Choice Of Research Problems Research Articles

The Campbellian construct validity: some comments

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to elaborate and comment on some themes related to construct validity, construct choice, and construct respecification in the Campbellian validity system. It is argued that Reichardt’s [(2008, November). An alternative to the Campbellian conceptualization of validity. (Paper presentation). Evaluation 2008 Conference, Denver, CO, United States] assertion that construct validity and external validity are equivalent in the Campbellian system is not correct. The illustrated restricted kind of construct respecification given by Shadish, Cook, and Campbell [(2002). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Houghton Mifflin] can be interpreted as part of causal explanation. Their illustrations of general respecifications, on the other hand, should not be considered construct respecifications, but be regarded instead as tentative basic explanations of study results. Choice of research problem or hypothesis – as well as of the included constructs – should be based on practical or theoretical needs in the research field.

What is an Ethical Chemist?

Almost all decisions made by chemists, and all other scientists, in their professional lives have an ethical dimension. In both the practice of chemistry and the education of students it is essential that chemists understand the moral complexity of real-world situations, apply the relevant moral standards, and have the moral courage to make difficult choices, or the foundation of trust essential to the scientific enterprise will erode. In this lecture I will develop the fundamental concepts of scientific ethics and show how they apply to both the practice of chemistry and the relationship between chemistry and society. I will consider both day-to-day ethical problems such as authorship and the treatment of data and larger questions such as the choice of research problems and the social responsibility of scientists.

Tradition and Innovation in Scientists’ Research Strategies

What factors affect a scientist’s choice of research problem? Qualitative research in the history and sociology of science suggests that this choice is patterned by an “essential tension” between productive tradition and risky innovation. We examine this tension through Bourdieu’s field theory of science, and we explore it empirically by analyzing millions of biomedical abstracts from MEDLINE. We represent the evolving state of chemical knowledge with networks extracted from these abstracts. We then develop a typology of research strategies on these networks. Scientists can introduce novel chemicals and chemical relationships (innovation) or delve deeper into known ones (tradition). They can consolidate knowledge clusters or bridge them. The aggregate distribution of published strategies remains remarkably stable. High-risk innovation strategies are rare and reflect a growing focus on established knowledge. An innovative publication is more likely to achieve high impact than a conservative one, but the additional reward does not compensate for the risk of failing to publish. By studying prizewinners in biomedicine and chemistry, we show that occasional gambles for extraordinary impact are a compelling explanation for observed levels of risky innovation. Our analysis of the essential tension identifies institutional forces that sustain tradition and suggests policy interventions to foster innovation.

Research Orientation and Research-Related Behaviour of Graduate Education Students

At the students' level, researchers' orientation tends to be undefined and hence students easily fall prey to having their orientation determined by factors other than those related to the nature of their research problems. The difficulties they experience especially in quantitative methods, biased supervisory advice, research orientations and motivational factors constitute some level of impediment to content learning, choice of research problem and to students' views of the importance of research skills for their future work. The tendency is for them to narrow their choice of problem to only that which will suit their non-crystallized orientation. This exploratory study tried to look at such interconnected web and to determine the influence of research orientation on some research-related affective and cognitive behviour of UB graduate education students. To test the six research hypotheses posited to guide the study, data were collected from 78 UB graduate education students who registered for education research courses in 2006. These hypotheses were tested by carrying out z-test of independent proportion, chi-square analyses and one- way ANOVA statistical analyses. The results showed that a significantly higher proportion of the students prefer qualitative to quantitative research and gender has a significant influence on such preference. Research orientation was found to have significant influence on attitude towards research, research motivation, and perceived level of intellectual demand by research; but not on intention to enroll in a doctoral programme; willingness to be involved in research study; and their self-reported academic performance in research course. Problem with numbers was found to be a significant determinant of students' research orientation. These results were discussed and recommendations made.

Against determinism: A reassessment of Marcel Mauss’s essay on seasonal variations

The famous “Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo” by Marcel Mauss has traditionally been understood as a text about the dominance of the social world in determining and imposing seasonal organisation on the physical world. Such interpretations of seasonality typically fail to take adequate account of contemporary European and North American debates about land and society. Paying close attention to the historical context of the essay reveals strong evidence for an alternative reading: that it was written as a polemic against anthropogeographical theory from the school of Friedrich Ratzel. The prime target was Hans-Peder Steensby, an intellectual disciple of Ratzel. Depicting Steensby as exclusively concerned with physical geography, Mauss reinterpreted his evidence within his own evidential context of social morphology. He concludes that the crucial principle governing Inuit seasonal life is the symbiosis between the social and physical worlds—and not the physical determination or technological adaptations diagnosed by the anthropogeographers. Understanding that Mauss was seeking to distance his own sociology/anthropology from geography provides an opportunity to reflect on the divergence in theoretical orientation and choice of research problems amongst the community of Inuit studies.

