Social Research Methods Research Articles

Book Review: Social Research Methods for Students and Scholars of Theology and Religious Studies by Joshua Iyadurai, Chenai

Book Review: <i>Social Research Methods for Students and Scholars of Theology and Religious Studies</i> by Joshua Iyadurai, Chenai

Children’s Rights and Online Age Assurance Systems

Abstract Age assurance is a way to prevent children accessing content, products or services that are potentially harmful to them, ranging from gambling services or alcohol or tobacco or, increasingly, certain products and services online. Now that children’s lives are mediated by digital technologies, policymakers are deliberating over the legal, technical and practical challenges. These have been little examined from the perspective of children’s rights. By combining legal and social research methods, this article examines the legal requirements for age assurance in Europe, assesses compliance by companies and reveals the consequences for family life. In law and practice, we show that age assurance is often ineffective in protecting children from online risk of harm. Further, as currently implemented it risks children’s other rights – to non-discrimination, privacy, to be heard, and their civil rights and freedoms, and remedy. We identify promising directions for the use of age assurance in child online protection, focusing on European policy, regulators and civil society actors.

Identifying Tools and Techniques for Picking out Cultural Bottlenecks: Another Crucial Component of the Symbiotic Approach to Socio-Cultural Change

This paper is built upon our earlier papers on the symbiotic approach to sociocultural change, and extends them meaningfully in new directions. This is done by proposing different types of tools and techniques that can be used in identifying cultural bottlenecks, and can therefore be used to usher in, or bring about a faster pace of sociocultural change. We therefore, aptly and appropriately begin this paper by carrying out a brief overview of our earlier papers on sociocultural change, and by briefly laying down their various concepts and postulates. Subsequently, and resultantly, various tools and techniques for identifying and overcoming cultural bottlenecks are also proposed. These include an alignment with a cultural taxonomy, a comparative method to compare cultures, a high low analysis of values, a root cause analysis of cultural performance, analysis of cultural orientations, an evaluation of cultural performance by laying down metric and measurements and analyzing the pace of sociocultural change, etc. We also briefly discuss ethnographic techniques that can be used to evaluate cultures, including long-term ethnography and the ethnography of enculturation. Likewise, social science research methods, and components of research design are reviewed, besides some other approaches to identifying and analyzing cultural bottlenecks. We hope and anticipate that this paper will become a useful cog in the machine to bring about faster sociocultural change, and will become an intrinsic part of our globalization of science movement as well.

Evaluating the Psychometric Properties of the Revised Attitudes Toward Research Scale for Use with MSW Students.

Evaluating students' attitudes toward research is essential for instructors of any research methods class, as students' general attitudes toward research may impact if and how they integrate research into practice decision making. However, few psychometrically sound, multidimensional instruments that can be used with Master of Social Work (MSW) students exist. This work used confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Revised Attitudes Toward Research Scale with a diverse sample of 396 master's level social work students. Multiple indicators, multiple causes models and a series of Monte Carlo simulations were then used to assess the relationship between various dimensions of students' attitudes toward research, their prior research exposure/training, and their sociodemographic characteristics. Results indicate that the overall performance of the measure with this sample of MSW students was strong, and the factor structure was consistent with that found when evaluated with different samples in previous research. Moreover, various sociodemographic characteristics predicted scores on the research usefulness, research anxiety, and positive research predisposition subscales. The use of this tool allows instructors to identify students with high levels of research-related anxiety and those who may not intuitively comprehend the need to understand empirical research findings and integrate them into practice decision making. The authors offer suggestions for integrating this validated tool into social work research methods classes to assist in developing students' ability to engage in all steps of the evidence-based practice process once in the field.

Social Research Methods: For Students and Scholars of Theology and Religious Studies, written by Joshua Iyadurai

Social Research Methods: For Students and Scholars of Theology and Religious Studies, written by Joshua Iyadurai

Foundations of experiential knowledge: recovering a forgotten resource for social work

This article explores the conceptual and theoretical foundation of experiential knowledge. A scoping review shows that limited studies have so far been published about experiential knowledge in the context of social work. Although the value of personal experiences is commonly acknowledged, these are generally not considered ‘real knowledge’. Two main problems are identified, the first being that in dominant positivist scientific conceptions, experiential knowledge is not seen as scientifically relevant. The second is that, epistemologically, it seems problematic to turn personal experiences into collective knowledge. Regarding the first issue, it is argued that from a social-constructivist angle, experiential knowledge is valid knowledge. Not only can denying the value of knowledge based on lived experiences be considered an epistemic injustice, but it also ignores it as a valuable resource for professional education and practice. The second issue needs to be further explored considering the complex processes of experiential knowledge production, using the opportunities that narrative and participative social work research methods offer.

