Contemporary Research Methods Research Articles

How to Read a Historical Source through a Literary Lens?

The article presents some possibilities of using contemporary literary research methods for analyzing historical sources. However, in the analysis of literary work as a historical source, attempts at “reversed” reading (i.e. source as literature) are still insufficient. The article presents some research tools based on text theory, which could be adapted to reading historical sources. There are privileged texts with some aesthetic features. The above-mentioned methods could not be used directly to analyze historical sources; they should be completed with extra-textual data.

Big Data and Innovative Research Methods

Big data and innovative research methods are two rapidly evolving trends that are transforming how we conduct research in sport management. Considering the natural relationship between social media, which is widely recognized as a major big-data source, and sport, this commentary centers on contemporary research method applied to social media data. In doing so, it discusses contemporary innovative techniques for social media data, focusing on exploring ways to access social media data, the natural language-processing techniques used, the challenges they address, the strengths and limitations of different techniques, and the ethical and privacy considerations associated with their use. Furthermore, the commentary demonstrates that using sentiment-analysis tools (e.g., Syuzhet, Bing, and AFFIN) is appropriate and efficient in analyzing sport’s social media data. Thus, a rigorous application of contemporary innovative techniques can significantly shape the future of sport management research. However, researchers must exercise caution when considering the source and preprocessing of the data prior to applying advanced analytical techniques.

Artificial intelligence research in hospitality: a state-of-the-art review and future directions

Purpose The purpose of this study is to analyze state-of-the-art knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI) research in hospitality. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts the theory-context-methods framework to systematically review 100 AI-related articles recently published (i.e. from 2021 to April 2023) in three top-tier hospitality journals, namely, the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management and Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management. Findings Findings suggest that studies of AI applications in hospitality are mostly theory-driven, whereas most AI methods research adopts a data-driven approach. State-of-the-art AI applications research exhibits the most interest in service robots. In AI methods research, little attention was paid to the amid-service/experience. Research limitations/implications This study reveals inadequacies in theory, context and methods in contemporary AI research. More research from hospitality suppliers’ perspectives and research on generative AI applications are advocated in response to the unveiled research gaps and recent AI developments. Originality/value This study classifies the most recent AI research in hospitality into two main streams – AI applications research and AI methods research – and discusses the gaps in each research stream and latest AI developments. The paper then suggests future research directions to guide researchers in advancing AI research in hospitality.

Обряд сватовства у тувинцев Монголии (полевые материалы авторов)

Introduction. The article examines the authors’ field data for an insight into a key wedding element — the matchmaking ceremony practiced by Tuvans inhabiting Bayan-Ölgii and Khovd provinces of Mongolia. It is due to the latter’s isolation that their material and spiritual culture — and specifically life-cycle rites — still retain somewhat unique features to be identified with the aid of comparative analysis. Goals. The paper aims to investigate the matchmaking ceremony of Tuvans from Bayan-Ölgii and Khovd provinces of Mongolia and, thus, shed light on most ancient beliefs and cults, customs and rituals, clarify questions of ethnogenetic and ethnocultural ties with the core ethnic community — Tuvans of the Tyva Republic (Russia). Methods. The work employs contemporary interdisciplinary research methods that facilitate a comprehensive approach involving methodological principles of related scientific disciplines, such as source studies and ethnography. Investigation of objective reality at the nexus of several related humanities fields shall yield a wider picture of ethnic specificities inherent to the examined culture and its functioning principles in the Tuvan ethnos at large. Results. The article considers archival and newly obtained field data on the matchmaking ceremony practiced by Tuvans of Khovd and Bayan-Ölgii aimags of Mongolia. Conclusions. Thus, the work presents a comparative ethnographic analysis of ritual matchmaking practices observed among Tuvans of Mongolia.

Reliability and Validity of Non-Instrumental Clinical Assessments for Adults with Oropharyngeal Dysphagia: A Systematic Review.

