Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Mark Bevir ◽  
Jason Blakely
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific

Readers are introduced to the major philosophical paradigms shaping social science research today, including hermeneutics and naturalism. The pervasive influence of naturalism on social scientific research is explained and the interpretive alternative is sketched. As part of this, readers are offered an account of the philosophical origins of today’s social science disciplines with a special focus on the case of political science. At the beginning of the twentieth century a modern, ahistorical, and formal paradigm for the study of politics was formed as scholars increasingly rejected the developmental historical narratives and Hegelianism of the nineteenth century. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the argument of the book.

Counting Confucians through Social Scientific Research

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Sun
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Chinese Religions ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Standing Problem

This chapter discusses the long-standing problem of identifying Confucians in China (and East Asia in general) through social science research methods—a problem deeply rooted in the nineteenth-century conceptualization of Confucianism and the overall classification of Chinese religions. It investigates different types of empirical data—national censuses and surveys—from Mainland China, as well as from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, in order to answer two questions. First is about whether “Confucianism” is a category in religious classifications in these East Asian countries and regions; the second asks about how many people are counted as “Confucians” in China.

The characteristics and results of eyewitness identification procedures conducted during robbery investigations in Houston, TX

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Wells ◽  
Bradley Campbell ◽  
Yudu Li ◽  
Stryker Swindle
Keyword(s):  
Eyewitness Identification ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Substantial Impact ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Identification Procedures

Purpose Social scientific research is having a substantial impact on eyewitness identification procedural reforms. Police agencies in the USA have changed their eyewitness practices based on the results of social scientific research. The purpose of this paper is to contribute new knowledge by using a unique set of data to describe detailed aspects of eyewitness identification procedures conducted as part of robbery investigations in Houston, TX. Design/methodology/approach Robbery investigators completed surveys following identification procedures conducted during a six-month period of time. The sample includes 975 identification procedures. The analysis describes important features of identification procedures and places results in the context of existing research. Findings Results show that photo spreads were the most frequently used lineup procedure and selection outcomes were similar to recent field studies conducted in the USA. Results also show that the type of procedure, presence of a weapon, cross-race identifications, and viewing opportunity were significantly correlated with selection outcomes. Originality/value Police are reforming their eyewitness identification procedures based on findings from social science research. The study measures and describe the characteristics of a large sample eyewitness procedures conducted by investigators in the field.

scholarly journals Ideology Between the Lines: Lay Inferences About Scientists’ Values and Motives

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 832-841 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivar R. Hannikainen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Personal Ideology ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Way

While philosophers emphasize the distinction between description and prescription, in practice people’s beliefs about contentious issues seem to reflect their normative commitments. Less is known about the way that people infer others’ ideology from their reports about matters of fact. In the context of scientific research on the heritability of intelligence, scientists’ normative views (Study 1a) and motives (Study 2) are inferred from the evidence they report—independently of their stated research objectives. Two preregistered replications (Studies 1b and 3) revealed that these effects generalize to other contentious domains of behavioral and social science research. Thus, laypeople view social scientific inquiry as (partly) a guided pursuit of evidence in favor of scientists’ personal ideology.

scholarly journals Ideology between the lines: Lay inferences about scientists' values and motives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivar Hannikainen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Personal Ideology ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Way

While philosophers emphasize the distinction between description and prescription, in practice people’s beliefs about contentious issues seem to reflect their normative commitments. Less is known about the way that people infer others’ ideology from their reports about matters of fact. In the context of scientific research on the heritability of intelligence, scientists’ normative views (Study 1a) and motives (Study 2) are inferred from the evidence they report–independently of their stated research objectives. Two pre-registered replications (Studies 1b and 3) revealed that these effects generalize to other contentious domains of behavioral and social science research. Thus, laypeople view social scientific inquiry as (partly) a guided pursuit of evidence in favor of scientists’ personal ideology.

