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The aim of this paper is to investigate social mobility processes affecting the lives of 15 young adults in Loughborough (aged 20-30) who experienced poverty and disadvantage as children. Using biographical narrations, the interactions between the labour market, welfare, educational institutions and familial relationships will form the framework for assessing the applicability of poverty 'transmission' theories and mechanisms. The paper's concluding comments highlight the complexity and vulnerability of young people's lives, reveal the structural and individual constraints on social mobility and address the role that institutions play in constructing the past and current life experiences of those young adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting on neo-liberal and Deleuzian theory, this paper examines how new modes of governance are shaping Australian regions and what kind of resistance is emerging in response to them, in particular to government encouragement of business and commercial appropriation. The first part of the paper discusses recent literature on regional policy-making in the context of neo-liberalism. It is argued that Deleuzian metaphors such as 'reterritorialisation', 'deterritorialisation', 'machinic assemblages', 'folding' and 'lines of flight' provide a rich conceptual vocabulary that can be used to enhance an understanding of contemporary regional policy-making. To demonstrate the efficacy of this claim, the paper draws upon the example of policy-making in the Australian State of Tasmania and the conflicts these policies have generated. Amongst the paper's conclusions is that the competitive practices now being pursued within the auspices of regional policy-making generate a set of new interactions that have significance both across Australia and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a tribute to esteemed scholar Manfred M. Fischer along with information on papers published in the 2007 issue of "The Review of Regional Studies." Fischer has given the academy a virtually unending stream of papers and books of the highest quality. He also given of himself for the betterment of the academic institutions and organizations for which he is a member. Fischer is currently working as a professor in the Institute for Economic Geography and GIScience and the Dead for the Department of Social Sciences of the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. The papers that appear in this issue have been produced by scholars who have given much to regional science and spatial analysis in their own right.

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]

This paper addresses Appadurai's challenge to expand the research imagination. It follows Boaventura de Sousa Santos in suggesting a need to separate analytically the trajectories of capitalism and modernity. For Santos, this involves the recognition that we cannot solve the problems of postmodernity with the tools of modernity. The paper approaches this problem through a focus on the idea of comparison as a high point of modern social science. It outlines five critiques of the ways that comparison has been used that both assume and reinforce the assumptions of modernity: that comparison is not the only way that relations between states can be elaborated; that cases and variables should not be wrested from their wider contexts; that assumptions of the predominance of the national level, especially as the basis for comparative indicators, are misleading; that the acceptance of a common set of measures constructs silences in the world outside the West; and that it does not ask whose knowledges are being recognised. The paper proposes four possible forms of moving comparison towards what Santos calls ‘translation’—‘expanding mutual intelligibility without destroying the identity of the partners of translation’; a critical theory that recognises that silences are constructed; distinguishing between rules of recognition and rules of realisation; constructing a level at which different concepts may be made commensurable; and creating a set of ‘education questions’ as a ‘contact zone where different conceptions may meet to construct reciprocal intelligibility and expand the research imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently some social psychological approaches have intensified their contributions to research in the environmental domain, helping it to focus more consistently on the shared aspects of all environment related experiences. The goal of this paper is that of joining these efforts, exploring the contributions of the social representations approach to research on environmental concern and environmental thought, as another area for applying social psychological knowledge. The paper first sketches how the environmental concern of the publics emerged in the 70s as a problem for the social sciences and proceeds to summarizing the main characteristics of this research, focusing on three problematic areas: (1) incipient theoretical integration among the frameworks dominating research; (2) insufficient reflection about the assumptions and measurement of the concepts employed; (3) a need for new research questions that push studies beyond the analysis of the socio-demographical correlates of beliefs. Afterwards a presentation of social representations theory will be undertaken and the usefulness of the approach to deal with some aspects of the problematic areas identified will be explored, with examples from recent research, and highlighting the importance of focusing on contradiction, polyphasia, and the articulation of the local and the global. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research, with a capital 'R', is a subject of considerable concern within South African ruling circles. There's not enough of it, and it's not the right kind, or so the argument runs. Recognising the importance of the material conditions of the researchers and the need for a bottom-up approach to developing research priorities, this paper focuses on the state of sociology research in South Africa today. It demonstrates that, over the past twelve years, a marked increase in the output of masters and doctoral graduates has been accompanied by a decline in the level of completed research by qualified sociologists. In terms of publications, there has been a significant increase in the proportion produced by women, but a negligible change in the number by black scholars. The paper rejects pessimistic assessments of the state of South African sociology. It concludes by arguing that the discipline should place itself at the centre of an integrated and engaged social science by drawing diverse strands together at a local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Resilience theory’ is a systematic methodology for understanding the dynamics of coupled social-ecological