Issues In Social Research Research Articles

Women, Psychology, and Social Issues Research

This article reviews the history of women psychologists' contributions to social issues research. The first part describes the work of a few remarkable women in the early part of the century whose scientific participation and feminist orientations were equally unusual. It then focuses on the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), which was founded in 1937, and traces the various stages of women's participation in it, beginning with its essentially all male leadership for over 20 years (with a few notable exceptions), through the flurry of short-lived feminist concerns after World War II, to the dramatic upsurge of female leadership and scholarship of the past two decades. Some potential reasons for the 20-year hiatus between postwar feminist interests and similar concerns in the late 1960s are discussed.

Whose side are we on now? Ethical issues in social research and medical practice

The stance of sociologist as champion of the underdog or as purveyor of the values and attitudes of the ‘superordinate’ was posed as a problem by Howard Becker and debated by Alvin Gouldner some two decades ago. Since then, those who have addressed the question as to whose side the sociologist should be on, have opted for an ‘ironic stance’. This paper, taking the case of a research unit wholly funded by a patient self-help group and located within a University in Britain, notes the difficulties currently faced by the ‘lay’ researcher working in the field of medicine in times of scarcity and want as compared with those faced some two or three decades ago in times of expansion. It is argued that the self-help group is identifiable both as suffering victim and as overlord, since they raise the funds which, sometimes directly and alway indirectly, are used to employ researchers. In practice there has always been a constant negotiation between funder and researcher, between expressing the values of one group as against those of another, and in the pursuit of fundamental and underpinning values. With the proviso that the interests of the most vulnerable and stigmatised groups in society are attended to, the self-interest both of sociology as a discipline and of individual sociologists working in these settings, it is argued, is by no means an ethically weak goal to pursue.

Social Research in Developing Countries: Surveys and Censuses in the Third World.

This collection of papers by various authors focuses on the problems of conducting social surveys in developing countries. Consideration is also given to the alternatives to the social survey and to ways of combining data collection methodologies that might be more appropriate in developing country situations. Sections are included on research strategy including censuses sample surveys and KAP surveys; sampling; data collection; interviewing and field organization; methodological marriages; and ethical and political issues in social research. The papers include both those that have been previously published elsewhere and original contributions.

Nuclear issues in social research

Nuclear issues in social research

Public reactions to some ethical issues of social research: attitudes and behavior.

This article reports on a survey of public attitudes toward issues of informed consent in social research. It finds a high level of expressed concern about such matters as confidentiality of response and study sponsorship; it also finds significant interrelationships between the expression of such concerns and willingness to answer sensitive questions on the interview, though generally such relationships are small.

A Moral Context for Social Research

Five recent books on the ethics of social research are reviewed: Ethical Issues in Social Research, Tom L. Beauchamp, et al., eds.; Ethics of Human Subject Research, Allan J. Kimmel, Jr., ed.; Social Research Ethics, Martin Bulmer, ed.; and The Ethics of Social Research: Fieldwork, Regulation and Publication and The Ethics of Social Research: Surveys and Experiments, both edited by Joan E. Sieber. Although these works are judged to provide good analyses of traditionally defined moral issues in social research, they are criticized for failing to recognize and explore the serious implications of pervasive bureaucratic control and manipulation of such research in modern society.

Semiotics and the Critical Sensibility: Observations on the Example of Meyer Schapiro

Originally published, with a slightly different title, in an issue of Social Research (XLV, 1978) dedicated to the work of Meyer Schapiro, this essay attempts to assess certain aspects of Schapiro's contribution and their relevance as models for the study of art. Among the aspects singled out are: the relationship between his studies of past and present art, between his scholarship and learning, on the one hand, and his critical commitment, on the other; his fundamental respect for the work of art and for the artist, for the freedom of artistic exploration and inventiveness, which underlies the basic humanism of Schapiro's critical approach and system of values.

Methods and Issues in Social Research

Methods and Issues in Social Research

Ethical Issues in Social Research

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bioethics.v1i1.9522 Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2010; 1(1):3

Evaluating the Potsdam Plan

indictment is severe, but those who have given attention to the matter will be aware of the fact that not a few economists, both in this country and in England, concur in it. Definite support for the Potsdam plan has come, as a rule, only from those who had a share in the development of this policy, such as Henry Morgenthau, Jr.,2 and the Foreign Economic Administration (FEA),3 whose views were largely discounted. A detailed defense of the Potsdam declarations by outside observers, however, was presented in a study entitled The Economic Problem of Germany. Prepared under the auspices of the Institute of World Affairs, and widely distributed by it in reprint form (after publication in the June 1946 issue of Social Research), it gains added importance by reason of the fact that it lists Dr. Alvin Johnson as its author together