social science methods
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2022 ◽  
Vol 119 (3) ◽  
pp. e2116638118
Author(s):  
Robert Jervis

Most high-profile disasters are followed by demands for an investigation into what went wrong. Even before they start, calls for finding the missed warning signs and an explanation for why people did not “connect the dots” will be common. Unfortunately, however, the same combination of political pressures and the failure to adopt good social science methods that contributed to the initial failure usually lead to postmortems that are badly flawed. The high stakes mean that powerful actors will have strong incentives to see that certain conclusions are—and are not—drawn. Most postmortems also are marred by strong psychological biases, especially the assumption that incorrect inferences must have been the product of wrong ways of thinking, premature cognitive closure, the naive use of hindsight, and the neglect of the comparative method. Given this experience, I predict that the forthcoming inquiries into the January 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol and the abrupt end to the Afghan government will stumble in many ways.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 14003
Author(s):  
Paul B. Thompson ◽  
Laurie Thorp ◽  
Blake L. Ginsburg ◽  
Tabitha Maria Zivku ◽  
Madonna Benjamin

An early ethics assessment method was used to evaluate sustainability goals and early findings from an automated body scanning technology for swine production. The project had twin goals of discovering potential pitfalls in the technology and exploring the applicability of the method, derived from the Ethical Matrix, as a tool to aid researchers in product design at very early stages in the research and development (R&D) process. This paper reports results on the second objective. Results of the evaluation workshop were coded and qualitatively analyzed. These results are reported and compared; the exercise is compared to the findings of other researchers using more traditional methods for ethical assessment on similar technologies, as well as standard social science methods for ascertaining economic sustainability and social acceptability of technological innovations. We conclude that the method has promise, especially for its applicability at very early stages in R&D, but that it does not substitute for analyses that occur at a much later stage in product or procedural development.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 383
Author(s):  
Elena Llorca-Asensi ◽  
Alexander Sanchez ◽  
Maria-Elena Fabregat-Cabrera ◽  
Raúl Ruiz-Callado

Disinformation does not always take the form of a fake news item, it also appears in much less evident formats which are subtly filtered into public opinion, thus making its detection more difficult. A method is proposed in this paper to address the study of “widespread” disinformation by combining social science methods with artificial intelligence and text mining. The case study chosen was the expression “right of self-determination” as a generator of disinformation within the context of the Catalan independence process. The main work hypothesis was that the (intentional or unintentional) confusion around the meaning and scope of this right has become widely extended within the population, generating negative emotions which favour social polarisation. The method utilised had three stages: (1) Description of the disinformation elements surrounding the term with the help of experts; (2) Detection of these elements within a corpus of tweets; (3) Identification of the emotions expressed in the corpus. The results show that the disinformation described by experts clearly dominates the conversation about “self-determination” on Twitter and is associated with a highly negative emotional load in which contempt, hatred, and frustration prevail.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Ferrie

Teaching research methods is difficult. This paper is situated in a context where undergraduate and postgraduate social science methods teaching in the UK, as in much of the world tends to be delivered as separate quantitative and qualitative courses, sometimes with an additional research design course. In this piece I argue firstly, that teaching a combination of knowledge and skills, makes methods learning environments unique within our institutions. Secondly, students need help to shift towards a new way of approaching their learning. Finally, I explore the differences in pedagogical approach between quantitative and qualitative methods and how students benefit from this being made explicit. The tree analogy is introduced as a teaching device. This paper will explore how it helps students who have not studied methods before, or who lack confidence in prior learning, to understand the pedagogy behind the learning environment, and thus, help them engage with the learning.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102199104
Author(s):  
Vincent August

Network concepts are omnipresent in contemporary diagnoses (network society), management practices (network governance), social science methods (network analysis) and theories (network theory). Instigating a critical analysis of network concepts, this article explores the sources and relevance of networks in Foucault’s social theory. I argue that via Foucault we can trace network concepts back to cybernetics, a research programme that initiated a shift from ‘being’ to ‘doing’ and developed a new theory of regulation based on connectivity and codes, communication and circulation. This insight contributes to two debates: Firstly, it highlights a neglected influence on Foucault’s theory that travelled from cybernetics via structuralism and Canguilhem into his concept of power. Secondly, it suggests that network society and governance are neither a product of neoliberalism nor of technological artefacts, such as the Internet. They rather resulted from a distinct tradition of cybernetically inspired theories and practices.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr Casimir Ani ◽  
Professor Emanuel Ezeani; ◽  
Uche Okoye1, ◽  
Ejiofo Chukwuemeka2

This exposition of African Cultural economics has been mainly based upon a mixture of social science methods. In the main, dialectical, historical, holistic and political economy approaches have been used to study the existing literature. The study of the existing literature focused principally on the original discourses , presentations, public lectures, research notes, publications of the African cultural economist and the publications of other emerging scholars in the field of African cultural economics, cultural economics, culture, African studies, African development theory and the social sciences.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr Casimir Ani ◽  
Professor Emanuel Ezeani; ◽  
Uche Okoye1, ◽  
Ejiofo Chukwuemeka2

This exposition of African Cultural economics has been mainly based upon a mixture of social science methods. In the main, dialectical, historical, holistic and political economy approaches have been used to study the existing literature. The study of the existing literature focused principally on the original discourses , presentations, public lectures, research notes, publications of the African cultural economist and the publications of other emerging scholars in the field of African cultural economics, cultural economics, culture, African studies, African development theory and the social sciences.


Author(s):  
Henry C. Ashworth ◽  
Sara Dada ◽  
Conor Buggy ◽  
Shelley Lees

ABSTRACT Despite growing international attention, the anthropological and socio-behavioral elements of epidemics continue to be understudied and under resourced and lag behind the traditional outbreak response infrastructure. As seen in the current 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the importance of socio-behavioral elements in understanding transmission and facilitating control of many outbreak-prone pathogens, this is problematic. Beyond the recent strengthening of global outbreak response capacities and global health security measures, a greater focus on the socio-behavioral components of outbreak response is required. We add to the current discussion by briefly highlighting the importance of socio-behavior in the Ebola virus disease (EVD) response, and describe vital areas of future development, including methods for community engagement and validated frameworks for behavioral modeling and change in outbreak settings.


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