scholarly journals Social data and society

Impact ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (9) ◽  
pp. 46-47
Author(s):  
Lucy Annette

The Japanese Association for Social Research (JASR) works to advance and promote the social sciences, furthering the discipline while also highlighting its importance. It was formed in 2003 as the Japanese Certification Board for Social Researchers with a view to administering accreditation on behalf of its three founding societies: the Japan Sociological Society, the Japan Society of Educational Sociology and the Behaviormetric Society of Japan. Five years later, it was reorganised into its current form and operates independently of its founding societies. JASR's focus on social research involves ensuring continuous improvement in social survey research and instilling public trust in this area. It operates a qualification called the Program of Certified Social Researcher, which is designed to certify social researchers. Further activities for the JASR relate to: granting certification; accreditation of tertiary education courses; seminars; grants; symposia and lecture meetings; awards; consulting; and publications. The ultimate goal of these activities is to support and promote practitioner and researcher professional development, thereby assisting in the development of social research. Its efforts to further the continuation of education for social researchers also involve the JASR hosting relevant seminars, symposia and lecture meetings. As part of these events, leading experts share their knowledge with attendees, helping foster the professional development of practitioners and researchers. The JASR's seminar series covers the Standard Curriculum and primarily targets graduate students. It's completion contributes to the requirements for the Certificate of Advanced Social Research.

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nicholson

The Economic and Social Research Council recently published a Report commissioned from a committee chaired by Professor Edwards, a psychiatrist, so that the Council, and the social science community in general, might know what was good and bad in British social sciences, and where the promising future research opportunities lie over the next decade. Boldly called ‘Horizons and Opportunities in the Social Sciences’, the Report condensed the wisdom of social scientists, both British and foreign, and concludes with a broadly but not uncritically favourable picture of the British scene.


1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-236

The Committee on Historical Studies was established in the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in 1984. The Graduate Faculty has long emphasized the contribution of history to the social sciences. Committee on Historical Studies (CHS) courses offer students the opportunity to utilize social scientific concepts and theories in the study of the past. The program is based on the conviction that the world changes constantly but changes systematically, with each historical moment setting the opportunities and limiting the potentialities of the next. Systematic historical analysis, however, is not merely a diverting luxury. Nor is it simply a means of assembling cases for present-oriented models of human behavior. It is a prerequisite to any sound understanding of processes of change and of structures large or small.


Author(s):  
Harold Kincaid

Positivism originated from separate movements in nineteenth-century social science and early twentieth-century philosophy. Key positivist ideas were that philosophy should be scientific, that metaphysical speculations are meaningless, that there is a universal and a priori scientific method, that a main function of philosophy is to analyse that method, that this basic scientific method is the same in both the natural and social sciences, that the various sciences should be reducible to physics, and that the theoretical parts of good science must be translatable into statements about observations. In the social sciences and the philosophy of the social sciences, positivism has supported the emphasis on quantitative data and precisely formulated theories, the doctrines of behaviourism, operationalism and methodological individualism, the doubts among philosophers that meaning and interpretation can be scientifically adequate, and an approach to the philosophy of social science that focuses on conceptual analysis rather than on the actual practice of social research. Influential criticisms have denied that scientific method is a priori or universal, that theories can or must be translatable into observational terms, and that reduction to physics is the way to unify the sciences. These criticisms have undercut the motivations for behaviourism and methodological individualism in the social sciences. They have also led many to conclude, somewhat implausibly, that any standards of good social science are merely matters of rhetorical persuasion and social convention.


1966 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-235
Author(s):  
A. A. Castagno

The African World: a survey of social research, is in my estimation one of the most important and unique attempts in African studies to interrelate the social sciences and the humanities; it has been edited for the African Studies Association by Robert A. Lystad (New York, Praeger, 1965). The contributors, mainly American and British, are well-known scholars. Together they have brought out a volume on methodology that is unparalleled in multi-disciplinary comprehensiveness in African studies. This is a tribute not only to the authors but also to the development of scholarship on Africa, for the past two decades of accomplishments are richly represented here. The distinction of The African World is that it identifies new problems, raises new questions and deals with a wide variety of methodologies. It should be mandatory reading for students of African affairs. And it can be usefully employed by nonAfricanists dealing with multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary aspects of area research.


1989 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-27
Author(s):  
M. V. Posner

WHAT IS RESEARCH IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES FOR? SHOULD (much of) it be financed by the state? How should it be organized? Where should it take place? In the United Kingdom, these questions thud down each morning on the desk of the Chairman of the Economic and Social Research Council, which now has a new home (in Swindon, with its big sister Research Councils) and a new Chairman, Professor Howard Newby. Six years, and more than one chairman, have come and gone since I sat at that desk; I have a short memory, and a full recognition of the duty of a retired bureaucrat — ‘get out, and shut up’. I am not willing or able to bore readers with a description or a critique of recent policies. But my present function gives me a new standpoint; things look different from Strasbourg, and an international perspective helps; above all, my responsibilities now spread widely (although jolly thinly) over the whole range of learning, scholarship, and science. So these are home thoughts from abroad.


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