Social Research Methods Research Articles

Environmental Policy and Regulatory Framework for Managing Mangroves as a Carbon Sink in Cuba

Carbon stored in mangroves is valuable for climate change mitigation. Managing the carbon stored in the mangrove requires an adequate legal framework and an environmental policy. In Cuba, there is little research on the capacity of mangroves to retain carbon and its articulation in environmental policy and management. In the present study, the following research question is raised: Is there a favorable context in the environmental policy to manage the mangrove as a carbon reservoir in Cuba? The aim of this research is to identify aspects of environmental policy, legal and administrative frameworks related to managing mangroves as a carbon sink in Cuba. The qualitative method of social research, the content analysis technique, and the modified Ibero-American Network for Integrated Coastal Management (IBERMAR) decalogue were used to compile, understand, and discuss the potential for effective management of mangroves for carbon storage. One hundred and twenty-one articles published in WOS and Scopus databases between 2019 and 2022, as well as books and material reviewed on the official websites, were checked. Present policy in Cuba manages mangroves for coastal protection and other ecosystem services but lacks a developed plan for considering the role of this marine forest system as a carbon sink. Managing mangroves as a carbon reservoir will require vigorous efforts to measure and monitor the system. It is necessary to build a robust national political agenda and strengthen institutional and regulatory capacities. This research provides a systematization of environmental policy as a baseline for the management of carbon reservoirs in mangroves in Cuba.

Индекс локальной автономии как инструмент оценки состояния муниципальных институтов

The index of local autonomy, developed by European experts, is a relatively new tool for quantitative measurement of the state of local self-government as a social phenomenon. The introduction of a quantitative approach into qualitative analysis and a reasonable combination of both methods allow avoiding the negative consequences of the dominance of each method in social research, including the analysis of the evolution of local self-government. The index is an attempt to objectify the level and dynamics of the development of local autonomy as the most important characteristic of this institution. The calculation of the index is based on 11 indicators that take into account the legal, political and organizational aspects of the autonomy of local self-government. For the first time, the LAI index was calculated in 2014, and in 2021 LAI 2.0 was calculated for the first time for Russia (including by the author of the article). The article presents the meaning and methodology for calculating the index, which can be taken into account for the current reform of public authority. It should be aimed at improving the efficiency of local self-government, which is facilitated by the level of its autonomy.

Ruch konsumencki jako przejaw społeczeństwa obywatelskiego w Polsce

The aim of the article is to analyze the consumer movement as a manifestation of civil society in Poland. The consumer movement in Europe was synthesized and the freedom of association in consumer organizations was indicated as an element of civil society. While implementing the undertaken research problem, were used the important for the field of social sciences research methods and techniques. The basic research method used in the article is the method of dogmatic analysis. It was used to analyze the legal acts regulating the discussed issues. The article also uses the comparative method to compare selected aspects of the activities of consumer organizations in Poland. As a result of the research, it was indicated that the idea of civil society in Poland was implemented through the development of the consumer movement and the right of consumers to associate in consumer organizations. The consumer movement in Poland developed much later than in Western European countries – in the 1980s. It was caused by the unpopularity and the minimization of the need for real consumer protection in the face of the realities of the socio-economic system in force in the People’s Republic of Poland. After 1989, despite the existence of relevant legal regulations in this area, the existence of a demand for the creation of consumer organizations (due to the need to protect consumers in the field of health, economic interests, redress, information and education), this did not translate into the multiplicity of these entities.

Sensual Construction of Body and Biography. Suggestions to Mutually Improve Deficient but Widespread Body Concepts and Biographical Research

Against the backdrop of an increasing interest in visual methods in social research, this paper examines some theoretical foundations of human (inter-)action by reflecting on the interplay between senses, the body, and biography. The main purpose of the paper is to combine an integral, non-Cartesian concept of the self as body (respectively the lived body as self) with biographical research—thus enriching research on the body, as well as on biography. Criticizing the Cartesian split of body and mind, classical phenomenological (Leib) and recent concepts of the body (“embodiment”) are sketched, resulting in a processual model of the sensual construction of the lived and living body in its environment. Given the interplay of bodily foundations of the self and processes of biographical structuring, so far, distant fields of research are converged. Some suggestions for conceptual improvements, an attentional shift to body aspects, respective research topics, and the extension of methods exceeding the narrative biographical interview in biographical research are indicated.