systems (SESs). Its ongoing development requires that resilience theory be confronted with case studies to assess its capacity to help understand and develop policy for SESs. This paper synthesizes the findings from several papers in the special feature ‘Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems’ that do just this. It then highlights key challenges facing resilience as a theory for understanding SESs and provides some avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How has sociology evolved over the last 40 years? In this paper, we examine networks built on thousands of sociology-relevant papers to map sociology's position in the wider social sciences and identify changes in the most prominent research fronts in the discipline. We find first that sociology seems to have traded centrality in the field of social sciences for internal cohesion: sociology is central, but not nearly as well bounded as neighboring disciplines such as economics or law. Internally, sociology appears to have moved away from research topics associated with fundamental social processes and toward social-problems research. We end by discussing strategies for extending this work to wider science production networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a personal view of the need for and uses of theory in educational research. It draws on the work of two exemplary theorists to point up the epistemological role of theory in making research possible and making it reflexive. The second section of the paper deploys some recent ideas and research from class theory and class analysis to suggest some of the limitations of the use of social class in current educational research and some ways of thinking differently about class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines aspects of the relationship between teaching and research in higher education in social science research methods, with particular reference to the subject area of Education. There are three main themes: reflections on how social science research methods should be (or are) taught; a review of current debates about the relationship between teaching and research, both in higher education and for school teachers; and finally, reporting how a group of educational practitioners (mainly school teachers) studying at Masters level experience learned about research methods. The paper is illustrated by qualitative data from a case study of student experiences of research methods teaching on a Masters degree in Education in a research-intensive UK university. It is suggested that studying the journey embarked upon by taught postgraduate students inexperienced in research is helpful in understanding how learning about research methods takes place, which in turn can assist future research methods teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To provide rigour when preparing a research design, the researcher needs to carefully consider not only the methodology but also the philosophical intent of the study. This, however, is often absent from reported research and provides the reader with little evidence by which to judge the merits of the chosen methodology and its influence on the study. The purpose of this paper is to set out the case for critical realism as a framework to guide appropriate action in practice development and realistic evaluation for understanding the consequences of those actions. It is evident that critical realism and critical social science share common ground. Emancipatory practice development (ePD) is based on the philosophy of critical social science and therefore by virtue is linked to the tenets of critical realism. Until now, the evaluation of ePD programme has been well served by 4th-generation evaluation. However, this paper outlines the need for a different approach to evaluation, one that is based on critical realism, that is concerned with emancipation, and that can be used in the ever-changing environment of clinical practice. Realistic evaluation not only links strongly to ePD programmes, but also serves as the basis for effective research questions that will test the outcomes of the research and inform the transferability of ePD mechanisms into differing contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a first-person experiential observational study by a newcomer to the use of research initiatives to combat poverty in two geographic regions and Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. Drawing on participatory action research and the tradition of ‘the animateur’ (catalyst-facilitation), the work of the sponsoring local agency, Research Initiatives Bangladesh (RIB) is described as illuminating a range of quite powerful applications. The paper is part of a larger project to bring to a western audience knowledge of the use of these methodologies in the Indo-Asian region, and some comparative reflections on them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a conceptual investigation into the notion of a network as a form of social organization for the production of excellent research. This metaphor has been particularly attractive to social scientists and managers of cooperative research, because it seems to connote what is organic, flexible and libratory in communication and in the philosophy of language. The paper criticizes this preconception. In particular, it shows that, while Wittgenstein's philosophy may indeed encapsulate the virtues that partisans for the networking trope admire, they are mistaken in thinking that they can claim his authority for the use they make of this figure. The thought that they can do so results from inattention to features of the development of his ideas about language, particularly his fervent anti-scientism. I conclude that an over-stretched use of the metaphor obscures its constraining signification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this journal is to provide a medium for the publication of original papers covering the entire span of sociological thought and research. The editor is particularly keen to publish work on current developments in research and analysis. All contributions, correspondence and books for review should be addressed to The British Journal of Sociology, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London. Papers submitted for publication are normally read by at least two assessors as well as by one of the editors. The editor's decision will be final. A decision of an article will usually be sent to authors within four months of submission, however, whilst every effort will be made to follow this practice, it should be understood that there may be circumstances where this will be difficult to guarantee. Articles submitted to the journal should be an original piece of work, not been published before and not being considered for publication elsewhere in its final form either in printed or electronic form.

