Social Science Research Research Articles

Regression Model in Social Science Research: The Issue of Multicollinearity, Detection Method, and Solution in SPSS

One of the objectives of social science researchers in an inferential test is to build a reliable regression model. Multi-linear regression aims to find or predict the effect of predictor variables on predicted variables. However, when there is a high linear correlation between predictor variables in multi-linear regression, the predictor variables in the model cannot accurately define their impact on predicted variables. This statistical condition is called multicollinearity. Without testing and detecting multicollinearity and its precise treatment, the regression model can create difficulties in defining the impact of individual predictor variables on the predicted variable, leading to a faulty interpretation of the impact on the whole model. In this study, 36 primary-level teachers were selected randomly as the respondents. The respondents’ data included their tentative salary, age, years of education, academic percentage in their final degree, and years of service. In the first round, the Karl Pearson correlation test is conducted among four independent variables: tentative current salary, age of respondent teachers, years of education completed, academic percentage in the final degree, and years of service s/he is involved in. SPSS version 25 is applied to find a correlation matrix between predictor variables, a matrix scatter plot, and linear regression with a collinearity diagnostic test. After finding a strong correlation between two variables, a collinearity diagnostic test is performed to locate and confirm the multicollinearity issue between the predictor variables. Once multicollinearity is confirmed, precise treatment is provided to solve the issue. The study found multicollinearity issues in two predictor variables; thus, further solutions were explained.

Underestimating the Relationship: Unpacking Both Socioeconomic Resources and Cognitive Function and Decline in Midlife to Later Life.

Although there is robust evidence that socioeconomic position influences later-life cognitive function, two issues limit knowledge regarding the nature and magnitude of these relationships and potential policy interventions. First, most social science research tends to treat cognition as a unitary concept despite evidence that cognitive outcomes are not interchangeable. Second, most biomedical research focuses exclusively on education, with limited attention to economic resources despite robust social science theoretical and empirical rationales for their role. Relatedly, there has been limited attention to how these relationships may vary across cohorts, even as educational and economic contexts have changed. Using the Health and Retirement Study (N = 36,494), we show that failing to attend to different facets of cognition, socioeconomic resources, and cohort differences leads to underestimates in the magnitude of educational and economic disparities in cognitive function and decline. This has important implications for appropriate policy interventions to address these disparities.

When Ethics Becomes Unethical: An Autoethnographic Account of Gaining Ethics Approval to Conduct Ethnography in a Healthcare Setting

AbstractMany ethnographic researchers have raised concerns over the potential impacts that the institutionalization of ethics review boards can have on social science research, especially within healthcare settings. However, few articles to-date have documented how these norms and practices play out in actuality. This paper, therefore, uses autoethnography to provide an account of three ethical challenges that arose during my process of seeking ethics approval through institutional review boards to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in a healthcare setting. In doing so, I demonstrate how bureaucratic accountability took precedence over my research expertise, making the research that I initially set out to do inaccessible, questionable, and ‘unethical’, despite being carried out in accordance with the current standards governing research involving human participants and their data. I conclude with ways to move beyond this existing ethics structure towards a more collaborative approach between ethics boards, researchers, and research participants grounded within the realities of the field.

Grey Literature Citations by Social Science Researchers in India: A Study

Grey literature has a pivotal role in the research study. It offers valuable insights that are often overlooked in traditional academic publications. Non conventional published materials such as reports, theses, and conference proceedings are examples of grey literature. This study investigates the utilization of grey literature by social science students in India, and the findings reveal that it is widely utilized due to its accessibility, relevance to local contexts, and provision of current information. The recent publication of grey literature is used more than the earlier published literature. Researchers frequently rely on government reports and NGO publications. This study encourages researchers to cite grey literature in their research.