This systematic review on non-instrumental clinical assessment in adult oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD) provides an overview of published measures with reported reliability and validity. In alignment with PRISMA, four databases (CINAHL, Embase, PsycINFO, and PubMed) were searched, resulting in a total of 16 measures and 32 psychometric studies included. The included measures assessed any aspect of swallowing, consisted of at least one specific subscale relating to swallowing, were developed by clinical observation, targeted adults, and were developed in English. The included psychometric studies focused on adults, reported on measures for OD-related conditions, described non-instrumental clinical assessments, reported on validity or reliability, and were published in English. Methodological quality was assessed using the standard quality assessment QualSyst. Most measures targeted only restricted subdomains within the conceptual framework of non-instrumental clinical assessments. Across the 16 measures, hypothesis testing and reliability were the most reported psychometrics, whilst structural validity and content validity were the least reported. Overall, data on the reliability and validity of the included measures proved incomplete and frequently did not meet current psychometric standards. Future research should focus on the development of comprehensive non-instrumental clinical assessments for adults with OD using contemporary psychometric research methods.

Introducing The New Scientific Members” Editorial Board” and the new Special Issues

The new board composition covers a wide range of research contexts, topics, and methods. The contexts covered range from a wide area of interest from Humanities, Social Science, Law, Engineering to specific industries, such as information technology and automotive. Interests cover a wide range of topics, including strategy, innovation, complexity, systems thinking, knowledge, education, science, Circuits, technology as well as communication and networks, in addition to the traditional topics of Humanities and engineering, leadership, governance, and project methodologies. Moreover, some board members specialize in cross-topical subjects, such as Biomedical, Medicine, quantitative, and mixed, as well as traditional and contemporary research methods, or simulation models. The list is not exhaustive, as it only shows those areas that are of most interest to the individual board members.

Skin Cancer Detection using Neutrosophic c-means and Fuzzy c-means Clustering Algorithms

Melanoma is the kind of skin cancer that poses the greatest risk to one's life and has the maximum mortality rate within the group of skin cancer disorders. Even so, the automated placement and classification of skin lesions at initial phases remains a complicated task due to the lack of contrast melanoma molarity and skin fraction and a greater level of color similarity among melanoma-affected and -nonaffected areas. Contemporary technological improvements and research methods enabled it to recognize and distinguish this type of skin cancer more successfully. A clustering technique called neutrosophic c-means clustering (NCMC) is presented in this research to group ambiguous data in the detection of skin cancer. This algorithm takes its cues from both fuzzy c-means and the neutrosophic set structure. To arrive at such a structure, an appropriate objective function must first be created and then minimized. The clustering issue must then be stated as a restricted minimization problem, the solution of which is determined by the objective function. This paper made a comparison between NCMC and fuzzy c-means clustering (FCMC). The results show that the NCMC is more suitable than the FCMC.

LIVING QURAN LAGU KEBANGSAAN INDONESIA RAYA

The national anthem Indonesia Raya, created by Wage Rudolf Supratman, appeared to encourage the struggle for the independence of the Republik Indonesia. Religious zeal accompanied the ideology of nationality to release the archipelago from the grasp of colonialism. The spirit of the warriors imprinted from the holy book of the Koran, really became a shield of power derived from the Creator. The Quran is the preserved holy book of the Almighty, thus being the only source of information and theological inspiration for freedom. Because the ideology of social liberation has been closed by the invaders.
 The Living Quran is one of the contemporary research methods that requires strengthening in order to be increasingly recognized for its existence as one of the scientific work processes in the field of Quranic Science. This method is rooted in the phenomenology that makes social phenomena the object of study. Along with its increasingly massive development, normative values in the study of interpretation need to be maintained so that the results of their research remain in line with the function of the Quran as a lifeline. The results showed that the lyrics of the national anthem Indonesia Raya, have content derived from verses of the Quran. The incarnation of the spirit of the archipelago in the form of oceans and land, is depicted in the Quran so that the Indonesian people have the power to realize natural management for mutual prosperity. The stories of the prophets and apostles contained in the Quran became a form of social ideology that became the glue of nationality.