This paper presents the reflections of two researchers employed at a cancer research unit. We reflect often together about the difficult emotional issues involved in working with cancer patients. To formalize these conversations we audiotaped and transcribed four dialogue sessions during which we asked ourselves the following questions: What are we learning about ourselves as we become immersed in this work? How do we negotiate our positions as both social scientists and as individuals who empathize with research participants about emotional/existential issues? This paper will explore our responses and reflections about some of our emotional connections to the women with whom we work, as well as our limitations and points of disconnect. We conclude that researchers are not dispassionate observers of others’ experiences and could benefit from working in an atmosphere where reflecting and processing painful emotions with colleagues or through writing is fostered and valued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM), this paper estimates the impact of random assignment into an anti-poverty program, New Hope, on earnings. The use of HLM allows for an examination of program impacts on levels, as well as trends, in quarterly data spanning more than two years of earnings. Results show that New Hope is associated with higher final levels of earnings. Additionally, results indicate that experimental group members experienced rapid earnings growth immediately after the quarter of random assignment, but that their earnings growth did not increase at a significant rate over the subsequent two-year period. Like many welfare recipients today, New Hope participants were required to work in order to receive the program's benefits. The results from this paper indicate that such a policy can lead to a rapid increase in participants' earnings, but that earnings may not continue to increase over time and may not increase enough to lift families out of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has benefited greatly from the time that I have recently spent working on the Committee of Section H of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. I am particularly grateful to David Shankland and Malcolm Smith, both of whom have served as Recorders for Section H, for generously sharing their knowledge and reminiscences of the Section with me. The paper further benefited from comments received at the recent 2004 Festival of Science in Exeter at which I presented it in a session entitled‘Anthropology after Darwin: The role of the BA’. I also acknowledge the helpful comments of three anonymous reviewers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the periodical, Sociological Methodology. Sociological Methodology is a journal that seeks to publish excellent contributions to each and every one of the many and diverse research methodologies that sociologists use in their research,or that they would want to use, if they knew of these methods or how to adapt them to sociological analysis. Many think of sociological methodology as a synonym for statistics or quantitative research methods. These Pavlovian responses are unfortunate. The editors of Sociological Methodology have consistently sought outstanding papers on all sociologically useful methods, including those that are generally perceived to be non-statistical and non-quantitative. Sociological Methodology is a refereed journal. The editor picks referees to render opinions on papers,makes editorial decisions based substantially (but not entirely) on referee reports, protects reviewers' identities from wounded authors,and does his best to protect authors from unfair, incompetent, or simply mistaken reviews. The editor also does his best to protect authors from his own errors by attending carefully to the comments of reviewers and by honoring any reasoned request for reconsideration and re-review. The system works on a web of redundant checks and balances,overseen by the editor.

There has so far only been little research attention given to how families actively engage in promoting their health in everyday life. In this paper a theoretical framework is proposed for studies of the ‘health-promoting family’ with particular focus on children''s health and well-being. This paper sets out a conceptual model for understanding how the family can play a part in promoting both the health of children and children''s capacities as health-promoting actors. It draws on contemporary social science approaches to health, the family and children, suggesting a new emphasis on the family''s ecocultural pathway, family practices and the child as a health-promoting actor. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Human Development Index (HDI) implicitly defines "human development" and ranks countries accordingly. To elucidate the HDI's meaning of "human development," the paper examines the sensitivity of the HDI to changes in its components, namely social indicators of education, longevity and standard of living. The HDI is next compared with two alternatives, the Life Quality Index (LQI) and a Time Allocation lndex (TAI) developed in this paper from the HDI's components. Also considered is the likely uncertainly in the HDI and what it means for HDI rankings. It is concluded that the HDI's weighting of the gross domestic product is in good agreement with peoples' preferences as revealed in the LQI and the TAI; further, that the HDI places many times greater weight on education than is indicated by peoples' allocation of time in developed countries. Literacy is accorded very high weight in the HDI, but its measure is unreliable. The HDI ranking of highly developed nations is so close and so uncertain that it is meaningless. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in this volume generally represent new developments in anthropology and cultural theory. Inevitably, in an evolutionary flowering, divergence can occur. Two of the papers represent a very new approach to theory for anthropology. This note discusses issues related to construction of theory that distinguish those papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two programmatic essays, Peter Jackson has reviewed new critical research on the geographical lives of commodities. This paper offers a constructive critique of his particular reading of this research. It is argued that three major issues require urgent attention if critical geographers and fellow-travellers are to take their commodity research forward. First, there is too much imprecision in the use of the related terms 'commodities', 'commodification' and 'commoditization'. This threatens to render all three terms meaningless or at the very least confusing. Secondly, this lack of conceptual clarity is linked to the problem of superficial engagements with normative issues. It is argued that the recent geographical research on commodities has thus far glossed over important questions of both academic and lay judgement. Finally, the paper suggests that the 'modest' role for critical academics envisaged