Research Orientations and Sources of Influence: Agricultural Scientists in the U.S. Land‐Grant System*

Abstract This research builds on the work of Busch and Lacy, who have written extensively about the sources of influence on the choice of research problems in the agricultural sciences at land‐grant universities. Employing data from a 1995–1996 nationwide survey of land‐grant agricultural scientists, I use multiple regression techniques to investigate the relative importance of 19 sources of influence on agricultural scientists engaged in six research areas: productionist‐oriented, sustainable agriculture, environmental, basic, consumer‐oriented, and rural community‐oriented. The first objective of this paper is to revisit and assess many of Busch and Lacy's findings about the influences on land‐grant agricultural scientists. I find that different types of land‐grant research are influenced by distinct combinations of factors. The second major objective is to extend Busch and Lacy's work by spotlighting the significant influences on sustainable agriculture research. My multivariate findings show that this research appears to exhibit influences that reflect its dual productionist and environmental character.

The Laser in America, 1950–1970 by Joan Lisa Bromberg

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 709 prehistory to antiquity. Chapter 3 discusses the Chinese energy model as an exemplary one that has lasted through the centuries. Focusing on the energy structure of food production, high-calorie yield con­ verters, cultivation of the soil, fuel sources, and social control of energy are covered. Chapters 4 and 5, in contrast to the stable Chinese energy model, address the impact of mechanization on European industrialization, focusing on agriculture, mill development, and capi­ talism. Chapters 6 and 7 concentrate on coal, artificial light, oil, and electricity as components of production over demand characteristics of the capitalist energy system and the oil crisis. Nuclear power is discussed in chapters 8—10, using the French model of electronuclear develop­ ment. Chapter 10 centers on the problems of the nuclear energy industry. The final chapter looks at the worldwide energy crisis. The book is well-researched and written in a clear and concise manner. Numerous tables, graphs, and maps support the material in each chapter and add a refreshing note to the text. References are found in the chapter notes located at the end of the book and testify to the tremendous amount of research undertaken. The glossary is enhanced with graphics and charts. Included in the appendix are graphic repre­ sentations of firewood availability in selected countries, extent of risk of desertification, and oil and uranium production and consumption. Historians and students of technology will find the social and ecological emphasis on energy most refreshing. The authors have provided detailed accounts of technical developments and placed them within the appropriate context of the “energy system,” which they define as “the mobilization of energies organized within systems with social, technical, political, mental, and other dimensions” (p. xv). The authors clearly demonstrate the importance of developing a new perspective on the energy issue. Cynthia Gay Bindocci Dr. Bindocci is developing a course on energy in Appalachia at West Virginia University. She recently completed an annotated bibliography on Women and Technology, published by Garland. The Laser in America, 1950—1970. By Joan Lisa Bromberg. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991. Pp. xiv + 310; illustrations, notes, index. $30.00. Is there any better symbol for the promises and perils of American high technology than the laser? Like the atom before it, the laser has come to represent, for both policymakers and the public, an intrinsic paradox of modern times, our simultaneous vision of technological salvation and obliteration. From the semiconductor production line to the grocery checkout aisle, from laboratory bench to rock music stage, from the battlefield to the operating room, lasers have already reshaped 710 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE our world in ways large and small and undoubtedly will continue to do so on frontiers from photonics to fusion. Yet because it is so new, so esoteric, and so shrouded in military and proprietary secrecy, the laser has attracted surprisingly little historical attention. In 1985, to commemorate its upcoming twenty-fifth anniver­ sary, a consortium of professional societies, corporations, and govern­ ment agencies underwrote the Laser History Project as a case study of contemporary American science and technology. Project director Joan Bromberg, whose earlier book on fusion set a high standard for histories of this type, has again demonstrated that official sponsorship need not compromise serious scholarship and can in fact enrich our understand­ ing of the immediate past by opening doors to private archives, company records, insider interviews, and other inaccessible sources. Bromberg carefully avoids the priority disputes that always seem to mar the first history of any recent technology (e.g., computers) in favor of trying to understand how the particular training, institutional context, and self-image of the pioneers shaped their choice of research problems and technical designs. Charles Townes and his former student Gordon Gould consequently emerge not simply as rival claimants to the concept of the laser but as representatives of different scientific styles (the physicist vs. the inventor) and laboratory cultures (Bell Laboratories vs. TRG, Inc.) Likewise, the struggle to reduce laser theory to practice becomes more a study of the distinct corporate traditions and strategies of Hughes, AT&T, and IBM, rather than an assessment of who got there first. For Bromberg, the real...