Book review “contemporary research methods in hospitality and tourism”

Book review “contemporary research methods in hospitality and tourism”

Maintaining laboratory cultures of cave-dwelling and surface-dwelling isopod crustaceans

Many aspects of cave animal biology cannot be understood through field observations alone. Access to some subterranean habitats is often technically challenging, rendering long-term monitoring of cave-dwelling species or investigating some aspects of their biology difficult. Also, contemporary research questions and methods require sampling individuals at certain life stages, and most cave adapted species have lengthy life spans or are not accessible in their natural habitats year-round. Therefore, we have established an animal facility in our laboratory where we keep cave-dwelling and related surface-dwelling crustacean species under controlled conditions. This allows us to study physiological and behavioral adaptations and the role of phenotypic plasticity in the evolution of these traits in cave dwellers. We are culturing freshwater, marine, and terrestrial isopods from three different families (Asellidae, Sphaeromatidae, and Trichoniscidae), among others. To date, we have established breeding colonies of several different cave and surface species pairs of aquatic asellids, and our most successful colonies have lived for two years and three generations. We have also established colonies of cave (freshwater) and surface (marine) sphaeromatids with varying degrees of success. Among terrestrial trichoniscids, colonies of cave species have persisted for more than two years, but without successful reproduction. Our repeated attempts to maintain surface species of Trichoniscus have been unsuccessful. Here we present our experiences to provide guidance for other researchers making similar attempts. We discuss general care practices such as decontamination of equipment and tools, quarantine, good and bad practices for small aquarium and terrarium design, housing, water treatment and conditioning, various food sources, and breeding approaches. We also review some of the problems we have encountered with our colonies and describe our attempts to solve them with varying degrees of success.

User Experience Methods in Research and Practice

User experience (UX) researchers in technical communication (TC) and beyond still need a clear picture of the methods used to measure and evaluate UX. This article charts current UX methods through a systematic literature review of recent publications (2016–2018) and a survey of 52 UX practitioners in academia and industry. Our results indicate that contemporary UX research favors mixed methods, and that usability testing is especially popular in both published research and our survey results. This article presents these findings as a snapshot of contemporary research methods for UX.

A Critical Review on the Book “Contemporary Research Methods in the Humanities (Discussions on Politics of Method)”

The purpose of this article is to critically evaluate the book “Critical Review of the Book Contemporary Research Methods in the Humanities (Discussions on Politics of Method), by Ahmad Mohammadpour. The context for the formation of the most important theoretical and practical streams in the humanities and their ontological and epistemological aspects has been presented in this book. From this point of view, the book can be considered as a valuable document in this field. The main message of this book is that it is research methods derived from our worldviews and lifeworld that shape our understanding and interpretation of the world, and thus the author introduces a new concept called Politics of Method . The results of the review of this book show that the author has not been able to convey well the key and operational points about “Politics of Method and his new findings; Therefore, this book is not able to provide guidelines for researchers in designing a research program from the perspective of methodology. Lack of connection between chapters, different language in presenting views and topics, inadequate translation of many parts of the book, are also among the weaknesses of this book.

A Framework for Classification of Gabor Based Frequency Selective Bone Radiographs Using CNN

The automatic classification of bone texture into healthy or osteoporotic cases presents a major challenge since there is no visual difference between the two cases. This classification requires an inspection of the fine granularity in the bone radiographs which is usually difficult with a naked eye. We have proposed a novel method in this paper, that can be used for the classification of bone radiographs into healthy or osteoporotic cases. We mimic the observations of the physicians by preprocessing the bone radiographs with Gabor filters bearing a high frequency. Later, we design and utilize a convolutional neural network wherein filtered images are fed as input to the system which classifies the images into their respective classes. The proposed algorithm has been validated on a bone radiograph challenge dataset. Our results depict that the method proposed in this research exhibits very good results in terms of classification. A comparison of the proposed and the contemporary research methods has also been shown in this paper. The experimental results show that by exploiting high frequency Gabor filters and employing the convolutional neural network architecture, good results in performing the classification of bone radiographs are achieved.

