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This paper compares the use of confidence intervals (CIs) and a sensitivity analysis called the number needed to disturb (NNTD), in the analysis of research findings expressed as 'effect' sizes. Using 1,000 simulations of randomised trials with up to 1,000 cases in each, the paper shows that both approaches are very similar in outcomes, and each one is highly predictable from the other. CIs are supposed to be a measure of likelihood or uncertainty in the results, showing a range of possible effect sizes that could have been produced by random sampling variation alone. NNTD is supposed to be a measure of the robustness of the effect size to any variation, including that produced by missing data. Given that they are largely equivalent and interchangeable under the conditions tested here, the paper suggests that both are really measures of robustness. It concludes that NNTD is to be preferred because it requires many fewer assumptions, is more tolerant of missing data, is easier to explain, and directly addresses the key question of whether the underlying effect size is zero or not.

This paper explores provocation as an approach towards social science research. While routinely used in natural science and arts research, this paper argues provocation might enable the social science researcher to initiate critical reflection amongst participants on issues that are often otherwise overlooked, obscured or accepted as naturalised practice. By assuming the role of provocateur, stimulator and/or agitator, the social science researcher can interrupt the flow of everyday life in order to illuminate and draw attention to complex social issues. Using research interventions that embrace, rather than deny, the socially constructed nature of the research process, provocation provides an alternative to largely non-obtrusive methods favoured in much social science research. This paper concludes by outlining the practical and methodological issues associated with this approach -- in particular the complicated ethics of provoking reflection on topics that might not have otherwise come to the participant's attention.

Drawing on the experiences of a novel collaborative project between sociologists and computer scientists, this paper identifies a set of challenges for fieldwork that are generated by this "wild interdisciplinarity. Public Access Wi-Fi Service" was a project funded by an 'in-the-wild' research programme, involving the study of digital technologies within a marginalised community, with the goal of addressing digital exclusion. We argue that similar forms of research, in which social scientists are involved in the deployment of experimental technologies within real world settings, are becoming increasingly prevalent. The fieldwork for the project was highly problematic, with the result that few users of the system were successfully enrolled. We analyse why this was the case, identifying three sets of issues which emerge in the juxtaposition of interdisciplinary collaboration and wild setting. We conclude with a set of recommendations for projects involving technologists and social scientists.

This paper discusses issues of research design and methods in new materialist social inquiry, an approach that is attracting increasing interest across the social sciences as an alternative to either realist or constructionist ontologies. New materialism de-privileges human agency, focusing instead upon how assemblages of the animate and inanimate together produce the world, with fundamental implications for social inquiry methodology and methods. Key to our exploration is the materialist notion of a 'research-assemblage' comprising researcher, data, methods and contexts. We use this understanding first to explore the micropolitics of the research process, and then -- along with a review of 30 recent empirical studies -- to establish a framework for materialist social inquiry methodology and methods. We discuss the epistemological consequences of adopting a materialist ontology.

This paper explores provocation as an approach towards social science research. While routinely used in natural science and arts research, this paper argues provocation might enable the social science researcher to initiate critical reflection amongst participants on issues that are often otherwise overlooked, obscured or accepted as naturalised practice. By assuming the role of provocateur, stimulator and/or agitator, the social science researcher can interrupt the flow of everyday life in order to illuminate and draw attention to complex social issues. Using research interventions that embrace, rather than deny, the socially constructed nature of the research process, provocation provides an alternative to largely non-obtrusive methods favoured in much social science research. This paper concludes by outlining the practical and methodological issues associated with this approach – in particular the complicated ethics of provoking reflection on topics that might not have otherwise come to the participant’s attention. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The study of marginalia has not been widely discussed in social sciences research and occupies a marginal space in terms of methodological legitimacy. We highlight the value of paying attention to the ways in which participants speak back to the researcher. This paper draws on marginalia found in surveys written or drawn by young people in classrooms across South Wales, demonstrating how various notes and marks made spontaneously by participants can tell us something important and worthwhile about how young people engage with research. We position marginalia as a manifestation of complex power dynamics in the research process that illuminate participants' negotiation of complex and multiple subjectivities in the literal margins and between the lines of the survey pages. Whilst the sensitive and rigorous analysis of marginalia is fraught with ethical and methodological challenges, we argue that paying closer attention to marginalia presents an opportunity for deeper engagement with participants when undertaking survey research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an academic subject of study, death has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Yet