The Bernal Lecture, 1983 - The collectivization of science

Within 40 years, J. D. Bernal’s radical commentary on ‘the social function of science’ has become the conventional wisdom of public science policy. It is now commonplace that science should be organized and financed on a large scale, and directed towards societal goals. This policy also includes basic research, which needs financial support for expensive apparatus. Science is thus being transformed from an individualistic community into a homogeneous collective enterprise, which now covers all types of research from the academic to the technological. The modern ‘R & D system’ is undoubtedly beneficial to society, and to the advancement of knowledge. But collectivization has not only changed the societal function of science; it has also changed its internal sociology. Personal discretion in the choice of research problems is now severely limited, even in the university sector, because most projects are now funded by outside agencies. Tension between the individualist norms of the academic tradition and managerial principles derived from the industrial tradition has made research an ambivalent profession. Should scientists be regarded as members of a transnational community devoted to ‘the search for truth’, or are they simply typical employees of governmental and commercial organizations with very worldly aims? This ambivalence is evident in controversies over scientific freedom and responsibility, and in the ethical problems of military research.

Perceived Criteria for Research Problem Choice in the Agricultural Sciences-A Research Note

Perceived Criteria for Research Problem Choice in the Agricultural Sciences-A Research Note

Perceived Criteria for Research Problem Choice in the Agricultural Sciences--A Research Note

Since the seventeenth century, science and technology have been presumed to be chief architects of human progress. Of particular importance to this view was the fundamental acceptance of science as an autonomous institution, creating knowledge that is an accurate representation of a unified natural world and, hence, not subject to external manipulation. Recently, however, the assumptions, as well as the products of science have come under attack. The scientific claims to objective knowledge have been challenged. The increase in scale, the development of a corporate, Baconian science, the increasing centrality of the relations between science and the state, and challenges to the belief in the unity of science (Kuhn) have meant that science as an institution has become less autonomous. Indeed some have argued that the products of science are frequently shaped by various client groups, class interests, and the state (Habermas; Rose and Rose). As long as the assumptions and products of science were seen as relatively unproblematic, there was little reason to examine the reasons for selecting particular research agendas. However, the intellectual challenges to the claimed autonomy of science, the questioning of the place of science in society, and the financial limitations imposed by the current economy make the issue of problem choice a particularly important theme in the sociology and philosophy of science (cf., Busch and Lacy; Gieryn; Weinstein; Zuckerman). Thus, in this paper we ask: What criteria do scientists perceive as important in choosing research problems? Do these criteria differ across disciplines? To what degree are criteria relevant to the pursuit of knowledge consonant with those relevant to the problems of everyday life?

The Bernal Lecture, 1983 - The collectivization of science

Within 40 years, J. D. Bernal’s radical commentary on ‘the social function of science’ has become the conventional wisdom of public science policy. It is now commonplace that science should be organized and financed on a large scale, and directed towards societal goals. This policy also includes basic research, which needs financial support for expensive apparatus. Science is thus being transformed from an individualistic community into a homogenous collective enterprise, which now covers all types of research from the academic to the technological. The modern ‘R & D system’ is undoubtedly beneficial to society, and to the advancement of knowledge. But collectivization has not only changed the societal function of science; it has also changed its internal sociology. Personal discretion in the choice of research problems is now severely limited, even in the university sector, because most projects are now funded by outside agencies. Tension between the individualist norms of the academic tradition and managerial principles derived from the industrial tradition has made research an ambivalent profession. Should scientists be regarded as members of a transnational community devoted to ‘the search for truth’, or are they simply typical employees of governmental and commercial organizations with very worldly aims? This ambivalence is evident in controversies over scientific freedom and responsibility, and in the ethical problems of military research. Collectivization generates pressure for efficiency and public accountability. The R & D system is thus driven from the top towards more urgent and utilitarian programmes. Is highly innovative research fostered adequately by the method of awarding project grants on the basis of peer review, which is often accused of being ponderous and unadventurous? It is suggested that this method of funding basic research should give way to the award of block grants to ‘institutes’, e. g. whole university departments, on the basis of periodic evaluation of their past work. This reform would locate the risks and responsibilities of innovative research within individual institutes, and would reduce the irrationalities and administrative rigidities of the present system; but it would need to be done rigorously, and with sincere concern for the dangers of institutional elitism and internal autocracy.

The present status of computer technology and its application areas among psychophysiologists with five year projections.

ABSTRACTPP‐T0006‐0‐I A survey of computer utilization among PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY subscribers is reported. Of 170 respondents, 73% have present access to one or more computers, and 17% expect access in two to five years. Computer users are analyzed with respect to their primary fields of interest, the physiological variables they are measuring, their choice of equipment, and their software development resources including access to programmers. Attitudes of users regarding the importance of the computer for their work, and its impact on their choice of research problems are described. Five year projections are given, revealing the strong trend to real‐time small computers and the growing software shortage among present users. Respondents generally favored a systematic exchange of programs among users.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Mental Illness Research

In undertaking interdisciplinary research, a team of behavioral scientists anticipated that the principal problems of collaboration would be due to their conceptual diffences. However, methodological differences, here characterized in terms of "clinical" and "quantitative" points of view, turned out to be the major barriers to collaborative effort and generated issues regarding such operations as choice of research problem, sampling procedures, kinds of data, and techniques for collecting them. Other problems arose due due to the adjustements in role required by team research. The conceptual framework and methodological strategy in process of development by the team seeks to take systematic account of these differences.