scholarly journals Household Surveys in Crisis

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 199-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce D. Meyer ◽  
Wallace K. C. Mok ◽  
James X. Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Measurement Error ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Household Surveys ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Survey Quality ◽  
Government Transfers ◽  
The Impact

Household surveys, one of the main innovations in social science research of the last century, are threatened by declining accuracy due to reduced cooperation of respondents. While many indicators of survey quality have steadily declined in recent decades, the literature has largely emphasized rising nonresponse rates rather than other potentially more important dimensions to the problem. We divide the problem into rising rates of nonresponse, imputation, and measurement error, documenting the rise in each of these threats to survey quality over the past three decades. A fundamental problem in assessing biases due to these problems in surveys is the lack of a benchmark or measure of truth, leading us to focus on the accuracy of the reporting of government transfers. We provide evidence from aggregate measures of transfer reporting as well as linked microdata. We discuss the relative importance of misreporting of program receipt and conditional amounts of benefits received, as well as some of the conjectured reasons for declining cooperation and for survey errors. We end by discussing ways to reduce the impact of the problem including the increased use of administrative data and the possibilities for combining administrative and survey data.

scholarly journals On the Discursive and Methodological Categorisation of Islam and Muslims in the West: Ontological and Epistemological Considerations

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 501
Author(s):  
Fethi Mansouri
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The West ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
Muslims In The West ◽  
The Impact

This article reflects on the ethical and epistemological challenges facing researchers engaged in contemporary studies of Islam and Muslims in the West. Particularly, it focuses on the impact of the constructions and categorisations of Muslims and Islam in research. To do this, it considers the entwinement of public discourses and the development of research agendas and projects. To examine this complex and enmeshed process, this article explores ideological, discursive and epistemological approaches that it argues researchers need to consider. In invoking these three approaches alongside an analysis of a collection of recent research, this article contends that questions of race, religion and politics have been deployed to reinforce, rather than challenge, certain essentialist/orientalist representations of Islam and Muslims in the West in research. As this article shows, this practice is increasingly threatening to compromise, in a Habermasian communicative sense (i.e., the opportunity to speak and be heard for all concerned), the ethical and epistemological underpinnings of social science research with its emphasis on inclusion and respect.

Requirements Capture for Inclusive Design Resources and Tools

Volume 3 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hua Dong ◽  
P. John Clarkson ◽  
Simeon Keates
Keyword(s):  
Unmet Needs ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Inclusive Design ◽  
Planning Stage ◽  
Product Planning ◽  
The Past ◽  
Design Resources ◽  
User Data ◽  
Design Requirements ◽  
The Impact

In the past twenty years, a number of resources and tools to support inclusive design have been developed. However, the impact of these resources and tools on industry is not evident — few industrialists have been using them in practice. Investigations into industry have identified unmet needs, for example, the lack of appropriate user data relating to inclusive design. The fundamental problem is that few resources and tools have been developed based on rigorous requirements capture. In fact, many of them were developed only because the developers think the information could be useful. It is essential to prepare a detailed requirements list when clarifying the task at the product planning stage. This is also true for developing resources and tools for inclusive design. Requirements capture plays an important role in identifying real needs from users and developing appropriate methods of support for them. This paper starts with a survey of available resources and tools for inclusive design, and a discussion on their merits and deficiencies in respect to industry application. A number of methods are employed for the requirements capture for an inclusive design toolkit, which leads to a consistent result. An outline of the toolkit is also presented.

scholarly journals STATEMENT FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE W. E. B. DU BOIS INSTITUTE

2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Louis Gates
Keyword(s):  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The Past ◽  
Considerable Work ◽  
Public Policy Decisions

In 1903, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois famously predicted that the problem of the twentieth century would be the problem of the color line. Indeed, during the past century, matters of race were frequently the cause of intense conflict and the stimulus for public policy decisions not only in the United States, but throughout the world. The founding of the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race at the beginning of the twenty-first century acknowledges the continuing impact of Du Bois's prophecy, his pioneering role as one of the founders of the discipline of sociology in the American academy, and the considerable work that remains to be done as we confront the “problem” that Du Bois identified over a century ago.