unlike other topics in the social sciences, death occupies a rather unique status as a research topic. A universal concern that affects everyone, this paper asks whether it is therefore ever possible to achieve a scholarly 'critical distance' from studying a place or people associated with death. Drawing on the author's experience of undertaking an ethnographic study of a London cemetery, the paper reflexively recounts the ways in which the author managed their own critical distance both in and outside of the field. The paper concludes that it is somewhat unrealistic to suggest that a scholar researching death can maintain a complete sense of detachment in light of their awareness of the mortal human condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of social sciences, certain tasks, such as the identification of typologies and the characterization of groups of individuals according to a set of questions, tend to pose a challenge for researchers. Further complications arise if the chosen rating scale is from 0 to 10, since the responses can be treated either as metric or categorical variables. This paper shows that neither treatment is able on its own to capture all the inherent properties of this type of data, and goes on to propose a bicriteria clustering approach, which captures both perspectives and enables the simultaneous analysis of mixed data using multiple tables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a theoretical ‘action research spiral’ model to guide reflection on the dual client focus of action research. While theoretically exploring and highlighting the tensions and dilemmas created by this dual client focus, this paper will argue for a greater degree of reflection on action research practice and utilize vignettes from action research cases to illustrate those reflective processes. It is concluded that further discussion and reflection on the process of action research is an important component of social science’s contribution to phronetic knowledge. I saw the University as helping us to reflect on what we are doing—they are the expert reflectors. This is particularly what I saw as X’s role. Sometimes his interjections go above their heads and his ‘nine words or less’ statements need to have some explanation, and I should feed this back to him. I also see the University as playing a visionary role, helping to show us new things about what is possible. I don’t see the University as helping to pull the team together—that is when it gets confusing. They are observing us, they are looking at us as the rats, and when they see something that they think needs to be addressed, they can feed this back to us—and this is where teaching and formal learning comes in. This is a difficult role for the University. I can see some of the University people just squirming—you can see it in their face that they want to intervene. They know something about what we are doing but are not imparting the knowledge. This can piss people off. They are withholding what they know and not helping. But it can also piss people off if they come in too early and tell us what is going on and what to do and not let us wallow around for a while, and learn. This is what I see as a major problem for the University. As you observe us, at what point do you reflect the learning and feedback, and yet not prostitute the learning or dirty the data. ..We are the rats, the factory is your laboratory. But when we are looking at the role of the University, you are the rats. (Plant Manager and Industry Sponsor of an Action Research Project, 2000) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wealth of literature exists that calls for an end to the dichotomous relationship between quantitative and qualitative research and closer integration of research methodologies. Many social and behavioural sciences have reaped the benefits of mixing methods. However, few methodological papers examine the specific benefits a mixed-method approach can have for humour researchers. This paper illustrates that humour studies are an appropriate vehicle through which to advance the debate on mixed methods. The paper discusses practical, theoretical and methodological benefits of using mixed methods, demonstrates how a mixed-method approach was innovatively used during a research project into the ethics of humour, and highlights how combining methods provided a more comprehensive understanding of the ethics of humour than would be gleaned from a reliance on one or two methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper questions the prescription of emancipatory participatory research for studying disability espoused by some disability researchers and activists. The paper argues that the advocacy of participatory and emancipatory research can be criticised on several grounds including problems of internal inconsistency and contradiction, an overly selective use of the works of feminist researchers and that research using such an approach could constitute an exercise of power that potentially marginalises some voices and potentially oppresses some disabled people and researchers. Ultimately, it is suggested, the emancipatory paradigm may serve to undermine the generation of knowledge that can be used by disabled people for self‐emancipation. The paper concludes that rather than prescribe emancipatory research as the only legitimate methodology for disability research, disability writers should, as feminists have in researching gender, adopt a more pluralist and eclectic approach to theorising and researching disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on original research, this paper considers the value of interpretive sociology for exploring clerical skill and knowledge and the role of the clerical function in organizations. It offers a critique of both the received view on clerical skill and knowledge and the epistemology generating such a view, and presents an examination of the notion of ‘common sense’. The paper draws to a close by demonstrating how an interpretive methodology can generate fresh insights to clerical work, skill and knowledge and to the clerical function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses issues in the use of biographical materials in writing about the contribution about Alva and Gunnar Myrdal