Social Science Methods Research Articles

‘Take my advice’: Entrepreneurial consumers and the ecosystemic logics of digital platforms

Technology affordances democratize access to entrepreneurship, making it relatively common for consumers to expand their social media activities to become digital entrepreneurs. The decreasing distance between consumption and entrepreneurial practices on digital platforms such as Twitch, Spotify, and YouTube amplifies the influence of cultural elements germane to entrepreneurial ecosystems. This article investigates the effect of this societal change on the discourse and behavior of consumers through the lens of institutional logics theory. It uses computational social science methods to analyze 1,909,370 comments posted on 249 videos published on a YouTube channel that unboxes technological products. The findings show that many end-users offer business advice to digital influencers as if they are collaborating with a buddy entrepreneur. A quantitative procedure demonstrates that these individuals have more subscribers than the average end-user. Further, the percentage of comments on this interaction correlates positively with end-user (consumer) engagement. This relationship indicates that a digital influencer's ability to inspire entrepreneurial behavior among end-users may benefit his/her business. It also suggests the existence of an entrepreneurship-related continuum from consumers to digital influencers.

African Urban Sexualities After Queer Visibilities

This article outlines why there exist important opportunities to think through what research on African urban sexualities—and specifically non-heteronormative sexualities—may mean moving forward. By looking back at the text Queer Visibilities that largely focused on articulating some of the relationships between the urban and sexuality over a decade ago in Cape Town, this article suggests at least three key opportunities in which future scholarship may wish to explore African urban sexualities in the current moment. These opportunities circulate around new theoretical insights that emerge from the South that may speak to but are not beholden to theories from the North, the urgent need for further empirical work on the ways sexuality interfaces with urbanisation dynamics on the continent, and to think through and give space to broader approaches to document the relationship between sexuality and the urban that include but also extend beyond more ‘traditional’ social science methods. This article then explores these opportunities in relation to the interventions that follow in this special issue.

Social science – STEM collaborations in agriculture, food and beyond: an STSFAN manifesto

Interdisciplinary research needs innovation. As an action-oriented intervention, this Manifesto begins from the authors’ experiences as social scientists working within interdisciplinary science and technology collaborations in agriculture and food. We draw from these experiences to: 1) explain what social scientists contribute to interdisciplinary agri-food tech collaborations; (2) describe barriers to substantive and meaningful collaboration; and (3) propose ways to overcome these barriers. We encourage funding bodies to develop mechanisms that ensure funded projects respect the integrity of social science expertise and incorporate its insights. We also call for the integration of social scientific questions and methods in interdisciplinary projects from the outset, and for a genuine curiosity on the part of STEM and social science researchers alike about the knowledge and skills each of us has to offer. We contend that cultivating such integration and curiosity within interdisciplinary collaborations will make them more enriching for all researchers involved, and more likely to generate socially beneficial outcomes.

INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS: FROM BASIC CONCEPTS TO CONTEMPORARY CONTRADICTIONS

The purpose of this study is to analyze the evolution and current state of institutional economics, to clarify its subject area, and to identify relevant problems. As a result, it was shown that modern institutional economics is one of the most productive and contradictory scientific fields. On the one hand, by combining the methods of various social sciences, it has offered effective tools for the solution of certain problems, has extended the economic approach to many spheres of life, has promoted the coordination of contradictory economic interests. It took into account the achievements of normative, ethical, informational, evolutionary, game, transactional, contractual and organizational approaches. On the other hand, due to the increased availability of data and the use of computational methods, institutional economics has been enriched by results in the areas of institutional diversity, institutional change, the study of the impact of institutional quality on inequality problems, and the role of individual economic actors. However, the degree of rationality of individual behavior, the impact of economic institutions on increasing imbalances in the distribution of wealth and power, the implementation of mechanisms of institutional change, and the transplantation of effective economic institutions remain debatable.