Research on Public Policy and Public Administration Based on Social Research Methods

Public policy and public administration, as integral components of modern societal governance, have their efficacy directly impacting social stability and development. Social research methods, as crucial tools for the scientific inquiry of social phenomena, play an irreplaceable role in the formulation of public policies and the practice of public administration. Whether through quantitative or qualitative research methods, these approaches provide essential theoretical support and empirical evidence for policymakers and administrators. By systematically applying these research methods, one can significantly enhance the scientific basis of policy formulation and the efficiency of public administration, thereby advancing social equity and justice. In the context of globalization and information technology, a profound exploration of the application of social research methods in the public domain holds significant practical importance for improving governance capabilities.

Teaching Note—Antioppressive Pedagogy in Action: The Undergraduate Research Methods Course

ABSTRACT The project of engaging undergraduates in research methods courses is an outstanding challenge for social work educators. Anxiety about the subject is common, for both students and instructors. Further, students’ wariness may reflect historical trauma and their knowledge about the ways in which research has been used to oppress people of color; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual or ally, and other sexual and gender minorities communities; and other marginalized populations. This teaching note offers reflections and experiences about developing an undergraduate social work research methods course that uses antioppressive pedagogies to create student-centered learning with experiential team-based activities and ongoing critique about the role of power and privilege in research. Specific teaching resources and strategies are shared.

Reflections of Social Work Academics on Moving from Social Work Practice to the Academic Environment

The social work academic field, in common with other professional qualification degrees requires academics to have substantial social work practice experience. This reflective paper explores the journey of two social work academics who have made the transition from practice to the academic environment within the last ten years. Having applied a duoethnographical approach, the authors discuss the potential challenges of making this transition but is more focused on the benefits that former social work practitioners bring to the academic and research environment. It discusses practice-based research and appreciative inquiry as beneficial research methods for social work research and the importance of engaging with people with lived experience in a collaborative approach to research. It emphasises that social workers with skills of engagement, critical analysis and managing challenging situations are well placed to undertake research and make recommendations for social work practice from an informed an ‘expert’ position.

Where is the wolf? A multi‐method comparison of social values and perceptions in a Swiss park

This article presents our recent experience studying public perceptions, discourses, and social values in Park Beverin, a Regional Nature Park in Switzerland. We applied four social research methods (news media analysis, survey with micro‐narratives, go‐along interviews, and focus groups), and delved into the subject of wolf Canis lupus adapting a triangulation protocol and systematic process from the health sciences. We observed the recurring perceptions of ‘wolf' throughout three of the four methods; however, depictions, values, prominence, and presence varied by method. Social values of the wolf were mostly silent when compared to other topics, and ‘wolf amplification' and ‘wolf fatigue' point to the need to rethink the social aspects in wolf management, conservation, and policy. The findings also show the need for diverse research methods for revealing social values and perceptions on sensitive topics that otherwise the use of one method may be masking or amplifying.

Practice and Experience of Corps Colleges and Universities in the New Era of the Communist Party of China's Unity and Stabilisation of the Borderlands

General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out when attending the Fifth Session of the 13th National People's Congress that "national unity is the lifeline of all ethnic groups in our country, and the sense of community of the Chinese nation is the basis of national unity". Based on this, this study takes the creation of national unity and progress in colleges and universities as the main line, selects the national national unity and progress in the creation of demonstration units - Shihezi University as the object of study, comprehensively applies the comprehensive social survey research methods such as literature research, participant observation, interviews, etc., sums up the specific practice of Shihezi University in practicing unity and stabilisation of Xinjiang, and puts forward targeted, comprehensive, and effective measures for the creation of Xinjiang's national unity and progress in Xinjiang. The study will summarise the concrete practice of Shihezi University, put forward targeted and exemplary opinions on the creation of national unity and progress, promote the implementation and development of the concept of "unity and stability" in the whole territory, and offer suggestions for the realisation of social stability and long-term peace and stability in Xinjiang.