Leadership without “the led”: a case study of the South Wales Valleys

PurposeThis paper aims to disrupt assumptions about leadership by arguing those who are ostensibly “followers” may be utterly insouciant towards the existence of people categorised as “leaders”. It contributes to anti-leadership theories.Design/methodology/approachThis article uses an immersive, highly reflexive methodology to explore subjective meanings of leadership at community levels ostensibly governed by local government leaders. It uses a case study of the South Wales Valleys, one of the hubs of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century but now economically deprived.FindingsThrough drawing on their rich and complex history, the author shows how in these communities there is a culture of neo-communitarianism that is anti-leadership and suspicious of attempts to establish hierarchies of superior over inferior. The author explores the complex webs of meaning through which ancient experiences reverberate like dead metaphors, informing contemporary understandings without conscious awareness of such a heritage. This is a history in which “leaders” betrayed or oppressed and exploited the population, which in response turned against hierarchies and evolved practices of self-government that continue today, invisible and unrepresentable within the wider culture.Research limitations/implicationsThe study draws on contemporary feminist research methods that emphasise subjectivity, flux and change. These are often not understood by readers not accustomed to stepping out of a positivist onto-epistemological frame.Practical implicationsThe paper challenges the universalising tendencies of leadership theories that assume a shapeless mass; “followers” await the advent of a leader before they can become agentive.Social implicationsThe paper offers insights into a day-to-day world that is rarely explored.Originality/valueThe article demonstrates how emerging forms of qualitative research give insights into communities that undermine dominant, universalising theories of leadership, followership and government more generally.

LESSONS FROM THE HEART: REVISITING THE PSYCHOCARDIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF ARISTOTLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The aim: To provide an overview of the psychocardiological theories of Aristotle and discuss their implications in contemporary research and clinical practice Materials and methods: Specific keywords (brain, heart, cardiology, psychiatry, psychocardiology, Aristotle, cardiocentric) were subjected to list down and analyze the literature in PubMed and Google Scholar. All types of articles, including original research, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses, along with gray literature dating back to 1950. We excluded studies reporting a significant conflict of interest and findings dispersed through popular media instead of peer-reviewed journals. Out of all articles, as per inclusion criteria and readings, we selected 26 for further analysis and narrative to build. Conclusions: Although this knowledge is currently outdated, revisiting his findings and methods is a source of lessons and inspirations for modern researchers and practitioners.

Perspectives in Urban Planning Research: Methods and Tools

The physical urban terrain across cities continually evolves through insights, consultations, deliberate redesigning or random acts by community members and natural forces that reshape the urbanscapes and how urban spaces are used. These built urban environments, including the quality of air, water and infrastructure therein, determined through research-informed designs and redesigns, are aimed at suiting the needs of space users in consideration of their social, psychological, political, cultural, financial, physical and such other dispositions and needs. Such research methods and tools used in shaping urban planning are also evolving. This paper discusses these contemporary research methods, tools and technology used in an urban planning inquiry. It applies current trends and examples to illustrate the employment of the methods used in researching urban planning to inform the design, development and operation of urban spaces. It is intended to be a valuable introductory reference for emerging researchers in urban planning, especially, undergraduate and postgraduate students with limited previous exposure to urban planning research, who are looking for a consolidated starting point. The authors found this to be largely lacking. Established researchers in the discipline will find the article useful as well. It concludes that future research in the discipline should not ignore established research techniques in addressing urban vulnerabilities.

Understanding the family care dyad: A comparison of two multilevel models.

Although there has been increasing attention on a dyadic perspective of illness, contemporary dyadic research methods are still rarely utilized in cardiovascular disease. The focus of this paper is to describe the advantages of two types of multilevel dyadic models (the matched pairs model and the lesser known incongruence model). Data exemplars in a sample of heart failure family dyads are used to illustrate the distinct advantages of these two related multilevel dyadic models with particular emphasis on alignment with research questions. The more commonly known matched pairs model examines separate outcomes for each member of the dyad, controlling for the interdependent nature of the data. By re-parameterizing this model into a univariate dyadic outcomes model, researchers can address distinct, and sometimes more appropriate, research questions (e.g. incongruent appraisals of the illness experience). This paper promotes greater application of these methods in cardiovascular research to further understanding of the dyadic experience and more appropriately target interventions.