Organizational Stigma: Taking Stock and Opening New Areas for Research

AbstractSince its introduction as a concept, organizational stigma has become central to explaining how organizations or industries become tainted, and how they overcome and manage such taint. In this introduction to the Special Issue on organizational stigma, we start by exploring the origins of the concept, providing basic definitions and reviewing the existing research on stigmatization, stigma transfer and experienced stigma. The papers in this issue flesh out our understanding of what causes organizational stigma and its implications at different levels. The remainder of this introduction takes stock of this recent work to explore future research opportunities around the micro‐ and macro‐foundations of organizational stigma, the links with scandals, controversies and other negative social evaluations and research methods. As the concept of organizational stigma reaches a new stage, we argue that its explanatory power can be harnessed to explore new and increasingly relevant phenomena and contexts.

Competitiveness of Global Apparel Industry: A Study Based on Transaction Cost Theory

This article explores global competitiveness in the apparel industry and its implications on the competitive performance of China and Bangladesh through the lens of transaction cost theory (TCT). The study has been conducted based on qualitative method of social science research. The primary evidence for this study has been collected through semi-structured in-depth personal interviews with key resource persons in international trade. The study finds that rising competition in global apparel trade largely influences Bangladesh’s competitiveness in the apparel industry compared to China. However, China’s apparel industry faces challenges from rising production costs. It also finds that unrestricted trade flows among Asian competitors through bilateral and comprehensive trade agreements have severe implications on Bangladesh’s competitiveness in apparel sector, while trade protectionism remains the key barrier towards China’s share of exports in global apparel market. The findings of the study will be crucial for both Chinese and Bangladeshi policy makers and stakeholders to address existing impediments, including future challenges to gain a competitive advantage in their apparel exports. The study is among the first to compare the international competitiveness of apparel industries between the two major apparel exporting countries by using TCT.

Demografski i društveni razvoj Martinaca u 18. i 19. stoljeću

Demographic and social development of Martinci/Felsőszentmárton in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this paper the author investigates the way the Croatian minority village community was formed at the end of the 18th and in the first half of the 19th century. Through the quantitative analysis of birth register data and the qualitative analysis of surnames in the aforementioned databases of the village of Martinci / Felsőszentmárton, the author creates a picture of the formation of society and community in the 19th century. With the help of published literature, the author provides a summary of the issue of im-migration, which formed the basis of further development and modernization, the stages of which the author determines using the methods of social, demo-graphic and historical research.

Introduction: The Olympic Scholarship of John J. MacAloon

Introduction: The Olympic Scholarship of John J. MacAloon

The Ideal Concept of Integrated-Based Ngrenehan Coastal Management for Community Welfare (Integrated Coastal Zone Management Approach)

This study examines the ideal concept of integrated-based coastal area management for community welfare. This study aims to analyze the management of coastal areas at Ngrenehan Beach and describe the ideal concept of managing coastal areas at Ngrenehan Beach with an ICZM approach in the future. This study uses a legal, social research method with a conceptual approach. The results of this study are (1) the Kanigoro village government provides solutions in the form of public policies that reflect the integrated management of coastal areas based on the tourism economy, community empowerment, and a sustainable environment; (2) elements of human resources, village infrastructure, and stakeholder communication are still problems that need solutions related to optimizing their implementation. These three elements are the principal basis of an integrated-based management pyramid. If these elements have not been implemented optimally, it is feared that the process of village development and development to become an empowered and civilized village will be hampered.