to the history of sociology and of research methods. After presenting a brief summary about the Myrdals' sociological research works and the biographical material available about them, the paper discusses a series of methodological dilemmas facing the biographical researcher, dilemmas identified by methodologists writing at the time of the Myrdals' own major period of sociologically informed research during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, and by more recent debates in history on the impact of postmodernist approaches to evidence. The paper argues that the use of biographical material as evidence in intellectual history, and elsewhere, needs to be guided by the same principles of the search for validity and representativeness as in other areas of social research, even though the frameworks of relevance chosen in the process of interpretation may be set by contemporary concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative computing is often described by enthusiasts as revolutionary, but in stark contrast, its methodological innovations are rarely discussed. Why is the debate missing? The paper charts some of the major developments in support for coding and theory-building, exploring the many reasons why these are either taken for granted or unrecognized and often unused. Whilst these tools had the potential to change methods, their adoption and their impact have been uneven, and they have been subjected to remarkably little sharp and critical debate. The paper concludes by asking what is required if researchers are to benefit from and drive this technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the Tog coefficient, which can be used to measure the level of inequality in a cross-tabulation of two ordinal-level variables. The Gini coefficient is a standard measure of income inequality which has been adapted by other authors for use in different contexts such as the measurement of health inequalities and the quantification of occupational segregation; the Tog coefficient represents a further stage in this process of development. The paper outlines the construction of the Tog coefficient and illustrates this using a social mobility table based on data from the 1972 Oxford Mobility Study. The trend in social mobility-related inequality as measured by the Tog coefficient is compared with the findings of Goldthorpe et al. based on odds ratios. A more elaborate application of the Tog coefficient uses a variety of data relating to the similarity of spouses' class backgrounds to demonstrate the existence of a long-term decline in the level of inequality in British society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses issues of research design and methods in new materialist social inquiry, an approach that is attracting increasing interest across the social sciences as an alternative to either realist or constructionist ontologies. New materialism de-privileges human agency, focusing instead upon how assemblages of the animate and inanimate together produce the world, with fundamental implications for social inquiry methodology and methods. Key to our exploration is the materialist notion of a ‘research-assemblage’ comprising researcher, data, methods and contexts. We use this understanding first to explore the micropolitics of the research process, and then – along with a review of 30 recent empirical studies – to establish a framework for materialist social inquiry methodology and methods. We discuss the epistemological consequences of adopting a materialist ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tax discipline has accepted the practice adopted in the economics and psychology disciplines of using student subjects for experimental research purposes. However, in other social science disciplines (e.g. accounting, management or consumer research), experimental research that uses students as a substitute for another group has been widely criticised as having little external validity. In this research, data are compiled from journal articles over a 20 year period to investigate the extent to which tax experiments use student subjects and the potential implications from this practice. Three research questions are addressed. First, do tax studies using student subjects justify or explain the use of student subjects? Second, are policy recommendations or other extrapolations to the tax-paying population made from the student subject results? Third, is any acknowledgement made of the potential limitations of using student subjects? The findings indicate that approximately half of the tax experiments investigated used student subjects. Of these, approximately 80% provided no justification for their chosen subject sample. A similar proportion did not acknowledge any limitations from the use of a student sample. Around half of the papers using student subjects extrapolated their findings to the general tax-paying population or provided tax policy recommendations. In addition, the research indicates that the tax discipline has not had the same level of robust debate on the use of student subjects in experimental research as that seen in other disciplines. This potentially limits the external validity and utility of many of the tax research experiments undertaken to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing body of literature which examines the personal experiences of social science practitioners who become reflexive researchers. Less, however, has been written on researchers who reflexively investigate once traumatising locations and experiences. This paper problematises the psychological and methodological challenges experienced by a social scientist and ‘survivor’ of wrongful conviction conducting reflexive research where the participants and researcher have a shared (hi)story of wrongful conviction and trauma. A particular consequence of conducting the study was that friendship groups were developed between researcher and participants. The paper will examine this phenomenon and conclude that reflexive ‘insider’ approaches that spawn friendship groups can provide rich data providing the challenges of such research are acknowledged and appropriate strategies employed to safeguard the integrity of the research. The paper similarly concludes that measures should be adopted to protect