Removal of greenhouse microclimate heterogeneity with conveyor system for indoor phenotyping

Greenhouse facilities are a prevalent contemporary crop research method, attractive for their ability to achieve controlled plant growth in all seasons and more uniform environments compared to field experiments. However, the environment within the same greenhouse is still heterogeneous, where diverging regions are referred to as ‘microclimates’. The non-uniform distributions of temperature and irradiation caused by microclimates create problems that have been proven to have their impacts on the growth, production, and quality of the crops. To address these issues, a traditional greenhouse was equipped with a conveyor system controlled by a computer algorithm to more equally expose heat, and irradiation to each plant. Using a simulation analysis of the greenhouse microclimates, the algorithm minimizes the conveyor motion while exposing all plants to equivalent units of heat and radiation. In a traditional greenhouse and one other greenhouse outfitted with a novel conveyor system, one maize genotype was replicated 50 times in each facility and subjected to drought and well-watered treatments simultaneously. Plants were scanned with VNIR hyperspectral cameras with push broom scanning from both the top and side views. Results showed that the variance within both treatment groups was significantly lower in the experiment performed in the greenhouse equipped with the conveyor system (p < .05). Results also showed the greenhouse equipped with the conveyor system had better experimental performances, where the well-watered plants and drought stressed plants showed clearer differences in projected leaf area, RWC, SPAD and 21 commonly used plant indices. Therefore, this novel greenhouse phenotyping mode showed better performances with lower plant variances compared to the conventional greenhouses.

A four-stage framework for conducting feminist storytelling research.

Storytelling is a contemporary research method increasingly used in qualitative interpretive research. Despite its popularity, there is a paucity of information providing detailed processes for conducting storytelling research that also incorporates a feminist perspective. To provide a four-stage framework for conducting feminist storytelling research. Systematic approaches or frameworks can help researchers conducting feminist storytelling studies. The authors discuss a framework for the sequential process of conducting storytelling research that embraces the tenets of feminist standpoint theory. This four-staged framework consists of the steps taken to prepare for the collection and analysis of data, as well as to disseminate the research's findings, from etic (procedural) and emic (feminist) perspectives. The authors demonstrate the use of the framework by applying it to a study of mothering. Use of a purposeful approach to feminist storytelling research may increase its auditability and verification. The authors anticipate that the framework can be adapted into an effective tool to support researchers interested in conducting feminist storytelling research.

Metal Detecting as Contemporary Artistic Research Method. Educational Values and Ethical Issues

Metal detecting became a major issue for cultural environment, over intense debates for and against. Already regulated in western countries and making its contribution to cultural and scientific studies, is still fiercely debated in Eastern European countries. Usually classified as outdoor hobby or leisure activity, metal detecting, although incomplete and inadequately legislated, has proven to be a cultural and scientific vector with great potential for participatory research and democratic access to cutting-edge technology. The centennial anniversary of First World War highlighted the major social, cultural and mainly educational impact of metal detecting opportunities of bringing to light countless artifacts and situations which described the human dimensions and personal dramas of people trapped in both major conflicts of 20th century. Besides undeniable educational values, when practiced by responsible and trained metal detectorists, inherent ethical issues arise in some contexts and situations. The article addresses the potential of metal detecting as contemporary artistic research method, within the related creative activities applied to recovered artifacts and collected data: classifications, photographic investigations, potential as sculptural objects and artistic installations. During the last decade, Eastern European metal detectorists became aware that democratization and public access to this technology offers the opportunity of participative research and regulated access to historical anthroposphere. Applications of this technology are multiple, within research areas of cultural environment. The method has great potential for educational fields and interactive teaching in arts and humanities.