Using Flickr Data to Understand Image of Urban Public Spaces with a Deep Learning Model: A Case Study of the Haihe River in Tianjin

Understanding public perceptions of images of urban public spaces can guide efforts to improve urban vitality and spatial diversity. The rise of social media data and breakthroughs in deep learning frameworks for computer vision provide new opportunities for studying public perceptions in public spaces. While social media research methods already exist for extracting geo-information on public preferences and emotion analysis findings from geodata, this paper aims at deep learning analysis by building a VGG-16 image classification method that enhanced the research content of images without geo-information. In this study, 1940 Flickr images of the Haihe River in Tianjin were identified in multiple scenes with deep learning. The regularized VGG-16 architecture showed high accuracies of 81.75% for the TOP-1 and 96.75% for the TOP-5 and Grad-CAM visualization modules for the interpretation of classification results. The result of the present work indicate that images of the Haihe River are dominated by skyscrapers, bridges, promenades, and urban canals. After using kernel density to visualize the spatial distribution of Flickr images with geodata, it was found that there are three vitality areas in Haihe River. However, the kernel density result also shows that judging spatial visualization based solely on geodata is incomplete. The spatial distribution can be used as an assistant function in the case of the under-representation of geodata. Collectively, the field of how to apply computer vision to urban design research was explored and extended in this trial study.

Incentives and disincentives of mangrove conservation on local livelihoods in the Rufiji Delta, Tanzania

Considering local communities’ perceptions on the role of conservation measures on their socio-economic wellbeing is important for assessing effectiveness and success of conservation measures. In this study, four themes - social impacts of conservation, legitimacy of conservation governance, acceptability of conservation management and ecological outcomes of conservation were studied in the Rufiji Delta, Tanzania. The themes constituted detailed basic issues as disincentives and incentives of conservation measures to be evaluated to improve conservation policy and practice. Social research methods including, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, household semi-structured interviews and; participant and non-participant observations were used to gather data. For comparison purpose, the delta was divided into three blocks; Northern delta (ND), Central delta (CD) and Southern delta (SD). Results suggest that local communities across the three blocks had mixed perceptions on the impacts of conservation to their livelihoods. Majority of respondents in all the three blocks acknowledged that mangrove conservation is important for enhancing livelihood sustainability, with 82%, 73.3% and 82.2% for ND, CD and SD respectively. Amongst of the four themes, legitimacy of conservation governance issues was cited mostly to significantly predict perceptions of conservation impacts on local livelihoods in both delta blocks. Results suggest that recognition of community inclusion, respect, encouragement and appreciation of their interests and priorities are keys for sustainable conservation which implies that good governance structures incentivise communities towards conservation. Further, it may be suggesting that, responsible government authorities and other stakeholders should emphasize governance systems to be inclusive, by involving locals in decision making, management of resources and all issues regarding the conservation of the delta.

Algorithmic Analysis of Political Tweets: A Systematic Literature Review

This study investigates the trends and challenges in information science with a special focus on political tweets. The past decade has witnessed a transformation in information mining, extraction and production using algorithms on social media platforms. The unique data structure of Twitter has gained scholarly attention for its intelligence to produce voluminous information which is convenient and rapid. But the efficiency of Twitter as a platform to obtain political knowledge remains a question. Various socio-technological research methods have emerged making Twitter an integrated topic of study for scholars from media studies, computer science and information science. The big data environment provides hashtags, @-mentions, and various digital affordances necessitating its study to be an integral part of social science research. Thus, the systematic literature review aims to examine tweeting patterns of political leaders to study variables such as ideology diffusion, polarization, political issues, digital campaigns etc. The study also examines computational research methods to retrieve Twitter data pertaining to political information. Academic investigation consists of approaches to automated data collection on Twitter, pre-processing techniques using R and Python, machine learning procedures and sentiment analysis used on Twitter data. The study showcases India’s stand in adopting the niche socio-technological methods in social science research.