Filling global gaps in monitoring data with local knowledge

Filling global gaps in monitoring data with local knowledge

Pitting Virtue Ethics Against Situationism: An Empirical Argument for Virtue

AbstractSituationists maintain that psychological evidence (e.g., the well-known Good Samaritan experiment) challenges a key assumption of virtue ethics, namely that virtuous people display cross-situational consistency of behavior. This situationist critique is frequently thought to pose a serious threat to virtue ethics. Virtue ethicists have so far mainly put forward conceptual rather than empirical arguments against situationism. In this paper, we examine the extent to which a plausible empirical argument can be developed against situationism, and in favor of virtue ethics. We note that such an argument will naturally entail empirical simplification, and consequently concessions from both sides of the debate will be required. We argue, however, that with such concessions in place, the debate between situationists and virtue ethicists can be captured by a claim about the way that virtuous behavior may change when situations change. We report the results of an experiment (conducted twice, for replication) showing how social science methods can be introduced to the situationism debate to test such a claim empirically. Our results offer tentative support for eudaemonist and agent-based varieties (but not for target-centered) versions of virtue ethics.

Digital methods of social science in food regulation: case studies from the Food Standards Agency

The use of digital methods in social research has increased significantly, offering some benefits over traditional research methods, and some new challenges. The UK Food Standards Agency’s social science provides several case studies of how digital methods can be effectively utilized in practice. The agency has adopted various digital methods including web push surveys, online panels, online deliberative dialogue and citizen science platforms to gather data and gain insights into citizens’ attitudes and behaviours when it comes to the food system and food safety and standards. The implementation of these digital methods has allowed for more efficient data collection, and when applied with care and creativity can offer a high level of engagement and participation from the public. Furthermore, the use of citizen science platforms such as Zooniverse has allowed for the involvement of the general public in the research process, leading to increased public understanding and engagement with the research. The broad use of digital methods in social research as demonstrated by the UK Food Standards Agency’s social science highlights the utility of such methods for current and future research practices.

Application of Machine Learning Methods for Data Analytics in Social Sciences

This article addresses the challenges in the application of artificial intelligence methods such as machine learning, computational intelligence and/or soft computing methods in social sciences. The literature review is performed in order to give a review of different approaches and methods that have been applied so far. The most used method in social sciences and management is the SWOT method, for the identification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats when making strategic decisions. Two fundamental characteristics of previous approaches are the development of numerical models of utility functions and the possibility of upgrading these models by formalizing the intuition of strategic decision-makers. There are several shortcomings of the existing approaches. The application of computational intelligence and machine learning methods in social sciences is identified as one of the most challenging and promising areas, which could overcome identified shortcomings. The principles of one popular machine learning method, the decision tree, are explained and a demonstration is performed on the case study of churn prediction. Benchmarking data set from the publicly available repository is used to demonstrate the suggested approach Evaluation results measured through model accuracy and reliability gave promising results for further analysis. A developed predictive model could serve as a standalone tool or as support for decision-making in social sciences.

Reformulating computational social science with citizen social science: the case of a community-based mental health care research

Computational social science is being scrutinised and some concerns have been expressed with regards to the lack of transparency and inclusivity in some of the researches. However, how computational social science can be reformulated to adopt participatory and inclusive practices? And, furthermore, which aspects shall be carefully considered to make possible this reformulation? We present a practical case that addresses the challenge of collectively studying social interactions within community-based mental health care. This study is done by revisiting and revising social science methods such as social dilemmas and game theory and by incorporating the use of digital interfaces to run experiments in-the-field. The research can be framed within the emergent citizen social science or social citizen science where shared practices are still lacking. We have identified five key steps of the research process to be considered to introduce participatory and inclusive practices: research framing, research design, experimental spaces, data sources, and actionable knowledge. Social dilemmas and game theory methods and protocols need to be reconsidered as an experiential activity that enables participants to self-reflect. Co-design dynamics and the building of a working group outside the academia are important to initiate socially robust knowledge co-production. Research results should support evidence-based policies and collective actions put forward by the civil society. The inclusion of underserved groups is discussed as a way forward to new avenues of computational social science jointly with intricate ethical aspects. Finally, the paper also provides some reflections to explore the particularities of a further enhancement of social dimensions in citizen science.

