scholarly journals Musings on methodology

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Hertog ◽  
Jan Van Gucht ◽  
Leen De Bontridder
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Grand Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
Science Community ◽  
Total Lack

As an applied science, community interpreting research is often tributary to the social sciences for its methods. Indeed, focus groups, interviews, questionnaires and case studies, in other words both quantitative and qualitative surveys and analyses are part and parcel of the social sciences methodology and are becoming increasingly common in CI research as well.But, as is often the case with applied scientific research, when it comes to adopting the methodological orthodoxy of the parent science, it is sometimes found lacking in methodological coherence and rigour. In our view, the most commonly found methodological hiatus in the current empirical CI research literature is the (mis)use of research designs of an essentially exploratory nature to generate broad sweeping conclusions at medium or even grand theory level, typically resulting in a total lack of falsifiability.A second point of concern is a rather generalised lack of validation of the outcomes of field research. That is why this article proposes a critical reflection on empirical research methodology in the field of community based interpreting in the form of a tentative typology of research methodologies, illustrated with an example taken from the authors’ own research.

Disentangling the Translational Sciences: A Social Science Perspective

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis D. Burgio
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Community Settings ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Services Research ◽  
Community Based ◽  
The Social ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Widespread Dissemination

In this article the author first attempts to disentangle a number of issues in translational science from a social science perspective. As expected in a fledgling field of study being approached from various disciplines, there are marked differences in the research literature on terminology, definition of terms, and conceptualization of staging of clinical research from the pilot phase to widespread dissemination in the community. The author asserts that translational efforts in the social sciences are at a crossroads, and its greatest challenge involves the movement of interventions gleaned from clinical trials to community settings. Four strategies for reaching this goal are discussed: the use of methods derived from health services research, a yet-to-be-developed strategy where decisions to modify aspects of an intervention derived from a clinical trial are triggered by data-based criteria, community based participatory action research (CBPR), and a hybrid system wherein methods from CBPR and traditional experimental procedures are combined to achieve translation. The author ends on an optimistic note, emphasizing the impressive advances in the area over the existing barriers and calling for a unified interdisciplinary science of translation.

The Edwards' Report and the International Relations profession

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Science Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science Community

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.

scholarly journals ‘What is infrastructure? What does it do?’: Anthropological perspectives on the workings of infrastructure(s)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lav Kanoi ◽  
Vanessa Koh ◽  
Al Lim ◽  
Shoko Yamada ◽  
Michael R. Dove
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Growing Body

Abstract Infrastructure is often thought of in big material terms: dams, buildings, roads, and so on. This study, instead, draws on literatures in anthropology and the social sciences to analyse infrastructures in relation to society and environment, and so cast current conceptions of infrastructure in a new light. Situating the analysis in context of President Biden’s recent infrastructure bill, the paper expands what is meant by and included in discussions of infrastructure. The study examines what it means for different kinds of material infrastructures to function (and for whom) or not, and also consider how the immaterial infrastructure of human relations are manifested in, for example, labour, as well as how infrastructures may create intended or unintended consequences in enabling or disabling social processes. Further, in this study, we examine concepts embedded in thinking about infrastructure such as often presumed distinctions between the technical and the social, nature and culture, the human and the non-human, and the urban and the rural, and how all of these are actually implicated in thinking about infrastructure. Our analysis, thus, draws from a growing body of work on infrastructure in anthropology and the social sciences, enriches it with ethnographic insights from our own field research, and so extends what it means to study ‘infrastructures’ in the 21st century.

Intellectual Schisms in Philippine Psychology are Schisms of the Self: Meditations from an East-West Comparative Standpoint

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-318
Author(s):  
Joseph Anthony Narciso Tiangco
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Zen Buddhism ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Self ◽  
Value System ◽  
A Value ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
East West

AbstractCritical reflection on the study of psychology situates both students and practitioners in a position to ponder upon not only the conceptual, methodological, and perhaps, theoretical advances within the discipline, but more so, in rediscovering what psychology is in the first place. The first part of this paper provides a discussion on how psychology can be remembered and studied within the backdrop of a condensed history of intellectual progression. Within this context, intellectual schisms can be understood as prompted by the value system held by members of a scientific community. Such a value system, therefore, is also attributable to the emergence of contending perspectives and systems that characterize psychology within a postmodern context. The second part of this paper argues that since psychology is the study of the self, then Eastern re flections have a place in situating Zen Buddhism as it correlates with Western postmodernism. The problem of the self in Eastern philosophy is a source of rich insight in arguing that the emptiness of the self is, in fact, due to its fluidity. Given this, I conclude in this paper that the fluidity of the self accounts for the fluidity of knowledge in psychology and the rest of the social sciences. I pose the challenge that the practice of psychology in the Philippines, as a science and profession, should take on a spiritual depth in consideration of the positive values espoused by postmodernism from an East-West comparative standpoint.