Tsugaru Gaku as Area Studies: Research plasticity and researcher hybridity

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Rausch
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
The Future ◽  
Social Science Researcher ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Social Scientific

This review essay speaks to the crisis of Area Studies, offering a view from the field in the form of a review of Tsugaru Gaku (Tsugaru Studies) as a specific Area Studies research case. After presenting an overview of the work of social science researchers working in Japan, both foreign and Japanese, the essay turns to major questions articulated in the literature of Area Studies regarding the purpose, character and future of Area Studies. By reviewing the multi-dimensional and combinative implications in the process and dissemination of his own social science research work together with consideration of the work of Japanese social scientists conducting research in rural Japan and publishing in Japanese, the author positions such ‘domestic,’ place-based sociological and anthropological research as a vital contribution to the future of Area Studies. Capitalizing on social scientific research that can contribute to Area Studies research requires a view of the ‘plasticity of research.’ Further, recognition of the ‘hybridity of the Area Studies researcher,’ both as the trained Area Studies specialist as well as a ‘domestic social science researcher’ capable of theory, methodology and analysis, as well as dissemination of Area Studies research originating in a specific place and in a specific language, is vital to the future of Area Studies research.

What’s Love Got to Do with It? The Sociology of Godly Love and the Renewal of Modern Pentecostalism

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amos Yong
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Interdisciplinary Work ◽  
Social Scientific Study ◽  
Pentecostal Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pentecostal Theology ◽  
Social Scientific

This article uses the recent work of sociologist Margaret M. Poloma to argue that developments in the sociology of Pentecostalism have the potential to revitalize a classical Pentecostal movement that can be otherwise understood as languishing. In particular, the social scientific study of benevolent service in various segments of the Pentecostal movement provides the springboard for the argument. After locating the interdisciplinary work of Poloma and her colleagues on godly love within the broader context of social science research in the last half century, this paper will explore its implications for the future and renewal of especially the classical Pentecostal movement, for Pentecostal theology and self-understanding, and for scholarship on Pentecostalism.

scholarly journals Racial Innocence: Law, Social Science, and the Unknowing of Racism in the US Carceral State

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 473-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Murakawa
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Racial Disparity ◽  
Racial Profiling ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Carceral State ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
The Us ◽  
Social Scientific

Racial innocence is the practice of securing blamelessness for the death-dealing realities of racial capitalism. This article reviews the legal, social scientific, and reformist mechanisms that maintain the racial innocence of one particular site: the US carceral state. With its routine dehumanization, violence, and stunning levels of racial disparity, the carceral state should be a hard test case for the willful unknowing of obvious devastation. Nonetheless, the law presumes “no racism,” condones racial profiling, and interprets racial disparity in policing and imprisonment as evidence of true racial difference in criminality, not discrimination. Prominent social science research too often mimics these practices, producing research that aids in the collective erasure of racism.

scholarly journals In Defense of Robin Barrow's Concern About Empirical Research in Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-145
Author(s):  
Jack Martin
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Additional Material ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Research In Education ◽  
Empirical Regularity ◽  
Social Scientific

This paper offers a defense of Robin Barrow’s main arguments in Giving Teaching Back to Teachers, including additional material concerning the inability of the aggregate data and statistical methods employed in research in education (and research on teaching) to speak to individual teachers and students or to particular classrooms. This defense and extension of Barrow’s position is applied in a critique ofa proposal made by Lorraine Foreman-Peck in her 2004 debate with Barrow, entitled What Use is Educational Research?, published in 2005 by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. A central confusion that attends and limits much empirical research in education and social science concerns conflation of two different senses of the concept general, as “common to all” or “on average.” The havoc this confusion plays ought not be ignored or minimized by educational researchers and their advocates who tend to exaggerate the empirical regularity in social scientific data and therefore the generalizability of social science research in education and elsewhere.

3. Objectivity and Values

2020 ◽  
pp. 64-90
Author(s):  
Sandra Halperin ◽  
Oliver Heath
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Empirical Theory ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Social Inquiry ◽  
Research Programmes

This chapter focuses on a key debate in the philosophy of social science: whether it is possible to separate facts and values in social science research. It first considers normative and empirical theory in political research before discussing the ways in which the values of the researcher influence the research process. It then examines Thomas Kuhn’s arguments concerning paradigms and how they change through scientific ‘revolutions’, along with their implications for the possibility of value-free social inquiry. It looks at an example of how the notion of ‘paradigm’ has been applied to a specific area of inquiry within politics: the study of development. It also compares Kuhn’s paradigms with Imre Lakatos’ concept of ‘scientific research programmes’.

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