СПЕЦІАЛЬНІ МЕТОДИ ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ ДЕРЖАВНО-ПРАВОВИХ ЯВИЩ: СУЧАСНИЙ ПОГЛЯД

The article focuses on the fact that in legal science there is still no unanimous opinion regarding the concept of research methodology of state legal higher education institutions. The thesis that state and law research methods can be classified depending on the field of scientific knowledge into general scientific research methods, which are included in general philosophy and are applied in all fields of knowledge, received further consideration; private scientific research methods developed and used in the field of one science or several related sciences; special research methods that can be applied in one science, as well as in several related sciences, using knowledge of different types of sciences. It is highlighted that the complexity of society, multifacetedness and branching of the interests of its members determines the need to study society as a complex structure. This obliges the need to study such social institutions as law and the state using the methods of sociology. It is emphasized that the use of statistical methods in social sciences in general and jurisprudence in particular is justified, this is caused by the fact that statistical regularities characterizing social processes cannot be explained directly by the action of these regularities. But the general data characterizing the set of these phenomena are relatively stable and predictable. It is revealed that thanks to statistical methods of research, it is possible to work out issues related to state-legal phenomena perfectly, from different angles, while making it possible to study the state and law from different angles, to evaluate the effectiveness of the state apparatus in particular and the state mechanism in general, to understand the peculiarities of social - economic development of the state and the legal system. It has been demonstrated that the psychological method of research is used more and more actively at the current stage of the development of legal science, thanks to it it is possible to solve problems related to the issues of psychological processes that occur in the brains of people and their behavior.

Sean Ansett and workers’ rights in a Tunisian leather goods factory

Research methodology This case is based on an in-depth interview with Sean Ansett on March 6, 2020 in San Francisco. For a good reference book on the interview method in social science, please see Seidman (2019). Ansett is an alumnus of the Lam Family College of Business at San Francisco State University. A follow-up interview was conducted on December 13, 2021, via Zoom. The case situations are factual, but the names of the luxury brand, the factory and the Tunisian social auditing firm were disguised. Selected video clips of the interviews are available upon request. Case overview/synopsis In 2010, Sean Ansett, a social auditor with more than 25 years of experience in promoting workers’ rights in the global supply chain, faced a momentous decision. He was hired by a luxury brand company to conduct a social audit of a Tunisian leather goods factory. During his visit to the factory, he observed the troubling signs of child labor and alarming health and safety concerns in the work environment. Should he report the factory’s situation to the local authority? What should he advise his client, the luxury brand company, to do? Ansett realized that this was not a cut-and-dried decision as reporting to the local authority may affect workers adversely if the factory was closed. This case highlights the ethical dilemmas of human rights in the global supply chain. It also raises critical questions for multinational firms regarding what constitutes an ethical brand and how to ensure effective code of conduct implementation. Complexity academic level This case can be used in undergraduate or graduate business courses or curated sessions and seminars related to corporate social responsibility, ethics and social auditing in supply chain management.

End-of-life decisions: A focus group study with German health professionals from human and veterinary medicine.

At first glance, human and (companion animal) veterinary medicine share challenging processes in end-of-life (EOL) decision-making. At the same time, treatment options in both professions are substantially different. The potential of an interdisciplinary exchange between both fields has been neglected by empirical research so far. In this qualitative study, professionals from both fields were brought together in interdisciplinary focus groups to investigate the ethical aspects of convergences and divergences in EOL situations in human and veterinary medicine. The authors present and discuss an innovative mix of materials and methods as stimuli for discussion and for generating hypotheses. The results point toward a general convergence of issues, challenges, and judgements in EOL situations in both fields, such as professional ethos, communication with the family and the role thereof as well as the ideals of death, clearly exceeding the expectations of study participants. At the same time, the study highlights a few prominent differences such as the access to patients' preferences or legal and practical constraints. The findings suggest that using social science methods in empirical interdisciplinary biomedical-veterinary ethics could help to shed more light on this new area. Animal as well as human patients can potentially benefit from this mutual, scientifically accompanied exchange and the resulting identification and corrections of misconceptions.

Visualizing superdiversity and “seeing” urban socio-economic complexity

ABSTRACT Recent migration has made traditional destination cities so diverse that many conventional social science concepts and methods have become inadequate to the task of understanding complex diversity, or what is now often termed superdiversity. Here, we address the need for new methods of "seeing" urban superdiversity in two ways. First, we highlight the need to understand urban contexts by examining new combinations and intersections of multiple social variables. Second, we demonstrate a suite of new interactive tools. We attempt to enable users to picture, perceive and apprehend complex analyses of multidimensional data on urban diversity in new, more intuitive ways. This visualization draws on multivariate geo-spatial data on different kinds of diversity, across three major destination cities: Sydney, Vancouver, and Auckland. We believe this approach contributes to the theoretical and methodological refinements needed to study contemporary superdiversity in urban settings, and to contribute to better public understanding and policies regarding the processes of urban diversification.