by Jackson and other commodity researchers is only defensible if questions of voice, message and audience are addressed systematically. Overall, the paper presents a menu of explanatory and normative issues that require attention if critical commodity analysts like Jackson are to maximize the potential of their research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a broad-based overview of the development of emancipatory disability research in the UK since its emergence in 1992. Drawing on personal experience in the field, the author responds to several important considerations that need to be addressed before considering adopting this controversial perspective. The paper is divided into two main sections. The first part provides a concise introduction to the thinking that underpins the concept of emancipatory disability research. The second section discusses key elements of this approach including the problem of accountability, the social model of disability, choice of methods and, enpowerment, dissemination and outcomes. The paper concludes by suggesting that whilst there has been considerable progress over the last decade the future of emancipatory disability research remains precarious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses spatial inequality as an emerging specialty area in sociology. Rural sociologists have long attended to spatial inequalities. The authors tend to view their work as uniquely centered on the rural experience, as opposed to occupying the forefront of spatializing stratification theory and of sociology as a whole. First the development of sociological interest in spatial inequality is discussed, providing an overview of factors that have contributed to a spatial trend in the study of stratification. Then, the implications for rural sociology are discussed, describing how rural sociologists contribute to research on spatial inequality, and distinguishes the approach of rural sociology from those of other subfields and disciplines. Finally, some examples of research in this emerging specialty area are highlighted by drawing from papers included in this issue. The authors call for the development of research based on qualitative approaches to provide deeper insights into the processes linking space with stratification, both from the perspective of people who are disadvantaged and from the standpoint of those who enjoy an advantage because of such a connection. They encourage the development of international and cross-national research on spatial inequality to broaden the understanding of the links between space and inequality.

The results from four studies are reported separately to test the idea that influential articles in psychology will be more readable than less influential ones. This idea is upheld when the papers involved are ones that have been highly rated by fellow colleagues (Studies 1 and 2) but it is not supported when the papers involved are highly-cited journal articles (Studies 3 and 4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the advantages of graphical mapping of national research publication and citation profiles from scientific fields in order to provide additional information with respect to research performance. By means of multi-dimensional scaling techniques national social science profiles from seventeen OECD countries and two periods, 1989-1993 and 1994-1998, are mapped, each profile represented by a vector of either publication volumes or citation values for nine social science fields. Aside from demonstrating the developments of publication volumes and citedness ranges as well as patterns, the graphical maps display clusters and similarities of national profiles over time. Combined with international rankings of averaged national impact factors (NIF) relative to the average world impact of field (WIF) for the same number of fields and periods, the graphical display supplies additional otherwise concealed information of the differences in research patterns between countries - even when the NIFs are quite similar. The analyses show that low Pearson correlation coefficients can be applied to flag extraordinary instances of either high or low national citation impacts during a period. Most importantly, the graphical maps make a strong case for adjusting or tuning the baseline impact to the actual national publication profiles when comparing NIFs of different countries. A new indicator, the Tuned Citation Impact Index (TCII) is proposed. It is constructed from the amount of expected citations a country ought to have received in each research field aggregated over its true profile. Common baseline profiles, like those of the world or EU, are consequently not regarded as the ideal benchmark. In the case illustrated by the journal publications of the social sciences the paper verifies the hypothesis that a dominant central cluster exists consisting of the large Anglo-American countries: USA, Canada and the UK. A further hypothesis, that the smaller northern EU countries with English as the second language are located together and close to the central cluster on the publication maps is only partly satisfied in the second period. A third hypothesis, that countries located near the central cluster on the citation maps may hold high(er) NIFs is falsified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over ninety years ago Lev Vygotsky warned of a growing crisis in psychology and social science research. Vygotsky’s warning has been echoed on many occasions but his solution to the problem has not been widely acknowledged. He advocated for a form of meta-science which he called “general science”, an integrative science that could connect and guide the development of specialised disciplines and schools of research. In this paper I explore the parallels between Vygotsky’s general science and contemporary forms of meta-level research and discuss their relevance and implications for addressing global challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Aim To discuss the implications of drawing on core nursing knowledge as theoretical scaffolding for qualitative nursing enquiry. Background Although nurse scholars have been using qualitative methods for decades, much of their methodological direction derives from conventional approaches developed for answering questions in the social sciences. The quality of available knowledge to inform practice can be enhanced through the selection of study design options informed by an appreciation for the nature of nursing knowledge. Design Discussion paper. Data sources Drawing on the body of extant literature dealing with nursing's theoretical and qualitative research traditions, we consider contextual factors that have shaped the application of qualitative research approaches in nursing, including prior attempts to align method with the structure and form of disciplinary knowledge. On this basis, we critically reflect on design considerations that would follow logically from core features associated with a nursing epistemology. Implications for nursing The substantive