Using Tacit Expert Knowledge to Support Shop-floor Operators Through a Knowledge-based Assistance System

The increasing complexity of industrial production systems is challenging employees on the shop-floor in their daily work. Specific knowledge about manufacturing processes is often not available in explicit form but mainly as tacit knowledge of experienced shop-floor workers. A systematic approach to knowledge externalization and reuse is required to make this operational knowledge available. This paper proposes a method to systematically capture and structure expert knowledge while incorporating knowledge management and social research methods. The proposed method's application and evaluation occur in a continuous manufacturing scenario, externalizing tacit knowledge about coping with manufacturing anomalies. A digital assistance system is designed and prototypically implemented to manage and reuse the externalized knowledge. The early involvement of shop-floor workers in the development phase of the prototype ensures usability and user acceptance of the assistance system. The assistance system is developed as a collaboration supporting artifact in the shop-floor's common information space. To observe the resulting productivity performance improvements in the manufacturing scenario, a KPI-based evaluation of the assistance system is presented. Finally, a discussion about the major contributions of this paper, namely the development of an approach for knowledge externalization and a human-centered design of an assistance system, takes place. To assess the novelty of these approaches, they are contrasted with the state of the art identified in the literature before a final summary of the results is presented.

A Common First-Year Undergraduate Engineering Course in Manufacturing based on Industrial Robots and Flipped Classroom

The pedagogy of a first-year engineering course in manufacturing is presented. This course entitled Manufacturing and Society involves collaboration with social science, is based on industrial robots as the central theme to attract students’ interests and utilizes the flipped classroom approach for delivery. We hypothesize that, in one semester, recent high school graduates will be able to gain knowledge in manufacturing by learning the computer-aided engineering (CAD) software, applying CAD to design a penholder, fabricating the penholder using additive manufacturing and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software, programming the robot to create a toolpath for the pen, drawing using the pen on the penholder guided by a robot, and elaborating on impacts of robotic painting on society from a social science perspective. This course is designed to give students, regardless of their intended major in engineering, broad knowledge in manufacturing via 10 engineering, 3 social science, and 10 technical communication lectures; 8 labs; and 4 projects. The social science lectures and discussions focus on how knowledge about society can be used to inform design and manufacturing decisions, social science research methods for understanding how engineers and technology can impact people’s lives, and changing trends in work, the workplace, and the future workforce as it relates to manufacturing. This course aimed to give undergraduate first-year engineering students a positive view of advanced manufacturing and its impact on society. Student evaluations and comments were positive and affirmed the learning objective of teaching manufacturing to the first-year engineering students. The flipped classroom approach was demonstrated to be ideal during the COVID-19 pandemic with limited capacity for in-person lectures and labs. The use of flipped classrooms allowed students to learn at their own pace, review and reinforce knowledge, have a closer interaction with instructors, and reduce the number of technical errors using simulation tools. This course with the support of flipped classroom pedagogy can be successfully implemented in the post-pandemic era, devoting the time of the class to answer questions, expand upon the class content and have a closer in-person interaction with students.

The effect of face masks on the stereotype effect in emotion perception

The accurate and swift decoding of emotional expressions from faces is fundamental for social communication. Yet, emotion perception is prone to error. For example, the ease with which emotions are perceived is affected by stereotypes (Bijlstra, Holland, & Wigboldus, 2010). Moreover, the introduction of face masks mandates in response to the Covid-19 pandemic additionally impedes accurate emotion perception by introducing ambiguity to the emotion perception process. Predictive coding frameworks of visual perception predict that in such situations of increased ambiguity of the sensory input (i.e., faces with masks), people increasingly rely on their prior beliefs (i.e., their stereotypes). Using specification curve analysis, we tested this prediction across two experiments, featuring different social categories (Study 1: Gender; Study 2: Ethnicity) and corresponding emotion stereotypes. We found no evidence that face masks increase reliance on prior stereotypes. In contrast, in Study 1 (but not in Study 2), we found preliminary evidence that face masks decrease reliance on prior stereotypes. We discuss these findings in relation to predictive coding frameworks and dual process models and emphasize the need for up-to-date analytic methods in social cognition research.

COVID-19 preparedness and social dynamics in a Sub-Saharan Africa country, Benin.

