Application Of Social Research Research Articles

Las Polémicas de la Relación Espacio Social y su Influencia en la Forma Urbana en Ciudades Contemporáneas

This essay explores the polemics of the concept “social spatial.” Four main axes of thought can be distinguished: social space as the material environment of social groups; social space as a relational establishment of positions; social space as a dialectical approach to the society-space relationship; and, finally, the threads of constructivism that question the opposition of society and space from a post-structural perspective. This essay attempts to situate these four perspectives within the literature that pays attention to social theory, social geography, urban studies and their implications for the spatial professions of urban planning, urban design, architecture and civil engineering. These four perspectives of social space are complementary from a theoretical point of view. Its application in social research often occurs simultaneously within and among different disciplines, depending largely on the object of analysis, and how geography is defined. I argue that these four theoretical perspectives define geography differently as either functional space, central places, territoriality, or lived places. Moreover, these perspectives and their respective definitions of geography influence practice and professional policy that affect urban form. This essay pays attention to the link between knowledge and practice that have created contemporary socio-spatial environments.

Математика как инструмент социальных исследований: к новому пониманию социальной реальности

The article explores the current state of mathematization in the social sciences and social applied analytics. Mathematics in social sciences and in social analytics represents the set of instrumental methods that help to obtain results, in contradiction to understanding of mathematics as critical doubt (the requirement of rigor as a doubt of methods correctness). In social sciences and analytics the results are obtained, not critically reasoning. Mathematics in social research is understood as useful methods, and not as theories that ensure the rigor of the application of mathematical methods. The understanding of the object of mathematics that is elaborated in social sciences also is far from classical concepts of philosophy of mathematics: mathematical objects as ideal entities, as formal constructions, as a priory synthetic, does not dominate. It is revealed that under the influence of practice of mathematical methods application in social research, the new image of social reality and of social ontology appears. Social reality starting to be understood as measured and the social relations as based on social comparability, because the relations are drawn up from the networks of social actors actions that are possessed by quantitatively comparable rights and responsibilities, values, opinions, beliefs, priorities, etc. Moreover, some researchers believe that for social phenomena that do not have measurable indicators, social reality has not yet formed, it is still amorphous, not homogeneous, has not acquired properties of stability, resistance to disturbing influences. Finally, the applicability of mathematics in social research is pushing researchers toward belief that social ontology, whether or not it is understood in an essentialist way, or in “flat ontology” construction (Bruno Latour), is presented in quantitative forms.

Hopes and challenges of creating and using a smartphone application. Working on and working with a digital mobile tool in qualitative sociospatial research

The article focuses on developing and using a mobile application in the research of spatial practices along the Polish-German border region. The goal is to broaden the frame of thinking about the use of mobile applications in social research and understand it as a network of human and non-human actors. Based on observations and interviews conducted both with the study participants using the application and ourselves as members of the research team, who developed the app, we will examine expectations and potentials regarding the use of this application. We explore how it shaped our relationships and contacts and the perception of the data collected, and we conclude by proposing a framework allowing to consider more factors in the development of the application to enhance efficiency and reliability and to see how it transforms the research process and its environment.

The Analytical Procedures of Grounded Theory Methodology in Research on the Human Body

The purpose of this article is to look into the problem of grounded theory methodology (GTM) application in social research on the human body. First, the theoretical roots of GTM in symbolic interactionism are enumerated and their consequences for applying the research strategy are described. The author presents examples of her research as an illustration of how GTM procedures enable the researcher to ingrain the body in social processes, and explains what it actually means to embed physical body in social phenomena and processes. The conclusions concerning the practice of GTM research are based on a series of empirical studies conducted by the author in the fields of dance, physical therapy, and medical work. The author argues that GTM expounds on specific procedures, which offer both methodological discipline and flexibility that is necessary for studying as challenging phenomenon as that of the human body.

On the Use of Selected Ordination Techniques to Analyze the Parliamentary Election Results

Ordination techniques such as CCA (Canonical Correspondence Analysis) or RDA (Redundancy Analysis) are very popular in ecological research but almost completely unknown in, for example, socio-economic research. The goal of this paper is to concisely organize the concepts and terminology associated with ordination and to present the possibilities of its application in social research with an example of the analysis of the 2015 parliamentary elections results.

SCRAPING THE SOCIAL?

This paper investigates the device of scraping, a technique for the automated capture of online data, and its application in social research. We ask how this ‘medium-specific’ technique for data collection may be rendered analytically productive for social research. We argue that, as a technique that is currently being imported into social research, scraping has the capacity to re-structure research in at least two ways. Firstly, as a technique that is not native to social research, scraping risks introducing ‘alien’ analytic assumptions such as a pre-occupation with freshness. Secondly, to scrape is to risk importing into our inquiry categories that are prevalent in the social practices and devices enabled by online media: scraping makes available already formatted data for social research. Scraped data, and online social data more generally, tend to come with analytics already built in. The pre-ordered nature of captured online data is often approached as a ‘problem’, but we propose it may be turned into a virtue, insofar as data formats that have currency in the practices under scrutiny may serve as a source of social data themselves. Scraping, we propose, makes it possible to render traffic between the object and process of social research analytically productive. It enables a form of ‘live’ social research, in which the formats and life cycles of online data may lend structure to the analytic objects and findings of social research. We demonstrate this point in an exercise of online issue profiling, and more particularly, by relying on Twitter and Google to track the issues of ‘austerity’ and ‘crisis’ over time. Here we distinguish between two forms of real-time research, those dedicated to monitoring live content (which terms are current?) and those concerned with analysing the liveliness of issues (which topics are happening?).