The surveillance, gamification and datafication of children’s finance: a feature and tagline analysis of child finance apps

Purpose Children’s finances are increasingly digitised through the emergence and development of a range of finance applications, or apps, for managing chores, saving and spending. This paper aims to offer a preliminary scoping study of these child finance apps in the nascent consumer research area of children’s FinTech. Design/methodology/approach This paper undertakes a qualitative analysis of the design features and marketing taglines of child finance apps to explore their role in the digitisation of children’s financial literacy, consumer socialisation and economic agency. Findings The present analysis reveals five key design functions of child finance apps: chore management; child savings; payment and spending systems; parental control features; and banking and finance features. Furthermore, three key child consumer themes emerge from the analysis of these child finance apps: gamification of child household labour; surveillance of children’s consumer participation; and datafication of children’s financial lives. Originality/value To date, there is little research into the increasingly popular use of child chore, consumption and financial management apps, and thus a research gap or problem is that we do not yet have sufficient understanding of how finance apps operate through their design and marketing to influence the financial conditions of contemporary childhoods. This study is significant in bringing theories of surveillance, gamification and datafication from digital platform studies to the fields of childhood studies, children’s consumer research and child FinTech studies. The findings suggest that child finance apps use gamification features to encourage children’s financial learning, surveillance features to enable parenting care in children’s financial development and datafication to exploit children’s financial data within the finance industry. This study is clearly limited to the app environment, and so future work should investigate the use and perceptions of these apps in more detail using more situated social research methods with families and children.

교육 분야의 요인분석 방법 실태 및 사회과학 연구분석 가이드 프로그램 개발

Objectives In this study, we intend to develop a factual situation of factor analysis methods in the field of education and a social science research analysis guide program. Methods In order to investigate the factor analysis method of the literature in the field of education, an analysis layer tool is selected, and the selected tools are used to analyze the education-related literature of the last five years (2019-2023). Based on the analyzed contents, a survey is conducted on educational researchers, and based on the results, a Delphi technique is conducted to determine the cause. Based on the identified causes and data, a model of the social science research analysis guide program will be selected, and the program of the selected model will be developed. Results Big data harvesting was selected as the analysis layer tool, and as a result of using it, 74.6% (1,400 articles) used the right angle rotation method as a factor rotation method among 1,876 documents that released factor analysis methods among 55,400 documents in the field of education over the past five years, and 25.4% (476 articles) used the square rotation method. Nevertheless, as a result of analyzing the cause of why most of the square rotation methods are not used, research in the field of education tends to rely on experts or companies due to lack of reference, advice, and statistical knowledge, and it can be found that the selection of research methods is influenced by the excellence of past practices and results, and the need for statistical knowledge is emerging due to the generalization of previous studies. It provided data on the causes of analysis method selection and preferred statistical knowledge acquisition for a group of experts in the field of education and statistics, and analyzed opinions on the social science research and analysis guide program model. It was divided into eight characteristics: automation of research methods, practical applicability, learning forms, provision of various analysis methods, user convenience consideration, update and maintenance, consideration of non-majors, and measures to overcome limitations. Based on these characteristics, the development of the social science research and analysis guide program was completed by dividing it into one main program and two auxiliary programs, and dividing it into three website pages. Conclusions The social science research analysis guide program will be operated free of charge after continuous update, revision, and supplementation by establishing a dedicated website. By allowing anyone to utilize all development components through the Git Hub, it is intended to help develop a more suitable and complete social science research foundation by improving the statistical lack of knowledge and the conventional form of using prior papers. Even if the statistical understanding was high while developing the program, there was a limit to fully presenting all social science research and analysis methods. This will improve through continuous updates, revisions, and supplements, but fundamentally, just as arguments conflict depending on whether statistical methodology is important like factor analysis or whether interpretation and use of results are important, various analysis methods are also difficult, and the developed program presents soft answers. It is hoped that more suitable research and analysis guides will be developed with shared data in the future.

Abstraction, Conceptualization, Disambiguation, Ideation, Innovation, Objectivization, Quantification, and Theorization in the Social Sciences: New Pillars for Contemporary Social Sciences Research

In many of our previous papers published over the years, we had developed and propounded concepts such as fuzzy logic, the theory of paradoxes, the certainty uncertainty principle for the social sciences, innovative methods for the social sciences, and had also explained the importance of inductive approaches, grounded theory, and nomothetic rule building. We had also stated the importance of practicalism as a core component of the philosophy of science. In this paper, we state the importance of abstraction, conceptualization, ideation, innovation, quantification, theorization, objectivization and disambiguation in the social sciences, and explain all of these concepts in detail. We also refer to them as the “pillars of social sciences research methods and techniques”, or “the guiding principles or the guiding forces in the use or employment of social science research methods and techniques, and social science research activity”. These approaches are necessary because social sciences research is mostly qualitative; these techniques could impart quality and objectivity to social science research in a way that other techniques cannot. These are different from the philosophy of science or the philosophy of social science, and these we anticipate would guide and drive much of social science research enterprise in the twenty-first century and beyond. These are also foundationally different from the objectives of social science research, examples of which could be cultural emancipation, inculcation of a scientific temper, etc. Needless to say, these can be gainfully employed in the non social sciences as well, though this is not our primary focus and emphasis here.