knowledge used by nurses to inform their practice includes both aspects developed at the level of the general and also that which pertains to application in the unique context of the particular. It must be contextually relevant to a fluid and dynamic healthcare environment and adaptable to distinctive patient conditions. Finally, it must align with nursing's moral mandate and action imperative. Conclusion Qualitative research design components informed by nursing's disciplinary epistemology will help ensure a logical line of reasoning in our enquiries that remains true to the nature and structure of practice knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pretest-posttest studies are an important and popular method for assessing treatment effects or the effectiveness of an intervention in many areas of scientific research. There are two distinct features for this type of study: availability of baseline information for all subjects in the study and missingness by design of measures of the responses. Important recent research advances on this topic include Leon et al. (2003) on efficient estimation of the treatment effect, and Huang et al. (2008) on a semi-parametric estimation procedure based on empirical likelihood (EL) where the mean responses for the treatment group and the control group are handled separately. EL ratio confidence intervals or tests for the treatment effect, however, cannot be constructed under the approach used by Huang et al. (2008). In this paper, we use an alternative EL formulation, which directly involves the parameter of interest, i.e., the treatment effect, and incorporates baseline information through an imputation approach. Our focus is to derive the EL ratio confidence intervals and tests for the treatment effect under the proposed imputation-based framework. Theoretical results are developed, and finite sample performances of the proposed methods with comparison to existing approaches are investigated through simulation studies. An application to a real data set is also presented. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 43: 378-402; 2015 © 2015 Statistical Society of Canada [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Written roughly a year before the end of his life, Guattari’s ‘The Ethico-Political Foundations of Interdisciplinarity’ elaborates an account of transdisciplinary research processes closely informed by his conception of transversality. Tacitly critiquing institutions of research that separate it from the political practices associated with the reinvention of democracy, the paper explores in particular the possibilities of conducting transversal research into urban life, and speculates on the value of information technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Basic research' is based on epistemological and intentional criteria. In terms of science policy, however, these criteria imply contradictory views on investment in 'basic research'. The former espouses the linear model of innovation and encourages policy-makers concerned with economic problems to expand investment on basic research. However, the latter can collide with the policy norm of policy-makers and discourage investment in 'basic research' in an institutional setting where the nation-state prevails over scientists, as in South Korea. Emphasizing policy ideas and policy learning, this paper empirically shows that changes in investment priority and the emergence of new concepts about 'basic research' are co-products of a policy paradigm of the linear model and a policy norm of industrial competitiveness in Korea. Specifically, emphasis was placed on the balance between pure and oriented basic research, but moved on to 'oriented basic research', 'basic engineering', and to 'basic research' coupled with 'woncheon-technology'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International collaboration is one of the effective ways to enhance the impact of scientific research papers. In this research, international research collaboration papers published by world-class universities in the field of humanities and social sciences from 2015 to 2019 were selected as the research object, and the effective enhancement of the impact of international research collaboration papers was found to not be dependent on expanding the scale of international research collaboration, but rather on selecting researchers with different international backgrounds and from high-level institutions for collaboration. It was also discovered that, in the field of humanities and social sciences, despite a relatively low proportion of international research collaboration papers being led by Chinese scholars, the Chinese research is characterized by a higher impact compared with the research led by non-Chinese scholars. In light of this, a series of proactive measures should be taken by China's world-class universities, such as actively participating in and initiating international collaboration, selecting high-level research collaborators, and attracting scholars from different countries to engage in research collaboration in the field of humanities and social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the character of the debate about 'quantitative' and 'qualitative' methods in feminist social science. The 'paradigm argument' has been central to feminist social science methodology; the feminist case against 'malestream' methods and in favour of qualitative methods has paralleled other methodological arguments within social science against the unthinking adoption by social science of a natural science model of inquiry. The paper argues in favour of rehabilitating quantitative methods and integrating a range of methods in the task of creating an emancipatory social science. It draws on the history of social and natural science, suggesting that a social and historical understanding of ways of knowing gives us the problem not of gender and methodology, but of the gendering of methodology as itself a social construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay describes institutional ethnography as a method of inquiry pioneered by Dorothy E. Smith, and introduces a collection of papers which make distinctive contributions to the development of this novel form of investigation. Institutional ethnography is presented as a research strategy which emerges from Smith‘s wide-ranging explorations of the problematic of the everyday world. Smith‘s conception of the everyday world as problematic involves a critical departure from the concepts and procedures of more conventional sociologies. She argues for an alternative sociology which begins with the standpoint of the actor in everyday life, rather than from within a professional sociological discourse aligned with the society‘s ruling institutions. The familiar sociologies of everyday life do not suffice for this purpose, since they deal with local settings and social worlds, but stop short of examining how these are knitted into broader forms of social organization. In contrast, institutional ethnography