the psychological equilibrium of the ‘insider’ researcher to avoid possible re-traumatisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enterprise of biography inhabits a liminal world at the intersections of fact and fiction, (social) science and art, objective narrative and personal life story. While social scientists write, use and are the subjects of, biographies, there is relatively little discussion in the methodological literature as to the nature of biography as a form of life-writing. This paper discusses some of the issues of method and of ethics and reflexivity encountered during the research and writing of a biography of the prominent social scientist Barbara Wootton (1897-1988). It considers questions of consent and responsibility, the 'triangulation' of data derived from different sources (e.g. interviews, archives, autobiographical accounts; letters, published work and references to, and about, it), the relationship between biographer and biographee, the legitimacy of links between the private and the public, and issues of 'bias' and interpretation in the production of biographical narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last 100 years have witnessed a fervent debate in the USA about quantitative and qualitative research paradigms. Unfortunately, this has led to a great divide between quantitative and qualitative researchers, who often view themselves as in competition with each other. Clearly, this polarization has promoted purists, namely, researchers who restrict themselves exclusively either to quantitative or to qualitative research methods. Mono‐method research is the biggest threat to the advancement of the social sciences. Indeed, as long as we stay polarized in research, how can we expect stakeholders who rely on our research findings to take our work seriously? Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore how the debate between quantitative and qualitative is divisive and, hence, counterproductive for advancing the social and behavioural science field. This paper advocates that all graduate students learn to utilize and to appreciate both quantitative and qualitative research. In so doing, students will develop into what we term as pragmatic researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growing possibilities for conducting web surveys, researchers increasingly use such surveys to recruit student samples for research purposes in a wide array of social science disciplines. Simultaneously, higher education students are recurrently asked to complete course and teacher evaluations online and to participate in small-scale research projects of fellow students, potentially leading to survey fatigue among student populations across the globe. One of the most frequently reported effects of over-surveying is a decrease in overall response rates. This situation has significant impacts on the generalizability and external validity of findings based on web surveys. The collection of reliable data is, nevertheless, crucial for researchers as well as educational practitioners and administrators, and strategies should be developed for achieving acceptable response rates. This paper reports on a methodological experiment (N = 15,651) conducted at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, in which possible strategies to improve survey response are explored. I specifically focus on the impact of an extra reminder as well as specific reminder contents on response rates. The results reveal that extra reminders are effective for increasing response rates, but not for diversifying the sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces and reviews the use of focus group methodology across the social sciences, identifying three different research traditions within which it has been used. It examines some key considerations affecting the use of focus groups, and highlights three central features of focus group research: providing access to participants' own language, concepts and concerns; encouraging the production of more fully articulated accounts; and offering an opportunity to observe the process of collective sense-making in action. Finally, the paper outlines some of the issues in the analysis of focus group data-an area with considerable potential for future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss the genre and framing of student practical reports to illustrate methodological and moral—political tensions in the move towards qualitative research in psychology. Using these ‘apprenticeship accounts’ as indicative of prevailing disciplinary discourses of research practice, and after framing my own account of these accounts, I argue that claims made for qualitative research as necessarily more progressive or humane in its practice are unfounded. By focusing on the accounts of five key constructs in accounts of research processes (‘rapport’, truth, subjectivity, power and reflexivity) I suggest that the possibilities of qualitative work can be impoverished by being defined in relation to quantitative research for two related reasons: first, qualitative research is advocated to supplement the limits of quantitative work: second, it is seen as correcting procedural lacks and informational limitations of quantitative work rather than as a challenge to positivist epistemological assumptions guiding research. In this way, the current popularity of qualitative work within psychology may be as much an index of its incorporation within the discipline as of an emerging ‘paradigm shift’. Nevertheless, as a site of resistance, as well as regulation, to prevailing norms of psychological research the student reports document a process of institutional negotiation, and I suggest that the process of reading and discussing such texts can open up other possible spaces for engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response from Aaron V. Cicourel to a review of his book "Method & Measurement in Sociology," which celebrates its 50th anniversary, is presented. Particular focus is given to the genesis of the book, as well as its underlying theoretical framework. Topics discussed include collaboration and authorship conflicts over the book, preoccupation over the advantages and disadvantages of interviewing, and validity concept in the field of social sciences.