Intergenerational and technological changes in mafia-type groups: a transcultural research agenda to study the ‘ndrangheta and its mobility

Mafia-type groups are increasingly mobile in their structures and in their activities. We propose here to revive cultural studies on mafias and organised crime by critically introducing insights from research on transculturation into mafia mobility studies. Transculturation helps understand how cultures stratify and engage with existing power imbalances in the host countries, within migration setting. We argue that transcultural transformations—primarily in the field of technology and intergenerational changes—have the potential to influence the resilience of mafia groups abroad. With the case of the ‘ndrangheta in mind—and using preliminary data from Operation Eureka (2023) to support our argument—we set a research agenda for three sub-themes of critical social science research into transculturation and mobility of mafia-type organised crime. This research agenda is adequate to study the mobility of mafia-groups, but will have the potential to influence research on mafias more generally.

Open Source Plagiarism Checking Software: An Assessment of Awareness and Utility Among Social Science Research Scholars of Lalit Narayan Mithila University, Darbhanga, Bihar: A Study

This study investigates the awareness and usage of open-source plagiarism checking software among research scholars in the Social Sciences discipline at Lalit Narayan Mithila University (LNMU), Darbhanga, Bihar. Given the increasing importance of academic integrity, this study aims to identify the level of knowledge, usage patterns, and perceived benefits of these tools among researchers. A structured questionnaire was administered to 60 participants, revealing a moderate level of awareness but limited usage. The findings suggest the need for enhanced training and institutional support to promote the effective use of open source plagiarism detection software. Although there is a notable intention to use plagiarism detection resources, various barriers remain that must be addressed to optimize their utilization and reinforce academic integrity in research practices.

Spanish participation in the social science and humanities research projects within the 7th European Union Framework Programme (2007-2013)

The objectives of this paper are to describe the Social Science and Humanities projects involving Spanish participation within the Seventh EU Framework Programme (FP7) (2007-2013), along with the scholarly output generated by these projects, and to compare the findings with the data from FP6 (2002-2006) in order to track their evolution. First, we determine the most significant characteristics of the projects with Spanish participation (duration, funding, topics, type of institution, etc.). Second, we analyse the scholarly production derived from a sample of projects taken from the Scopus database to analyse some bibliometric features. The results show an increase in the leadership and prominence of Spanish institutions, compared to FP6-SSH. In terms of scholarly outputs, none of the sources used (CORDIS, OpenAIRE and SCOPUS) allows a detailed study of scholarly production, although this output is characterized by articles written predominantly in English, published in first-quartile journals. Moreover, data showed that research funding for SSH may have long-term effects, with some outputs acknowledging funding being published a decade after the end of the project.

Xenophobia in Juror Decision-Making

Abstract With the upsurge of anti-globalizing ideologies and politics, the increasing institutionalization of xenophobia within the legal system has emerged as a pressing concern. Existing law and social science research has underexplored xenophobic bias in the US legal system. This article conceptualizes xenophobic bias as consisting of racism and nationalism. It investigates whether mock jurors reach different verdicts on defendant companies from foreign countries of origin (Japan, France, and China) compared to domestic (US) companies. Using a test simulating a patent lawsuit, the research finds no evidence of general xenophobic bias in juror liability verdict decisions, yet there is a specific bias against the Chinese company when granting damage awards. The similarity-leniency effect that has been established in the previous literature is corroborated in this article. Additionally, political views moderate the effects of the company’s country of origin on juror decisions. This research offers a more nuanced conceptual framework of xenophobic bias in juror decision-making for future law and social science research and informs judicial policies seeking to improve jury instructions and jury selection to reduce xenophobic bias.

Doing social science with conservation: co-reflexivity on the project model in conservation

Abstract The conservation sector increasingly values reflexivity, in which professionals critically reflect on the social, institutional and political aspects of their work. Reflexivity offers diverse benefits, from enhancing individual performance to driving institutional transformation. However, integrating reflexivity into conservation practice remains challenging and is often confined to informal reflections with limited impact. To overcome this challenge, we introduce co-reflexivity, offering an alternative to the binary distinction between social science on or for conservation, which respectively produce critical outsider accounts of conservation or provide social science instruments for achieving conservation objectives. Instead, co-reflexivity is a form of social science with conservation, in which conservation professionals and social scientists jointly develop critical yet constructive perspectives on and approaches to conservation. We demonstrate the value of co-reflexivity by presenting a set of reflections on the project model, the dominant framework for conservation funding, which organizes conservation activity into distinct, target-oriented and temporally bounded units that can be funded, implemented and evaluated separately. Co-reflexivity helps reveal the diverse challenges that the project model creates for conservation practice, including for the adoption of reflexivity itself. Putting insights from social science research in dialogue with reflections from conservation professionals, we co-produce a critique of project-based conservation with both theoretical and practical implications. These cross-disciplinary conversations provide a case study of how co-reflexivity can enhance the conservation–social science relationship.