Disciplinarity and the application of social research

This response to Corcoran (2010) and Abell and Walton (2010) is organized around four key issues. (1) Disciplinarity: against a focus on the standard disciplinary boundaries of social psychology, and the conventional qualitative/quantitative division, it highlights metatheoretical, theoretical, and empirical disagreement over the object of analysis. (2) Social cognition: doubts about a suggested overlap between the concerns and methods of social cognition and discursive psychology are outlined. (3) Naturalistic data: the virtues of working with records of people living their lives outside of the narrow situations got up by social researchers are reiterated. (4) Application: the applied success of discursive psychological research is illustrated.

Microcomputer Data Base Programs in Social Research

Possible data base applications in social research include working with quantitative data files and gathering research information. Social research commonly involves 10 data management activities common to most major mainframe statistical packages. Social researchers using microcomputers may need other solutions for their data management needs. These include writing a program, using a standard spreadsheet, and using a data base manager program. Microcomputers and their data base software can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of information gathering for research projects by easing and improving notetaking and organizing and by providing highly efficient, error-checking tools to assist in entry of research data from many different kinds of sources. Mainframe and minicomputers traditionally have not been used for many of these information gathering activities. For the nearfuture, microcomputer data base managers will continue to serve useful purposes for social researchers, even while they remain not completely adequate because of their orientation toward their principal market: business people. Developments in the software arena will help make microcomputer data base manage ment tools more useful. As microcomputer statistical packages improve, social researchers may once again do most of their "data base management "using the same tool they use to perform their statistical analysis.

Statistical Distributions in Social Research

The purpose of this article is to introduce social scientists to the Pearson System of Frequency Curves. This statistical procedure is an important tool in the identification of a wide range of statistical distributions from empirical data. Given that sociological phenomena are more likely to conform to various types of skewed distributions rather than the normal one, it is a methodological advantage to identify a specific skewed dis tribution which conforms to a statistical distribution. The article presents several em pirical examples in the identification of statistical distributions and provides possible useful applications in social research.

The Estimation of Incomes and Expenditures in British Towns

The absence of Census or other government data on the income of the population of British towns has resulted in a continuing search for proxy variables that are correlated with income. This paper suggests a method for estimating both incomes and expenditures for towns, based entirely on published government data. While the proposed method is rather simple and crude, it should be of value in marketing, economic, and social research applications where rapid, economical estimates of incomes and expenditures are required.

Outcome Probabilities for a Record Matching Process with Complete Invariant Information

Abstract Record matching processes, which compare sets of identifying information, to decide whether or not a pair of records relate to the same individual or population item, are basic in a wide range of applications in social research, maintenance of files and information retrieval. Such processes may be conveniently described in terms of matching a single incoming record against a master file or list. In order to evaluate different record matching processes, in terms of matching costs and error losses, it is necessary to evaluate the outcome probabilities. It is shown that this can be done for a simple model which assumes that the information used for matching is complete and invariant but, possibly, insufficient to distinguish between all population items, by considering only the class-size probability distributions. The latter can be estimated directly from the list or from a sub-sample drawn from it, by the application of Goodman's [2] results concerning the estimation of the number of classes in a ...

Outcome Probabilities for a Record Matching Process with Complete Invariant Information

Abstract Record matching processes, which compare sets of identifying information, to decide whether or not a pair of records relate to the same individual or population item, are basic in a wide range of applications in social research, maintenance of files and information retrieval. Such processes may be conveniently described in terms of matching a single incoming record against a master file or list. In order to evaluate different record matching processes, in terms of matching costs and error losses, it is necessary to evaluate the outcome probabilities. It is shown that this can be done for a simple model which assumes that the information used for matching is complete and invariant but, possibly, insufficient to distinguish between all population items, by considering only the class-size probability distributions. The latter can be estimated directly from the list or from a sub-sample drawn from it, by the application of Goodman's [2] results concerning the estimation of the number of classes in a population. The outcome probabilities can then be evaluated by considering the incoming record as randomly drawn from the list, if it should match some item on the list, and as added to the list, to form a new list with approximately the same classification probabilities, if it ought to match no item on the list. A numerical example illustrates an application of the model.

The Application of Social Research to Intergroup Relations

The Application of Social Research to Intergroup Relations

The Application of Social Research

rN DELIVtERING this inaugural address, I regard it as unfortunate that I do not have the opportunity of refemng to an immediate predecessorJ , iand of drawing upon his contributions and expenence in discussing the status and prospects of the field of work under review. But this fotrmal occasion does give me one opportunity which I am anxious to seize-that of paying tribute to my teachers and colleagues who have offered so much help and encouragement. In particular, I wish to express my indebtedness to three people with whom I have had the good fortune to be associated. To the Director of the SchoolJ Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders, I owe the first impetus in studying population questions. In the field of population studies, as in many other branches of social research, the Director has done pioneer work, and I have benefited greatly from his expenence as well as from his unfailing support. I am glad, further, to have the opportunity of expressmg in public, and to such an audience, my thanks to Professor Lancelot Hogben. The two years I spent in his department were years of continuous mental stimulationJ for Professor Hogben illuminates every subject he touches. Finally, I should like to pay tribute to the late Dr. R. R. Kuczynski, who did more than any other individual ln our generation to promote the development of demography His work was distinguished by its meticulous and disinterested scholarship, and its complete integrity. Equally outstandmg was the warmth of his personality. No one who expenenced it could possibly forget. Alentionlng those names also provides a direct link with the subject I wish to discuss to-day the application of social research. For those three people, academic ln the best sense of the term, have also been distingiished by their irlterest in social policy and in the relation of research to policy. And it is the application of social research to social policy with which I am here concerned. To be more specific, I propose to discuss not the methods of, but the need for research, and the main stages at which the application of research is most required. I take it as axiomatic that planning, even more in the social than in the economic field, is here to stay. This has one oblrious implication relevant