This paper explores the contrasts and complementarities of two different sets of archived data, life history interviews and diaries. Both are well-tried methods of data collection in the social sciences, but little attention has been given to ways of using them in combination. We begin with an outline of how we went about collecting data for archiving: recruiting 12 families, interviewing people aged 75 and over, and collecting diaries from other family members. We go onto present examples of the data from one particular family. We then compare what the interviews and diaries, analysed in combination, contributed to our understanding of time, concluding with comments on the relevance of different temporalities to current debates on family and intergenerational relationships. The archived data offer researchers interested in qualitative longitudinal investigations a complex and many-faceted understanding of temporality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments in archiving have built on a 50 year foundation of sharing social survey data and are enabling the take-up of data curation practices on a wider scale. Advances in data archiving have been driven by the quest for comparable and harmonised data sources and mandates from sponsors of research to make data accessible – to provide both transparency and to maximise re-use value. In this paper, I discuss four recent developments that are bringing challenges for social science data archives: methods for archiving qualitative data; providing safe access to disclosive data; institutional data archiving initiatives; and dealing with the emergence of ‘new’ data types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational research in Britain has been subject to substantial government intervention in recent years. The rationale for this has been the demands made by a model of evidence‐based policymaking and practice that carries implications for other fields of social research as well. In this paper, the growing influence of this model is sketched, and it is argued that it relies on some very questionable assumptions about what research can offer policymakers and practitioners. It is concluded that the consequences of enforcing this model are likely to be negative for both sides, but especially for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If we accept that social research is not simply a matter of representation, but involves actively intervening in and constructing our current social and political conditions, we are then presented with a set of problems about representation and intervention. The methodology, memory-work, is introduced here as one specifically developed for the purposes of undertaking politically engaged social research. In this paper, I describe the rationale and method of memory-work, emphasizing the ways in which it involves undoing the subject of linear, causal, biographical narratives and a notion of the subject as collectively constituted. I elucidate the method by drawing on an example from research about HIV subjectification in which the notion of individual responsibility arose as a problem for memory-workers- it simultaneously enables and constrains actively working on oneself and one's world. Discussing this research leads to a consideration of the ways in which the methodology needs to be adapted to reflect the specific concerns of one's time and place. I conclude with a discussion of the important but limited notion of history entailed in the original conception of memory-work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative Solutions and Research (QSR) provide merge tools for combining NUD*IST or NVivo 'projects' as neither package enables more than one researcher to work on a data set simultaneously (although, of course, turn-taking on the computer is possible). These tools appear to offer researchers collaborating in pairs and in teams the option to develop work separately and combine it for cross-analysis. Although the merge tools are easy to use, doing so effectively imposes some important limitations on the use of QSR software. This paper discusses four strategies for using merge effectively in team research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While international comparative studies of social polices is a well-established and fairly long-standing branch of social science (at least since the post-war development of the various configurations of the so called 'Welfare State' in Europe), there has clearly been a renewed surge of interest for this question in the past ten to fifteen years, a fact perhaps not unrealated to the institutional trend of 'European integration'. The resulting literature has thus become a successful and thriving sub-species within policy studies, in which disciplinary research is often subordinated to, and geared towards, the search for transferable 'good practice'. Yet be it for scientific or political and administrative purposes - 'policy transfer' - this research field seems to be riven both by doubt about the sheer relevance of and the the real scope for international comparison on the one hand, and on the other hand by a now long-drawn-out debate about the feasability of effective policy-transfers. The principal obstacles for international comparison, given the near-absence of a common international 'metalanguage' to describe and analyse polices in shared terms, would appear to be specific problems posed by the translation and description of 'foreign' social policies. Moreover, social policies themselves are often said to be too idiosyncratic and typical of each country to be adequately described, let alone really understood and transferred by foreign observers, analysts and policy-makers. Social policies are thus generally seen as differing radically from one national 'context' to another, and these 'contexts' themselves are often described, very deterministically it seems, as totally coherent and cohesive 'systems'. Against this dominant 'systemic' vision of national social policies so enbedded in their 'cultural' context that are barely translatable, hardly comparable, and utterly untransferrable, this paper argues that by choosing to analyse national sets of social policies into 'functional areas' and further into (more or less) discrete functions, it is quite possible to