Housing First as a global fast policy, economic tool, and disciplinary tactic: can Housing First’s progressive promise be salvaged?

While there are an abundance of studies evaluating the effectiveness of Housing First programs, there is a recent surge in critical social science research that situates Housing First within broader debates about contemporary neoliberal homelessness governance. This paper provides clarity to this evolving and somewhat fragmented work by highlighting three main conceptualisations of critical Housing First research. First, it is interpreted as a technocratic global fast policy that, while appealing to policymakers and government officials, ultimately fails to address the structural causes of housing insecurity and homelessness. Second, it is viewed as an economic tool that prioritises housing for a narrow cohort of ‘chronic homeless’ that incur a high cost to scarce public resources. Third, it is seen as a disciplinary tactic that ignores people’s alternative expressions of home and compels them to abide by the norms of ‘independent living’ and the private rental market. We conclude with an assessment of this critical literature. Whilst acknowledging its key insights, we contend that its treatment of Housing First as yet another form of neoliberal homelessness governance and overreliance on Anglophone-country case studies risks reifying HF’s worst aspects and failing to adequately recognise its transformative potential.

Unearthing the misconduct and inaccuracies in social science research: a trend analysis of retracted articles based on retraction watch database

Purpose The purpose of this study is to comprehensively analyze the research article retractions in social sciences over the past decade (2014–2023). Design/methodology/approach The study used scientometric methods to evaluate the prevalence, patterns and factors contributing to social sciences article retractions. Bibliographic data of retracted articles were collected from the Retraction Watch Database under an agreement signed with the database. Further, citations of the retracted articles were collected from Scopus and Google Scholar. The analysis encompasses performance assessment and citation-based analysis to reveal the trend of retraction and scrutinize the impact of retracted articles. Findings Over the past decade, article retractions have shown dynamic trends, with notable fluctuations in recent years. Further, investigating the time taken for article retraction reveals the urgency of addressing issues identified soon after publication. Scientific misconduct and publication-related concerns emerge as primary factors leading to retractions. Countries such as Russia, the USA, China and publishers such as Elsevier and Taylor and Francis led in the retractions of social science articles. A significant portion of retracted works had garnered academic attention prior to retraction and even after retraction. Originality/value This study can contribute to a better understanding among scholars and stakeholders of the trends and reasons for retractions of research articles in the social sciences.

A traditional ecological knowledge summit

A traditional ecological knowledge summit The Global Center for Climate Change and Transboundary Waters (GCTW) cohosts a Traditional Ecological Knowledge Summit (1), as Gail Krantzberg (2), Peter Czajkowski, Dawn Martin-Hill, Rohini Patel, Hiliary Monteith, and Drew Gronewold explain. The Global Center for Climate Change and Transboundary Waters (GCTW) integrates hydroclimate modeling, water quality forecasting, and community-engaged mixed methods that harmonize and propagate Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), Indigenous Knowledge (IK), and Western Science (WS) into robust 21st-century transboundary water resources governance protocols. The U.S. National Science Foundation and the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council fund the Center. It supports a multinational network of researchers that is designed to promote information sharing across borders.

More social media friends, more life satisfaction?– why fear of missing out leads to contrary effects

AbstractFear of Missing Out is a focus of research in social sciences, especially with respect to social media use. This study examined the extent to which social media use (active and passive, respectively) elicits Fear of Missing Out due to greater perceived bridging and bonding social. In addition, the extent to which Fear of Missing Out affects feelings of stress and life satisfaction was investigated. In an online survey 1230 participants were included. Within the framework of a path model, the assumption of an indirect effect of both active and passive social media use via social capital, Fear of Missing Out, and stress on life satisfaction was confirmed. Finally, further study results as well as implications and limitations of this research are discussed.