scholarly journals Doing Less with More: Cohorts, Education and Civic Participation in America

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Horowitz
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
School Students ◽  
College Degrees ◽  
Geographic Space ◽  
The Impact

Decades of social science research demonstrate the impact of education on civic participation. However, prior scholarship generally assumes that the returns to education do not change over time or geographic space. Absolute educational effects are not always plausible; as more individuals obtain a college degree, there are a greater number of qualified individuals competing for the same social resources. The present study tests the impact of education on civic participation, and whether this effect changes as the number of college-educated individuals increases over birth cohorts. The present findings suggest that in some cases, a college degree's impact on civic participation declines as more individuals obtain college degrees. The findings challenge commonly held assumptions about the effect of higher education on civic participation. Furthermore, the findings suggest that while sending an individual to college may increase civic participation, encouraging all high school students to go to college may undercut the benefits of college attendance.Keywords: higher education, cohorts, civic engagement, volunteering

The Determinants of Program Success and Failure

1981 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Wolman
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Evaluation Research ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Program Performance ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Program Success ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTRecent social science research – particularly evaluation research and cost-benefit analysis – has produced a substantial and very useful literature on the impact of public policy and on the relationship of program inputs to outputs and outcomes. However, the explicit focus of these analytic techniques on impacts and outcomes does not systematically yield useful information on why programs have been successes or failures. Policy-makers faced with an evaluation of program success or failure obviously need to know something about the why question if they are to make needed adjustments in the program or carry the lessons of one program to other areas. This article attempts to present a comprehensive framework for explaining and understanding program performance. It is meant to have two uses and to serve two clienteles. First, it presents for social scientists a set of research questions to guide research into the determinants of program performance. Second, it provides public policy-makers with a set of action questions which should be asked and answered appropriately in the actual formulating and carrying out of public policy, as a means of enhancing the chances of program success. The framework is divided into two parts, the formulating process and the carrying out process, although these two processes may overlap considerably, both in time and in terms of substantive concerns. Program success may be impeded by problems or inadequacies in one or more of the components in either the formulating stage or the carrying out stage or in both.

scholarly journals Video Use in Social Science Research and Program Evaluation

2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 22-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Rosenstein
Keyword(s):  
Program Evaluation ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Video Observation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Data Collection And Analysis ◽  
Situational Assessment ◽  
Giving Feedback

In light of technological advances in producing, viewing and storing moving images, it is appropriate to survey the literature concerning the use of moving images in research over the past few decades. A review of the literature shows that the use of video technology for research falls into three areas: observation (including data collection and analysis), a mechanism for giving feedback, and a means for distance learning and consulting via videoconferencing. This article addresses the first two areas — observation and feedback. It begins with a survey of the use of video observation as a tool for research and documentation. A section on feedback, divided into three sections: performance, interaction and situational assessment follows. A separate section is devoted to the use of video for Program Evaluation. The article concludes with a discussion of epistemological methodological issues and the ethics involved in such a technologically advanced medium.

scholarly journals Disruptive Norms: Assessing the Impact of Ethnic Minority Immigration on Nonimmigrant Voter Turnout Using a Complex Model

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 422-442
Author(s):  
Thomas Loughran ◽  
Edward Fieldhouse ◽  
Laurence Lessard-Phillips ◽  
Lee Bentley
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Complex Model ◽  
Civic Duty ◽  
Majority Population ◽  
Spatial Composition ◽  
The Impact