develop an approach whereby it becomes manifest that structural resemblances between societies give occasion to homothetic functions or sets of functions. This general point is illustrated by the particular example of 'urban social policies' in France ('politique de la ville') and Great Britian ('inner-city policy'). This is a policy area in which the institutional contexts are generally recognized to vary considerably between the two countries, but in which similar devices have been put in place to counter the adverse affects of the 'urban crisis' affecting France and Britain alike since the mid-sixties. Indeed, a recent comparative study of some of the lastest urban social policy programmes in both countries was able to conclude that not only was there a real convergence on policy objectives, but moreover that 'the actual measures available to take action differ little on either side of the Channel, and similarities are more striking than the differences' (Booth, Green and Paris 1997). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychology and other disciplines of social sciences, and even the medical discipline of psychiatry, are plagued by a tendency towards instrument development. In psychiatry there is the trend to develop more and more refined scales and interview schedules, in psychology we have an increasing trend to rely on measures of validity (and reliability) in the development of instruments to quantify otherwise rather little explored fields like intelligence, loneliness, severity of addiction, happiness, depression etc. The basic question asked in this paper is whether the statistical way of constructing realities is appropriate. The term precision is introduced for 'virtual' realities created by statistical modelling, whereas the term exactness is proposed for 'social' realities, realities by consensus, or meaning shared through a common grammar and, therefore, of communication value. The paper tries to set out social realities as pertaining to realities by consensus, created by a shared grammar of constructing things rather than by statistical associations. It goes on to examine some mathematical bases of qualitative research. The paper assumes that topology, communication theory, language development, emotional intelligence and a few other issues following a common grammar of constructing meaning can be helpful in promoting social science research. The basic issue: can we delink meaning from statistics, i.e. quantification? Drawing from examples from physics and biology the paper tries to give the answer of an assertive yes to this question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of Charles Ragin’s Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is increasing in the social sciences. However, some of its characteristics, especially those of its fuzzy set variant, are still not well understood by users. QCA, a set theoretic method, aims to describe, in a Boolean form, the configurations of conditions that are necessary and/or sufficient for some outcome. The calibration of set memberships is a central feature. We discuss how two alternative calibrations of a condition affect the assessment of consistency with sufficiency. Using first an abstract example and then an empirical one from the sociology of education, we explain why “stricter” calibration of conditions results in higher consistency with sufficiency. We demonstrate that conventional truth table analysis is not an ideal way to compare the analytic consequences of alternative calibrations and therefore employ an alternative which allows a more direct comparison of consistency indices while keeping comparative configurational contexts intact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on my own research experience, I argue in this paper for the advantages of a middle way in research which brings together the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative methods. This avoids the all too common tendencies in contemporary sociology to argue either from a very small number of individual biographies, or from sets of statistics not supported by in-depth research: research using one eye rather than two. This middle way has long been a familiar approach among historians, and also with a number of distinguished pioneer social researchers—including here Raymond T. Smith, Janet Finch and Peter Townsend—with whom I have recently recorded life story interviews. I also reflect on my own experience of some of the practical difficulties of using life stories drawn from large-scale samples and linked to quantitative studies, and in particular a recent study of stepfamilies based on the National Child Development Study cohort. I conclude that the philosophy of research needs to be changed, so that instead of a hard method and a soft method keeping their distance from each other except at the initial or concluding stages of research, the expectation should become a zigzag of mutual exploration: a sociology using both eyes to the full. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist social science is marked by its diversity, its ethos of inclusiveness and its critical power. These qualities are best exemplified in feminisms' acknowledgement, at the epistemological level, that men as well as women are crucial participants in the feminist enterprise. Moreover, epistemological justifications for positioning men within feminism is matched by a commitment to think through the methodological implications of men's involvement as both researchers and researched. In particular, inclusiveness pushes at the boundary of what counts as feminist methodology, and it forces us to rethink the underlying principles of feminist research work. In this article, two key feminist methodological principles--rapport and empathy, and democracy--are interrogated in the light of a series of in-depth interviews with a group of powerful, authoritative and uniformed men (senior police officers). It is suggested that while there may be a temptation to dismiss the interviewing relations which evolved as 'non-feminist', they are also indicative of feminist methodological vitality and strength as well as its capacity to accommodate the fractured subjectivities of research participants. The paper concludes by positing a re-conceptualization of interviewing principles which not