Смешанная методология социальных наук

This text is devoted to the question of using mixed methods in social sciences. The attention is paid to the positions of leaders in the field, articulated by the uplevel “Journal of Mixed Methods Research”. The main results and discussions on the journal’s pages will be outlined briefly. As scholars note, mixed methods provide an integrative methodology in social sciences and a third paradigm beyond quantitative and qualitative approaches within social research. The third methodological paradigm is distinguished by pluralism and pragmatism, openness and flexibility of principles. Quantitative and qualitative methods in social cognition are well complemented by digital tools. In many methodological works one can find descriptions of software products by which mixed research is commonly produced. The purpose of the article is to review the important results and discussions published in JMMR, describe the philosophical and methodological principles that shape the basis for integrative research, and compare them with other traditions of reflection on methodology of social cognition. In conclusion, it is said that there is a continuum of different scientific studies, where quantitative and qualitative methodologies may be treated only as the basic types of design. A review helps to validate one more conclusion: there is no radical opposition between social and nomological sciences grounded in the nature of their methods, as philosophers presuppose. Finally, mixed methods research is highly relevant to philosophy, where qualitative analysis has always prevailed.

MI Nurul Falah's Communication Strategies Emerged in The Environmental Governance Learning Process

PT Bumi Serpong Damai Tbk is a company engaged in real estate development where this company is also one of the companies under Sinar Mas Land. PT Bumi Serpong Damai Tbk has also been successful in developing a new city, namely BSD City. Therefore, through Corporate Social Responsibility, companies also need Community Development. Where in Community Development it is necessary to have relationships with the community as a relationship with communication as a function of community relations which is one of the functions of the company in participating in active and continuous planning with the people in a community to maintain and develop the environment for the benefit of both parties, namely the institution and the community. Therefore, the author will discuss Sinar Mas Land's CSR communication strategy in fostering environmental governance in dealing with face-to-face learning in disadvantaged madrasas in the South Tangerang area and what is the involvement and relationship pattern of Sinar Mas Land's CSR with target schools in the South Tangerang area? The aim of this research is to determine Sinar Mas Land's CSR communication strategy in fostering environmental governance in dealing with face-to-face learning at disadvantaged madrasas in the South Tangerang area. To determine the involvement and relationship patterns of Sinar Mas Land's CSR with target schools in the South Tangerang area. The paradigm of this research is post positivism, namely an understanding that every aspect of social reality is seen holistically as a natural unity that needs to be interpreted in depth, especially as social reality is understood as a complex reality. This type of research is descriptive. The aim of descriptive research using a qualitative approach is to seek detailed factual information regarding existing symptoms. The research method used is a case study, which is one of the research methods in social sciences. In research using this method, an indepth longitudinal examination of a situation or event called a case is carried out using systematic methods of observing, collecting data, analyzing information and reporting the results.

A review and comparison of studies on office window behaviour using engineering and social science methods

With the urgent need of reducing building carbon emissions to ease climate change, it is necessary to have energy efficient buildings. An effective way of achieving this mission is adopting natural ventilation, which is commonly achieved by openable windows controlled by building occupants in most cases. In this kind of buildings, therefore, occupant window behaviour becomes significantly important on the building performance. To better understand this behaviour, researchers from both engineering domain and social science domain have contributed, but it seems like that they have different research aims, methods and findings. To promote transdisciplinary collaboration in this area, this study has carried out a thorough review of studies on window behaviour in office buildings. The review work collected 66 relevant studies, and analysed their aims, methods and main findings to figure out the differences between engineering studies and social science studies. The existing studies were mainly coming from renowned academic journals (91%) and academic conferences (9%). The comparison revealed significant differences between the two scientific domains, with some overlapping between them. To obtain deeper understanding on occupant window behaviour, critical discussions on how to better collaborate between these two domains in the future have been provided as well.