Beyond the Case

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Case Method ◽  
Singular Case ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Extended Case Method ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comparative Ethnography

The social sciences have seen a substantial increase in comparative and multisited ethnographic projects over the last three decades, yet field research often remains associated with small-scale, in-depth, and singular case studies. The growth of comparative ethnography underscores the need to carefully consider the process, logics, and consequences of comparison. This need is intensified by the fact that ethnography has long encompassed a wide range of traditions with different approaches toward comparative social science. At present, researchers seeking to design comparative field projects have many studies to emulate but few scholarly works detailing the process of comparison in divergent ethnographic approaches. Beyond the Case addresses this by showing how practitioners in contemporary iterations of traditions such as phenomenology, the extended case method, grounded theory, positivism, and interpretivism approach this in their works. It connects the long history of comparative (and anti-comparative) ethnographic approaches to their contemporary uses. Each chapter allows influential scholars to 1) unpack the methodological logics that shape how they use comparison; 2) connect these precepts to the concrete techniques they employ; and 3) articulate the utility of their approach. By honing in on how ethnographers render sites or cases analytically commensurable and comparable, these contributions offer a new lens for examining the assumptions, payoffs, and potential drawbacks of different forms of comparative ethnography. Beyond the Case provides a resource that allows both new and experienced ethnographers to critically evaluate the intellectual merits of various approaches and to strengthen their own research in the process.

Empowering farmers for increased resilience in uncertain times

2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (7) ◽  
pp. 843 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Nettle ◽  
M. Ayre ◽  
R. Beilin ◽  
S. Waller ◽  
L. Turner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Agricultural Research ◽  
Dairy Farm ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Research Development ◽  
The Past ◽  
Level Of Activity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Designs

As farmers continue to face increasingly uncertain and often rapidly changing conditions related to markets, climate or the policy environment, people involved in agricultural research, development and extension (RD&E) are also challenged to consider how their work can contribute to supporting farmer resilience. Research from the social sciences conducted in the past decade has focussed on adaptability or adaptive capacity as a key attribute for individuals and groups to possess for managing resilience. It is, therefore, timely to ask the following: do current ways of doing and organising RD&E in the dairy sector in New Zealand and Australia contribute to supporting farm adaptability? This paper reports on results from an examination of case studies of challenges to resilience in the dairy sector in Australia and New Zealand (i.e. dairy farm conversion, climate-change adaptation, consent to farm) and the contribution of dairy RD&E in enhancing resilience of farmers, their farms and the broader industry. Drawing on concepts from resilience studies and considering an empowerment perspective, the analysis of these cases suggest that, currently, agricultural RD&E supports adaptability in general, but varies in the strength of its presence and level of activity in the areas known to enhance adaptability. This analysis is used to generate principles for dairy scientists and others in the RD&E system to consider in (1) research designs, (2) engaging different farmers in research and (3) presenting research results differently. This represents a significant shift for the science and advisory communities to move to methods that acknowledge uncertainty and facilitate learning.

When Natural Experiments Are Neither Natural nor Experiments

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
JASJEET S. SEKHON ◽  
ROCÍO TITIUNIK
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Unbiased Estimate ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Natural Experiments ◽  
Treatment Control ◽  
Causal Inferences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
Alternative Research ◽  
Conceptual Difficulties

Natural experiments help to overcome some of the obstacles researchers face when making causal inferences in the social sciences. However, even when natural interventions are randomly assigned, some of the treatment–control comparisons made available by natural experiments may not be valid. We offer a framework for clarifying the issues involved, which are subtle and often overlooked. We illustrate our framework by examining four different natural experiments used in the literature. In each case, random assignment of the intervention is not sufficient to provide an unbiased estimate of the causal effect. Additional assumptions are required that are problematic. For some examples, we propose alternative research designs that avoid these conceptual difficulties.

History and Social Science in the West

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Passmore
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
External Force ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The West ◽  
Grand Theory ◽  
Academic History ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyzes the relationship between history and various disciplines within the social sciences. Historians and social scientists shared two related sets of assumptions. The first supposition was of a world-historical shift from a traditional, hierarchical, religious society to a modern egalitarian, rational one. Second, history and social science assumed that progress occurred within nations possessed of unique ‘characters’, and that patriotism provided the social cement without which society could not function. Nevertheless, academic history seemingly differed from social science in that it was untheoretical and predominantly political. Yet historians focused on the nation’s attainment of self-consciousness, homogeneity, and independence through struggle against internal and external enemies—a history in which great men were prominent. Historians and sociologists unwittingly shared versions of grand theory, in which change was an external ‘force’ driven by the functional needs of the system, and in which meaning derived from measurement against theory, rather than from protagonists’ actions and beliefs.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document