Real Social Science Flyvbjerg, Bent; Landman, Todd; Schram, Sanford
04/2012
eBook
Real Social Science presents a new, hands-on approach to social inquiry. The theoretical and methodological ideas behind the book, inspired by Aristotelian phronesis, represent an original ...perspective within the social sciences, and this volume gives readers for the first time a set of studies exemplifying what applied phronesis looks like in practice. The reflexive analysis of values and power gives new meaning to the impact of research on policy and practice. Real Social Science is a major step forward in a novel and thriving field of research. This book will benefit scholars, researchers and students who want to make a difference in practice, not just in the academy. Its message will make it essential reading for students and academics across the social sciences.
With foreword by Kenneth J. Gergen and Mary M. Gergen. Creative research methods can help to answer complex contemporary questions, which are hard to answer using traditional methods alone. Creative ...methods can also be more ethical, helping researchers to address social injustice. This accessible book is the first to identify and examine the four areas of creative research methods: arts-based research, research using technology, mixed-method research and transformative research frameworks. Written in a practical and jargon-free style, with over 100 boxed examples, it offers numerous examples of creative methods in practice, from the social sciences, arts, and humanities around the world. Spanning the gulf between academia and practice, this useful book will inform and inspire researchers by showing readers why, when, and how to use creative methods in their research.
Game theory is central to understanding human behavior and relevant to all of the behavioral sciences--from biology and economics, to anthropology and political science. However, as The Bounds of ...Reason demonstrates, game theory alone cannot fully explain human behavior and should instead complement other key concepts championed by the behavioral disciplines. Herbert Gintis shows that just as game theory without broader social theory is merely technical bravado, so social theory without game theory is a handicapped enterprise.
Between January and March 2022, crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) performed the first archaeological fieldwork in space, the Sampling Quadrangle Assemblages Research Experiment ...(SQuARE). The experiment aimed to: (1) develop a new understanding of how humans adapt to life in an environmental context for which we are not evolutionarily adapted, using evidence from the observation of material culture; (2) identify disjunctions between planned and actual usage of facilities on a space station; (3) develop and test techniques that enable archaeological research at a distance; and (4) demonstrate the relevance of social science methods and perspectives for improving life in space. In this article, we describe our methodology, which involves a creative re-imagining of a long-standing sampling practice for the characterization of a site, the shovel test pit. The ISS crew marked out six sample locations ("squares") around the ISS and documented them through daily photography over a 60-day period. Here we present the results from two of the six squares: an equipment maintenance area, and an area near exercise equipment and the latrine. Using the photographs and an innovative webtool, we identified 5,438 instances of items, labeling them by type and function. We then performed chronological analyses to determine how the documented areas were actually used. Our results show differences between intended and actual use, with storage the most common function of the maintenance area, and personal hygiene activities most common in an undesignated area near locations for exercise and waste.
Abstract
When in children’s lives do gaps by family socioeconomic status (SES) in cognitive skills emerge, how large are they before children enter school, and how do they develop over schooling? We ...study the evolution of achievement gaps by parental education from birth to adolescence in Germany. We exploit data from fifty-seven tests taken from the age of seven months to sixteen years by the National Educational Panel Study. Because Germany has one of the most stratified education systems in the Western World, we hypothesized that achievement gaps will grow particularly during tracked secondary schooling. However, our findings show that SES gaps emerge and expand long before children enter school and then remain stable throughout their school careers. Because gaps stop growing, we tentatively conclude that schooling decreases inequality in learning by family SES.
Evaluation of methods used for estimating content validity Almanasreh, Enas; Moles, Rebekah; Chen, Timothy F.
Research in social and administrative pharmacy,
February 2019, 2019-Feb, 2019-02-00, 20190201, Volume:
15, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The assessment of content validity is a critical and complex step in the development process of instruments which are frequently used to measure complex constructs in social and administrative ...pharmacy research. The aims of this study were to investigate the elements of content validity; to describe a practical approach for assessing content validity; and to discuss existing content validity indices. This is a narrative review of the assessment and quantification of content validity. It describes the key stages of conducting the content validation study and discusses the quantification and evaluation of the content validity estimates. Content validity provides evidence about the degree to which elements of an assessment instrument are relevant to and representative of the targeted construct for a particular assessment purpose. The assessment of content validity relies on using a panel of experts to evaluate instrument elements and rate them based on their relevance and representativeness to the content domain. It is a three-stage process that includes; the development stage, judgment and quantifying stage, and revising and reconstruction stage. To quantify the expert judgments, several indices have been discussed in this paper such as the content validity ratio (CVR), content validity index (CVI), modified–Kappa, and some agreement indices. A practical guide describes the process of content validity evaluation is provided. In summary, content validation processes and content validity indices are essential factors in the instrument development process, should be treated and reported as important as other types of construct validation. Determining item CVI and reporting an overall CVI are important components necessary to instruments especially when the instrument is used to measure health outcomes or to guide a clinical decision making. Content validity deserves a rigorous assessment process as the obtained information from this process are invaluable for the quality of the newly developed instrument.
Qualitative coding procedures emanating from grounded theory were limited by technologies of the 1960s: colored pens, scissors, and index cards. Today, electronic documents can be flexibly stored, ...retrieved, and cross-referenced using qualitative data analysis (QDA) software. We argue the oft-cited grounded theory framework poorly fits many features of contemporary sociological interview studies, including large samples, coding by teams, and mixed-method analysis. The grounded theory approach also hampers transparency and does not facilitate reanalysis or secondary analysis of interview data. We begin by summarizing grounded theory’s assumptions about coding and analysis. We then analyze published articles from American Sociological Association flagship journals, demonstrating that current conventions for semistructured interview studies depart from the grounded theory framework. Based on experience analyzing interview data, we suggest steps in data organization and analysis to better utilize QDA technology. Our goal is to support rigorous, transparent, and flexible analysis of in-depth interview data. We end by discussing strengths and limitations of our twenty-first-century approach.