SummaryThis project aims to assess and analyse the perception and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Benin. The applied research methodology was interdisciplinary and combined field studies that used ethnographic and social research methods with coding and data analysis, leading to theoretical dilemmas, which were analysed from the viewpoint of bioethical reflection. Furthermore, biomedical engineering approaches were used to assess the preparedness to COVID-19. Despite the preparedness to COVID-19 due to the promoted governmental measures, a peculiar management of the pandemic emerged. The latter, although noteworthy, did not overcome the typical challenges of medical locations in low-resource settings. This, together with the controversial spread of information and local beliefs, caused significant economic and social consequences, exceeding the benefits related to the containment of the virus. This research highlights how the emotion of fear, in this specific situation, was herald of dramatic consequences, rather than having a heuristic and empowering effect.

Leaving the Lectures Behind: Using Community-Engaged Learning in Research Methods Classes to Teach about Sustainability

This article explores the outcomes of using community-engaged learning in a sustainability-focused social sciences research course titled Methods of Social Research. The integrated components of the course were designed to teach students about the research process while addressing sustainability issues at Utah State University. Throughout the course, students learned how to collect, analyze, and interpret data; work in research teams; write a grant; and write and present a final research paper. Student sustainability surveys and the final course evaluation were used to analyze student learning outcomes. We found that students demonstrated increased confidence in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data and an improved effectiveness and enjoyment in working in teams toward a final product. Students also exhibited their knowledge of small- and large-scale sustainability challenges as well as a decisiveness in answering questions related to sustainability. These outcomes resulted in heightened student self-efficacy and critical thinking skills when performing research and engaging with issues related to sustainability.

Snap-along ethnography: Studying visual politicization in the social media age

In this article, we argue that two significant shifts, namely, the blurring of lives offline and online and the increasing significance of the visual character of these lives, pose new challenges to social science research methods. We propose the application of snap-along ethnography to address these challenges. Snap-along ethnography is an ethnographic method with three core features: (1) participant observation conducted simultaneously offline and online, (2) a concomitant analytical focus on the act of taking, sharing, posting and commenting on images and the content of the images taken, and (3) a research design that builds on the participants’ own, spontaneous and self-originating actions of taking images. We illustrate the application and benefits of the method with examples from an ongoing research on young people’s visual forms of political action.

Visual, Audial and Artistic Methods in Social Research

This article reflects on the use of sensory and creative methods to explore feelings of belonging among young people in state care across Scotland. The concern was to understand how these young people, many of whom move frequently between short-lived placements in foster families and residential units, construct a sense of belonging in circumstances that differ considerably from conventional and often idealised notions of ‘home’. Sensory and creative methods, employed here within relatively unstructured interviews, proved invaluable to understanding difficult-to-articulate, ambivalent, emotional, and aesthetic aspects of belonging. Their use illustrates the potential of moving beyond a reliance on the verbal and textual in qualitative research. Notably this article demonstrates how the use of such methods in data collection and representation can highlight the significance of research participants’ agency and creativity however difficult their affective and financial circumstances. As such, these methods also facilitate a greater appreciation of the complex personhood of research participants who may otherwise ‘appear’ in research outputs only as exemplars of particular social problems. 

Are There Enough Open Educational Resources Dealing With Social Science Research Methods? Insights From the D-A-CH Region

The D-A-CH (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) region has traditionally been skeptical toward open educational resources (OER) materials. Despite being strong partners for the open science community, the three German-speaking countries in Europe did not embrace wide-reaching OER policies in the past and offered only a limited number of incentives for supranational or nationwide genuine German-language OER. These missing national initiatives can also be seen in the field of social science research-related materials. As the domain gained much public interest during the COVID-19 pandemic, where attitudes, values, and societal changes—traditionally the domain of social scientific inquiry—were spotlighted in the media and public discourse, it fell to individual universities, organizations, and people to provide free online education materials—be they true OER or at least quasi-OER—that could help people within and outside of academia to understand and gain insights into the statistics and data presented and distributedviavarious channels. However, mapping the OER materials in this field during the summer of 2021—1 year after the pandemic had begun and the accompanying stream of data had started—revealed that the educational resources covering social science research methods that are offered in the German language are sparse, and those that are available are mostly quasi-OER, not fulfilling all the typical OER criteria. Thus, they have limited application scenarios. If the region wants to truly embrace an open science policy, it needs to strengthen OER in future.