The problem of determining the appropriate statistical method in human and social research

This research aims to find a solution to a problem faced by most researchers in the field of human and social sciences. The problem is related to the use of the appropriate statistical method for analyzing data and testing hypotheses, choosing between the two main types of statistics: parametric and non-parametric. Choosing the statistical method is not random, but rather depends on the fulfillment of certain conditions, such as normality of distribution, sample size, homogeneity, and measurement level (nominal, ordinal, categorical, or relative), the research poses a crucial question: How does a social researcher choose the appropriate statistical method to test the hypotheses of his research?

Leveraging computational methods for nonprofit social media research: a systematic review and methodological framework

While social media platforms are valuable for examining the online engagement of nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, the research considerations underlying social media data remain opaque to most. Through a systematic review of nonprofit studies that analyze social media data, I propose a methodological framework incorporating three common data types: text, engagement and network data. The review reveals that most existing studies rely heavily on manual coding to analyze relatively small datasets of social media messages, thereby missing out on the automation and scalability offered by advanced computational methods. To address this gap, I demonstrate the application of supervised machine learning to train, predict, and analyze a substantial dataset consisting of 66,749 social media messages posted by community foundations on Twitter/X. This study underscores the benefits of combining manual content analysis with automated approaches and calls for future research to explore the potential of generative AI in advancing nonprofit social media research.

The role of feedback type and peer interaction on knowledge acquisition in a flipped classroom on social science research methods

The role of feedback type and peer interaction on knowledge acquisition in a flipped classroom on social science research methods

Exploring food poverty experiences in the German Twitter-Sphere

BackgroundThis study investigates the subjective perceptions of food poverty in Germany by analysing Twitter discourse using the German-language hashtag #IchBinArmutsbetroffen (#IamPovertyAffected) and examines the extent to which various dimensions of a multidimensional theoretical model of food poverty are represented in the discourse.MethodsEmploying a combination of computational social science and qualitative social research methods, the research identifies, and analyses tweets related to nutrition by applying a hierarchical dictionary search and qualitative content analysis. By examining the narratives and statements of individuals affected by food poverty, the study also investigates the interplay among different subdimensions of this phenomenon.ResultsThe analysis of 1,112 tweets revealed that 57.96% focused on the material dimension and 42.04% on the social dimension of food poverty, suggesting a relatively balanced emphasis on material and social aspects of food poverty in the narratives of those affected. The findings reveal that tweets on material food poverty underscore economic challenges and resource scarcity for food. Social food poverty tweets demonstrate widespread deprivation in social participation, leading to isolation, exclusion, and social network loss. Overall, the results elucidate intricate interconnections among subdimensions and multidimensional manifestations of food poverty.ConclusionsThis study contributes methodologically by presenting an approach for extracting food-related textual social media data and empirically by providing novel insights into the perceptions and multifaceted manifestations of food poverty in Germany. The results can aid in a better understanding of the phenomenon of food poverty as it currently manifests in Germany, and in developing targeted social, health-promoting, and political measures that address more effectively the empirically evident multidimensionality of the phenomenon.

Methodological construction for the analysis of social phenomena: case of entrepreneurial decisions in university students

This document aims to reflect on a social research method that allows for the examination of complex social phenomena through the operationalization of some of its characteristics. It is not a traditional article that presents and analyzes results; rather, its nature is reflective, centering on the presentation and justification of a methodology. To this end, the epistemological and ontological foundations and difficulties of traditional research methodologies are discussed. Additionally, the foundations of the proposed approach are presented, and a case application is exposed, demonstrating the convergence of perspectives in a single study. The document concludes that this method can be essential for holistic, transdisciplinary, and interdisciplinary methodological approaches where different perspectives are required for the same phenomenon.

Book review: Joshua Iyadurai, Social Research Methods: For Students and Scholars of Theology and Religious Studies

Book review: Joshua Iyadurai, <i>Social Research Methods: For Students and Scholars of Theology and Religious Studies</i>