Effect of Non-Financial Incentives on Employee Performance: A Study of (Birs) Makuirdi, Benue State Nigeria

This article examined the impact of non-financial incentives on employee performance: A study by BIRS Makurdi Benue State. The aim of the study was to achieve the following objectives. A study by BIRS Makurdi, Benue State aims to determine the impact of non-financial incentives on employee performance. The study focused on BIRS Makurdi staff in Benue State, which has a population of 449. The Taro Yamane formula was used to calculate the sample size, resulting in a sample size of 499. First-hand information was used for the study. The main data collection tool used was a questionnaire. Using the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences, both quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods were used to test the developed hypotheses (SPSS 21). Tables and simple percentages were used to present the raw data extracted from the primary source. Employee recognition with a beta coefficient of -0.192, training and development with a beta coefficient of 0.946 and career advancement with a beta coefficient of -0.025 were found to have significant and non-significant effects on employee performance in BIRS Makurdi Benue- Country. Conclusion: At BIRS Makurdi, Benue State, this study experimentally examined the impact of non-financial incentives on employee performance. The study concludes that non-financial incentive strategies significantly improved employee performance at BIRS Makurdi in Benue State in line with the findings.

Can Social Norms Explain Long-Term Trends in Alcohol Use? Insights from Inverse Generative Social Science.

Social psychological theory posits entities and mechanisms that attempt to explain observable differences in behavior. For example, dual process theory suggests that an agent's behavior is influenced by intentional (arising from reasoning involving attitudes and perceived norms) and unintentional (i.e., habitual) processes. In order to pass the generative sufficiency test as an explanation of alcohol use, we argue that the theory should be able to explain notable patterns in alcohol use that exist in the population, e.g., the distinct differences in drinking prevalence and average quantities consumed by males and females. In this study, we further develop and apply inverse generative social science (iGSS) methods to an existing agent-based model of dual process theory of alcohol use. Using iGSS, implemented within a multi-objective grammar-based genetic program, we search through the space of model structures to identify whether a single parsimonious model can best explain both male and female drinking, or whether separate and more complex models are needed. Focusing on alcohol use trends in New York State, we identify an interpretable model structure that achieves high goodness-of-fit for both male and female drinking patterns simultaneously, and which also validates successfully against reserved trend data. This structure offers a novel interpretation of the role of norms in formulating drinking intentions, but the structure's theoretical validity is questioned by its suggestion that individuals with low autonomy would act against perceived descriptive norms. Improved evidence on the distribution of autonomy in the population is needed to understand whether this finding is substantive or is a modeling artefact.

Interview Method in State Capitalism Literature: Main Issues and Suggestions

Interview technique is one of the widely used methods in social sciences. This article examines how the interview method is applied in state capitalism literature. First, using the ISI Web of Science (WoS) database, it identifies 25 articles (among 177) that used the interview method in their analyses on state capitalism. The keyword “state capitalism” is searched in all SSCI articles (titles, abstracts, keywords, etc.) to find contributions on state capitalism (WoS categories of Political Science, Public Administration, Economics, International Relations, and Sociology). Then, the article investigates how the method is applied in these works. It highlights that practitioners of the interview method seldom engage with the related methodological literature. Despite intriguing debates and valuable contributions, how the interview method is drawn on to support analyses and drive main arguments are not generally clear. Thus, more engagement with the methodological literature would be useful in more explicitly and systematically describing (i) the execution of the method (date, length, mode, etc.), (ii) elaboration of saturation, and (iii) how the interview data are analyzed and presented to the readers, including coding, use of software, and use of direct quotations.

An Overview of Books Suggested for Research Methods at International Relations (IR) Postgraduate Degree Programmes in Turkey

This study focuses on the core reading in research methods courses in International Relations (IR) postgraduate programmes in Turkey. The first section determines the core reading materials in the syllabi. In the second section, in order to thematically code these books, we create five categories: (1) General Research Methods, (2) Research Methods in Social Sciences (3) Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Research Methods, (4) Research Methods in Political Science (5) Research Methods in International Relations. The research was modelled/designed according to a case study conducted with a qualitative approach. The data collection method of the study is document review, while the chosen data analysis method is content analysis. The study analyses the contents of syllabi from 70 different module/course. Findings show that Social Sciences have the most methodology-related books with 37% of the books being relevant to research methods. Conversely, the study shows that this rate is at 1% for IR. The study concludes that discipline-specific method books are not chosen within the IR postgraduate programmes. Finally, the study recommends significant research methodology books to be included in the related IR syllabi.