This article explores whether introducing an external group into a population with different characteristics to the existing population may lead to behavioral change. Specifically, we test whether introducing ethnic minority immigrants with varying levels of civic duty (commitment to voting) norms into a previously homogenous nonimmigrant ethnic majority population influences voter turnout among the nonimmigrant majority group. The findings have been produced using a complex agent-based model (“the voter model”) where the parameters and characteristics have been developed through the extensive synthesis of existing findings from real-world social science research on voter turnout. The model adopts the KIDS (“Keep It Descriptive Stupid”) approach to this form of modeling complex systems. The model puts a particular emphasis on exploring the dynamic social aspects that influence turnout by focusing on the role of networks and spatial composition factors such as ethnic diversity and levels of internal and external immigration. It uses an approach based on aggregative neighborhood dynamics to go beyond existing static models of the influence of social norms on voting similar to the classic approach of Schelling. The main findings from this article suggest that, other factors being equal, increased levels of immigration lead to a small but significant increase in turnout among the nonimmigrant population and show that higher levels of civic duty among immigrants lead to higher levels of turnout among nonimmigrants over time. This challenges the popular belief that increased immigration and diversity in a specific community will always lead to lower turnout levels.

scholarly journals A New Model for Industry–Academic Partnerships

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 703-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary King ◽  
Nathaniel Persily
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Data Access ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
Consumer Privacy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Charitable Foundations ◽  
Academic Partnerships ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTThe mission of the social sciences is to understand and ameliorate society’s greatest challenges. The data held by private companies, collected for different purposes, hold vast potential to further this mission. Yet, because of consumer privacy, trade secrets, proprietary content, and political sensitivities, these datasets are often inaccessible to scholars. We propose a novel organizational model to address these problems. We also report on the first partnership under this model, to study the incendiary issues surrounding the impact of social media on elections and democracy: Facebook provides (privacy-preserving) data access; eight ideologically and substantively diverse charitable foundations provide initial funding; an organization of academics we created, Social Science One, leads the project; and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard and the Social Science Research Council provide logistical help.

Policy analysis by academics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marleen Brans ◽  
David Aubin ◽  
Valérie Smet
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Research Programmes ◽  
Structural Interfaces ◽  
Policy Problems ◽  
The Impact

Through their policy relevant research outputs and integration in policy networks, Belgian academics ‘speak truth to power’ (Wildavsky 1979) or ‘make sense together’ (Hoppe 1999) in political and public debates about policy problems and options. At the turn of the millennium, the federal and regional governments have moved to institutionalizing policy relevant research in what are called interuniversity research pillars, and middle to long term research programmes, thematically organised along the priorities decided by the respective governments. Next to these structural interfaces, there are other access points for academics to bring their expertise to policy-making. Sectoral academic experts maintain multiple relationships with knowledge brokers. They are welcome guests in opinion sections of the written and spoken media and hold positions in the strategic advisory bodies of different governments. Several of them are also active in think tanks, or act themselves as consultants in commercial university spin-offs. This chapter analyses the structural and individual access of academics to policy-making in Belgium. The empirical material is based upon documents analysis and budget information, on a study of knowledge utilisation in labour market and education policies in Belgium, and on a recent survey on the impact of social science research on Flemish policy-makers.

scholarly journals Dependency, History, and Scholarship: An Interview with Professor Stanley J. Stein

2010 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-392
Author(s):  
Vincent Peloso
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social History ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American History ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
National Endowment ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Impact

Stanley J. Stein, Walter Samuel Carpenter III Professor of Spanish Civilization and Culture and Professor of History, Emeritus, at Princeton University, is a lifelong Latin Americanist. Together with his late wife Barbara, herself an accomplished bibliographer and historian of the region, Professor Stein wrote several books and articles that put their stamp on methods of writing the social history of modern Latin America, specifically on the impact of colonialism and industrialism in Mexico and Brazil in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is fair to say that no one who studied Latin American history over the last 35 years would have failed to engage the slim, elegantly written synthesis, The Colonial Heritage of Latin America: Essays on Economic Dependence in Perspective (1970). Recipients of grants and fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, singly or together, the Steins were honored for their path-breaking studies with the CLAH Robertson and Bolton prizes, the Conference on Latin American History Distinguished Service Award (1991), and the American Historical Association Award for Scholarly Distinction (1996).

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