to form a social workers union in order to create a sense of unity and professional group awareness within the profession. Keywords: Greenland, action research, empowerment, social work, social planning, marxism.


1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
DESMOND KING

In the twenty years after 1945 both the United States and Britain created public funding regimes for social science, through the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) respectively. The historical and political contexts in which these institutions were founded differed, but the assumptions about social science concurred. This article uses archival sources to explain this comparative pattern. It is argued that the political context in both countries played a key role in the development of the two research agencies. In each country the need politically to stress the neutrality of social research – though for different reasons in each case – produced a bias towards positivist scientific methodology, untempered by ideology. This propensity created the trajectory upon which each country's public funding regime rests.


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