only appreciate diversity in feminist epistemological and methodological commitments, but also variability and difference in feminist research relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the challenge of sustaining critical and committed research within individualist academic research practices by highlighting key features of the storied character of research accounts. Three issues that are negotiated within any research project are explored: firstly, received understandings of the possibilities of theory as a tool of intervention as well as an academic requirement for, and outcome of, research. Secondly, issues of commitment, whether political or disciplinary, and the interplay (and tensions) between the two are considered. Thirdly, issues of textuality are addressed, as expressing political and disciplinary questions of genre and audience, including the variety of forms of accountability researchers are both subject to and those we (should) institute to elaborate more than academic criteria for evaluation of research practice. By framing the commentary according to adaptations of accounts of the socially situated and encultured character of narration by Walter Benjamin and Donna Haraway, some theoretical resources for analysing and countering the individualist ethos of academic research are put forward. These then give rise to further practical questions around joint action and intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of Indigenous methodologies has grown strongly since Tuhiwai Smith's 1999 groundbreaking book Decolonizing Indigenous Methodologies. For the most part however, there has been a marked absence of quantitative methodologies with the methods aligned with Indigenous methodologies predominantly qualitative. This article proposes that the absence of an Indigenous presence from Indigenous data production has resulted in an overwhelming statistical narrative of deficit for dispossessed Indigenous peoples around the globe. Using the theoretical concept of Indigenous Lifeworlds this article builds on the core premises of Walter and Andersen's 2013 book Indigenous quantitative methodologies. Arguing for a fundamental disturbance of the Western logics of statistical data the article details recent developments in the field including the emergence of the Indigenous Data Sovereignty movement. The article also explores Indigenous quantitative methodologies in practice using the case study of a Tribal Epidemiology Centre in New Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the comparability of assessment tools under different format conditions. Prior studies have not considered the interaction of format and device on time to complete an assessment and have instead treated each of them separately with conflicting results. This study assesses, by linear regressions using web-based data, the performance of multiple devices under varying formats while controlling for non-device factors such as demographic information. The results of this study add to the growing literature on the equivalence among devices and formats used to collect and interpret performance in a variety of organizational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do research participants feel about having their 'ordinary' lives researched? This article focuses on how research participants manage the sharing of details emerging out of their ordinary lives in the context of research - an activity which, for most, is outside of the ordinary. Despite two significant research turns - towards reflexivity and towards the 'everyday' - these experiences remain curiously neglected. Drawing on a study of small acts of help and support, I seek to push methodological debate about researching the ordinary beyond the technical challenges of surfacing or capturing the apparently mundane or 'insignificant'. I do so by arguing that background feelings rooted in the living of, and sharing about, the ordinary are analytically important in their own right; that the 'ordinary' itself, therefore, has to be managed by research participants and researchers; and that Goffman's notion of performance is a useful tool for understanding how this is done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst critical realism (CR) is becoming recognised as a significant meta-theory for the social sciences, there is little guidance on how to produce research which is consistent with its ontological and epistemological assumptions. This article contributes to an emerging discussion about how CR can be applied, drawing on an example of a qualitative study that has sought to understand and explain the causes of unmet need amongst a group of rural labourers in Tunisia. Using this study as an illustration, I show how techniques from grounded theory methodology can be usefully harnessed in the data collection, coding and analysis stages of a research project that adopts a CR philosophical and methodological framework. I illustrate how an 'abductive' variant of grounded theory allowed drawing on pre-existing theoretical knowledge throughout the research stages; whilst open and axial coding techniques could be harnessed for identifying and postulating CR causal mechanisms. This article should be of interest to students and researchers involved with grounded theory and applied critical realism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though panel data are increasingly used in the social sciences, the question whether repeatedly participating in a panel survey affects respondents’ attitudes and (response) behaviour is still largely unsolved. Drawing on a model of associative networks that is extended by assumptions on survey satisficing, we present a theoretical framework that emphasizes the role of strength-related attributes of attitudes (accessibility, internal consistency, extremity) and motivation in respondents’ information processing. In particular, we argue that - depending on respondents’ predispositions - occupation with survey questions enhances attitude strength, which results in increasing attitude stability and influence on thoughts and behaviours. Against this background, we bring together hitherto unconnected results from previous research and thus contribute to a more thorough understanding of both the mechanisms and the multifaceted outcomes of