examines how the scenes of everyday life are shaped by forms of social organization which cannot be fully grasped from within those scenes. The principal tasks of institutional ethnography include describing the coordination of activities in the everyday world, discovering how ideological accounts define those activities in relation to institutional imperatives, and examining the broader social relations in which local sites of activity are embedded. The four papers which follow demonstrate that specific contributions to institutional ethnography can be made in relation to a wide array of topics, methods, and interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As researchers, we cannot be outside society and thus activities such as "science," or "objectivity" are striated with procedures for minimizing or celebrating the presence of the researcher in the research product. Our recognition of the situated character of scientific knowledge is the context in which questions about the researchers‘ relation to the group s/he studies have arisen. The paper begins with a review of the Insider/Outsider debate which circles around the researcher‘s relation to those she studies. Where the researcher enters the research site as an Insider - someone whose biography (gender, race, class, sexual orientation and so on) gives her a lived familiarity with the group being researched - that tacit knowledge informs her research producing a different knowledge than that available to the Outsider - a researcher who does not have an intimate knowledge of the group being researched prior to their entry into the group. This paper describes the research issues that arise and the various strategies researchers have used to manage them. The argument then shifts to query the social boundaries implicit in the construction of research Insiders and Outsiders. Reflecting on research that explored mothering for schooling, the article shows that researchers are rarely Insiders or Outsiders. Rather, research is constructed in a relationship with many Others. The interaction of individual biography and social location shape the research relation in complex ways which undercut the common-sense translation of historical familiarity into epistemological privilege. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on a qualitative research study, Children, Parents and Risk. This study looks at the ways in which risks to children are understood and managed by children and parents. The paper focuses on two areas of the research—gaining access and interviewing—in order to show how the research process itself has constituted an important source of data on childhood and risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the interactional underpinnings of social scientific research. Based on a detailed examination of a two-hour research interview it describes aspects of the conversational practices through which social scientific knowledge is generated. Put critiques of interview research have been somewhat unilateral in their focus, typically examining how researchers impose understandings on their subjects' reports. This paper moves beyond the unilateral focus to describe how researcher and subjects interact to mutually develop procedures for doing the actual research and collaboratively assemble their product. The analysis treats evaluative knowledge as a locally managed, interactional achievement. It stresses the practical, the situ character of how knowledge is co-produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing interest of geographers in the sociology of science, no work has been done on the structure analysis of a community of geographers engaged in a particular research specialty. The paper sketches the set-theoretic foundations for such work and reviews the literature on research specialties. Particular attention is focused upon the descriptions of social and cognitive structures yielded from citation analysis. Citations are used to explore the structure of one research specialty, spatial diffusion modeling, this is accomplished using multidimensional scaling (MDS) and Q-analysis. The graphical description yielded by MDS does not prove illuminating, but the algebraic, structural description provided by Q-analysis, whereby both citing and cited papers are considered, offers a more useful interpretation. Q-analysis is suggested as a natural language in which to investigate further the structure and dynamics of research specialties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes the form of a double text which simultaneously investigates the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) through citation analysis, and investigates citation analysis using theoretical ideas from SSK and Foucault. One strand of the text performs an analysis of citation patterns in SSK. This text identifies the figures who have had the most impact through their articles and books, and examines the possible effects of cultural and linguistic bias. It also investigates the impact of SSK outside the field, asks whether this impact has changed over time, and identifies researchers who have had a particularly high impact outside SSK. The other strand takes citation analysis, as exemplified in the citation study of SSK, as its topic. This text focuses on the way the citation analysis constitutes its field of study, and on the way a citation is produced as a separable, countable category. It notes the 'realistic' idea of science categories which is deployed, and the individualistic model of scientific activity. It questions the involvement of citation analysis with power, both in the traditional sense of institutional control of science through funding changes, and in the Foucaldian sense of scientists adopting citation counting as a regime of self-regulation. The paper ends with a dialogue between the 'authors' on/in these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents group of papers and related discussion arising from the workshop on "Federal Funding and Knowledge Growth in Subfields and Specialties of Science," held at the U.S. National Science Foundations, under the aegis of its Division of Policy Research and Analysis, in Washington D.C. region, as of February 1, 1986. The author expresses gratitude to Susan Cozzens, of that Division, who undertook the duties of Guest Editor for this "Theme Section." Her cheerful and efficient performance in this role is warmly appreciated. The author wonders about the content and balance of a journal such as "Social Studies of Science," which relies for most of its material on unsolicited submissions of research papers, are largely determined by the journal's image-- and that image may bear little, relation to reality. In entering the sixteenth year, changes have been made in the team of Editorial Advisers. The author is thankful to Michael Gibbons, Ian Mitroff, Marcel Roche, Jarlath Ronayne, Jean-Jacques Salomon and Brigitte Schroeder-Gudehus: they have all given devoted service to us over the years, and they are counted as continuing friends of the journal.