panel conditioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose relational data modeling as a tool for replacing the ad hoc and uncoordinated approaches commonly used throughout the social sciences to gather, store, and disseminate data. We demonstrate relational data modeling using global electoral and political institutional data. We define a relational data model as a map of concepts, their attributes, and the relationships between concepts developed using a formal language and according to a set of rules. To demonstrate the methodology, we design a simple relational data model of six concepts: countries, parties, elections, districts, institutions, and election results. Furthermore, we introduce a data model to solve the particularly vexing issue of party discontinuity (party splits, mergers, and alliances). We show how the solution facilitates computational tasks, such as the calculation of core measures of political phenomena (ex: electoral volatility). Ultimately, a relational data approach will play a central role in collective investments to develop advanced data capabilities, and thereby advance the accuracy, pace, and transparency of scholarship in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seeking Research Ethics Committee (REC) approval in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) is increasingly encumbered by bureaucratic rules and regulations. Termed ‘ethics creep’, such governance is challenged by an emerging body of international literature. This article contributes to such literature by documenting the emotional vicissitudes of seeking REC approval in an Irish university, for a proposed sociological study of children with asthma. Our critical discussion includes an account of indeterminate bureaucratic procedures and protocol which, despite their formally rational and rationalised status, were unreasonable, insidious and frustrating. Challenging ‘ethics creep’ and promoting critical debate underpins our discussion of the researcher’s experiences and responses when confronted with bureaucratic irrationality – arguably something that not only taxes researchers’ emotions and commitment but also threatens to ‘strangle’ HSS research and the research base more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to contribute to debates about the current orthodoxy in relation to involving young people as participants in social research. This article will reflect on the increasing trend of including young people to greater degrees in social science research and questions whether ‘user involvement’ necessarily benefits the users or produces ‘better’ research. The dilemmas encountered in establishing and working with a Young People’s Advisory Group for a research project on young people’s experiences of violence in their intimate relationships are discussed in a way that illustrates the complexity of achieving benefits both for the young people and for the research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author discusses his studies of urban spatial movement in communities in Hertfordshire. He describes his study of the social changes in the villages of Hexton, Watton and Tewin in Hertfordshire which included investigations on the social changes involving farmers, middle class commuters and immigrants from abroad. The author explains the difficulties in understanding spatial movement without first understanding the differences between the villages which he studied. He examines the pattern of changes that impacted the villages and the various social classes and their differences.

This study assesses the scaling properties of some new measures of the fear of crime. The new conceptualization—a range of distinct but related constructs that constitute the fear of crime—comprises the interplay between emotion, risk perception and environmental perception. Data from a small‐scale survey are analysed using confirmatory factor analysis showing good scaling properties of the multiple indicators. Two implications of the new conceptualization for the rationality of the fear of crime are discussed. First, perceptions of the risk of crime seem to be a product of how individuals make sense of their social and physical environment. Second, the fear of crime may constitute such evaluations of community cohesion and moral consensus as well as specific experiences of ‘fear’ of ‘crime’—a way of seeing as well as a way of feeling. The conclusions consider ramifications for the rationality of the fear of crime, particularly in the context of reassurance policing in England and Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses whether the focus group method can be employed with troubled groups and for the discussion of high‐involvement topics. It analyses focus groups' discourse of high‐involvement topics, such as ‘the body’, ‘relationships’, and ‘sexuality’, conducted with female adolescents aged 15–20 years at a detention home. Contrary to the traditional belief that the focus group method is designed for low‐involvement topics and mainstream groups, our analyses of the discursive devices employed suggest that the method can indeed be used for high‐involvement topics. We also argue that other methods would not have given us ‘deeper’ insights and that the focus group method can be seen as a less intrusive method to be used in this setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the relationship between feminism and qualitative research. Utilization of qualitative methods and quantitative approaches to research studies; Reasons for the intellectual development of the discipline of sociology; Importance of contingent factors in pulling feminism in the direction of qualitative methods.

The need to provide an evaluation of policy implementation is an integral part of almost all work carried out by organizations. Accordingly, many social science researchers will undertake some form of evaluation work during their careers. For many, this task will prove relatively unproblematic. However, for some, evaluation research may pose a number of difficulties. This reflexive article explores one area of concern, focusing as it does on some of the consequences and problems that emerge when researchers undertaking evaluations become involved in the consequences of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]