The objective of this paper is to develop a statement of those conditions that facilitate and those that obstruct the internationalization of social science knowledge. The topic merits investigations if for no other reason than that the internationalization of culture of all forms is an increasingly visible and salient phenomenon in our time. This process is evident at many levels, the spread of science and technology, fueled by the intensity of international economic competition; the diffusion of ideologies, notably those of democracy and modernization; the growth of common norms associated with growing economic and political interdependence, and the growing flow of persons through migration and tourism and the diffusion of culture, especially popular culture, through the expanded international system of the media, especially television. This paper distinguishes among three aspects of knowledge-research, training and learning - and the content and quality of knowledge. Research refers to the formal creation and codification of knowledge. Considered analytically, this activity is not attached to any special kind of social structure; knowledge has been created and codified informally, for example, in peasant agriculture and traditional crafts, and chroniclers and historians have accumulated facts and lore about societies for many centuries.

Historical demography as a separate discipline came into existence when family reconstruction was first developed for the analysis of a pre-transition population. This paper assesses the significant achievements made in this field of population studies since then. Attention is also paid to equally significant findings obtained from aggregative analysis based on back projection, and to a large body of research results for the period of the demographic transition. In the last part of the paper, new research directions are discussed. Data issues as well as methodological ones are raised. Special attention is given to newly emerging Asian historical demography where different source materials require different methods and techniques, which in turn are expected to broaden the scope of the so far disproportionality fertility-oriented field. Finally, discussions are extended to economic, cultural and institutional aspects of the subject, with a plea not to isolate demographic analysis from other branches of historical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues, by way of empirical example, that the long-accepted contention that participant-observation research can best be accomplished by strangers who become like natives is by no means the only or even best approach. Rather, natives can be trained to distance themselves from their own group, making use of inherently objective sociological and anthropological perspectives. Such natives-as-strangers are more likely to be cognizant of nuances in the cultural life being studied. Using the example of the author's research among Jews, the paper also outlines some of the risks of this native-as-stranger approach, foremost among them being the tendencies to take too much for granted and to become alienated from one's native group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable attention has been given recently to the perplexing problem of the relationship between attitudes and behavior (Ehrlich, 1969; Deutscher, 1969; Warner and DeFleur, 1969; Ajzen et al., 1970; Lastrucci, 1970; Tarter, 1970). Methodological issues have been debated, the lack of congruence between attitudes and behavior has been examined, and a variety of solutions have been offered. We are told, for example, that the continuing poor correlation between measured attitudes and overt behavior requires us to search for the intervening variable or variables which apparently obtain (Ehrlich, 1969); or to employ the "direct observation" of the phenomenon under investigation rather than try to extrapolate from paper-and-pencil tests to behavior (Deutscher, 1969); or to develop theories that, in turn, enable us to find indicators that are more valid than the paper-and-pencil type (Lastrueci, 1970); or to simply admit that attitudes as "presently conceptualized play no real role in behavior" (Tarter, 1970). A number of important aspects of attitude research, however, have been obscured or omitted in these discussions. For the surprising aspect of the situation is not, as has often been implied, the lack of congruence between attitudes and behavior, but the persistent use of research designs that are inappropriate for the complexity of the subject under investigation. Further, it is surprising that researchers have failed to draw out other important implications of their research. That is, the fact that an attitude does not lead directly to a behavior does not justify the assertion that attitudes play no role in behavior, or that attitude research lacks significant implications for social life. The basis for this latter statement will be shown below in a discussion of the values of attitude research. It may be that inadequate research designs, valued for their simplicity rather than their appropriateness, are a manifestation of the "publish or perish" syndrome. In any ease, this paper attempts to outline the problems and the values of attitude research, and to demonstrate thereby that such research is of great significance for the understanding of social phenomena. If that significance seems minimized by those studies that have found poor correlation between attitudes and behavior, the fault lies both in the failure to create research designs that reflect the complexity of the problem and in the tendency to exalt the importance of the proximate causes of overt behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research training at higher education level for clinical and teaching staff is important and there are methods to introduce research culture in employees at clinical and teaching departmental level. Objectives: To recognize and quantify the research productivity status of teaching and clinical faculty of (DUHS) Dow University of Health Sciences Karachi before and after its establishment in 2003. Design: Non experimental cross sectional study. Period: 1st October 2012 to 1st February 2013. Setting: Medical college Karachi. Subjects and method: Students of third semester were applied to sort out the ten years record from 1998 to 2008 of all researches conducted by faculty of Dow University of Health Sciences, published in international and national journals by using different online search engines. Research Output was measured in terms of the increase in the number of publications and quality of publications before and after the launch of Dow University. Data was entered in Microsoft office excel version 2007 and analyzed it in statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 17; Pearson chisquare was applied to test the statistical significance at 95% confidence interval. Results: Data of total 594 researches was found out between the years 1998 to 2008, 175(29.5%) researches were published before the foundation of Dow university of Health sciences Karachi (2003) while 419(70.5) researches were produced after 173(45.6%) research papers were published in indexed journals before, "whereas" 206(54.4%) were published in indexed journal after 2003. Original research articles were 152 (31%) before 2003, which rose to 339 (69%). Publications of article types such as case reports, case series, and short communication, editorials and review articles also increased to 80 from 23 after establishment of Dow University. Conclusions: From a total of 594 faculty researches o published in indexed and non indexed journals between the years 1998 and 2008; there was a significant increase in production after establishment of Dow university of Health Sciences Hence it is confidently reported that due to establishment of research committees after the founding, there is a promotion and facilitation of research activities among faculty members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores social scientists' and humanities (SSH) scholars' integration within the academic medical research environment. Three questions guided our investigation: Do SSH scholars adapt to the medical research environment? How do they navigate their career within a culture that may be inconsistent with their own? What strategies do they use to gain legitimacy? The study builds on three concepts: decoupling, doxa, and epistemic habitus. Twenty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with SSH scholars working in 11 faculties of medicine across Canada. Participants were selected through purposeful and snowball sampling. The data were analyzed by thematic content analysis. For most of our participants, moving into medicine has been a challenging experience, as their research practices and views of academic excellence collided with those of medicine. In order to achieve some level of legitimacy more than half of our participants altered their research practices. This resulted in a dissonance between their internalized appreciation of academic excellence and their new, altered, research practices. Only six participants experienced no form of challenge or dissonance after moving into medicine, while three decided to break with their social science and humanities past and make the medical research community their new home. We conclude that the work environment for SSH scholars in faculties of medicine does not deliver on the promise of inclusiveness made by calls for interdisciplinarity in Canadian health research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how to properly present and discuss the methods and results from an empirical study is an essential skill for researchers in any field of work. The methodology and results sections are often considered the most important parts of a manuscript, as the information in these sections are what readers use to evaluate the quality, validity, and replicability of the study. Unfortunately, certain elements are often omitted, and the methodology and results of a paper can become cluttered, repetitive, and generally uninformative on what took place in the study and why, and how valid the study’s conclusions actually are. It is therefore critical that the content of these sections is presented clearly and precisely so readers can accurately evaluate and replicate the research. This article aims to provide researchers in criminology and criminal justice, and other social or behavioral sciences, with a detailed road map on how to prepare and write an organized, informative, and properly formatted methodology and results section for an empirical article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects upon emotional moments in research with children and young people. In particular, we seek to contribute to the now-extensive literature on emotions in social scientific research practice by: (i) attempting to acknowledge the often-overlooked emotions experienced by children and young people whilst participating in research; (ii) highlighting the complex, multiperspectival nature of emotions in research. We suggest that these complexities can, simultaneously be problematic and an opportunity to celebrate the achievement of doing research together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the formal policy-making process in Northern Ireland and the use of qualitative research. The multi-level nature of governance is explained with the division between devolved and non-devolved powers and the respective roles of the Northern Ireland Government and the UK Government as well as the different levels of policy-making within the Northern Ireland system of governance. Institutions for policy-making set up in 1999, following the Good Friday Agreement are based on a form of consociationalism or power sharing, which produces a coalition government involving all the main parties. The nature of government strategy statements, consultation papers, legislative proposals, Assembly committee reports and policy documentation is examined in terms of their use of qualitative analysis and evidence. It is argued that the limited use of qualitative research and evidence reflects three main factors: a lack of political consensus, a deficiency in policy capacity and an absence of conceptual analysis. These barriers to the use of qualitative evidence and the promotion of qualitative research are also put in a wider context of a range of constraints in the form of political, ideological, communal and vested interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]