Digital Methods: An STS Challenge to Methodological Digitization in Social Science Research

ABSTRACT The integration of digital technologies into social science has catalyzed the development of fields such as digital sociology, digital humanities, and digital social sciences more broadly. This technological shift has significant methodological implications for social science research, which are being increasingly discussed. This discussion raises critical questions about the potential and limitations of merging traditional social research methodologies with digital innovations. Digitized and digital methods have brought about promises of a new era in social science research. However, some scholars have highlighted the challenges and limitations associated with this methodological transition, including data-relevant considerations, skill and expertise issues, and ethical concerns. From the vantage point of advancements in science and technology studies (STS) – a discipline that has engaged with the methods and practices of knowledge production for some decades – I will explore five additional methodological challenges posed by the digitization of social science research that has been largely overlooked or neglected in the literature of digital methods. Our analysis concludes that while digital methods can serve as valuable complementary tools, they are not sufficient to fully engage with the core practices and phenomena of social science research. Thus, digital and traditional methods can coexist, albeit not in a symmetrical manner.

Research Output, Key Topics, and Trends in Productivity, Visibility, and Collaboration in Social Sciences Research on COVID-19: A Scientometric Analysis and Visualization

COVID-19 has caused a surge in scientific publications, with increased collaboration. This study aims to elucidate scientific output, focal topics, emerging themes, and trends and patterns of productivity, visibility, and collaboration within social sciences research (SSR) on COVID-19. A scientometric analysis was conducted utilizing Biblioshiny and VOSviewer software. About 65,742 records published on WOS between 2020 and 2022 were analyzed. Topics such as “telehealth,”“well-being,” and “inequalities,” were among the key topics while “interventions” and “mental well-being” were among emerging key topics. Collaboration patterns were regional. Harvard Medical School, the University of Toronto, and the University of Oxford emerge as leaders in collaboration, productivity, and influence. The USA, Italy, India, Spain, and Brazil serve as regional hubs for facilitating collaboration. The USA, England, and China exhibit leadership and influence, playing pivotal roles In shaping the global research. These findings are important for policymakers, funding agencies, and researchers in cultivating future research topics and collaborative efforts. The findings can inform strategic decision-making, resource allocation, and policy development to address present and future health crises. Additionally, these efforts contribute to advancing global sustainability initiatives and promoting human well-being. Encouraging international collaboration is essential, particularly for tackling the regional challenges encountered by countries with limited domestic research capabilities. Future research can improve the methodology used by di-versifying data sources beyond WOS.

Unfolding the relationship between change management, employee engagement and productivity: resistance to change and emotional intelligence as moderators

PurposeThe objective of this study is to investigate the effect of change management (CM) on employee productivity (EP). A double-layered conceptual model involving resistance to change and emotional intelligence (EI) as moderators and employee engagement (EE) as a mediator between CM and EP.Design/methodology/approachFour industries from India (education, healthcare, information technology and manufacturing) are selected to test the hypothesized relationships. The data from 406 respondents were collected through a survey instrument and was analyzed using Hayes’s PROCESS macros.FindingsThe results reveal that CM is a precursor to EE and EP. The findings also indicate that resistance to change (first moderator) and EI (second moderator) significantly influenced the relationship between CM and EP mediated through EE.Research limitations/implicationsAs with any social science research, this study suffers from the limitations of common method bias and social desirability bias. However, the researchers have taken adequate care to minimize these biases. This study has several theoretical and practical implications.Originality/valueThe moderated-mediated model concerning CM is the first of its kind to study in the Indian context and hence makes a substantial contribution to the literature on CM. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Unveiling Digital Mirrors: Decoding Gendered Body Poses in Instagram Imagery

Social media platforms have had a significant impact on people's everyday lives worldwide and imagery on social media has become a vital means of practicing views of the self and communicating them to others. Albeit a significant proportion of people frequently upload self-representations on social media, this source of information on individuals, groups, and societies remains under-examined within the social sciences and neighboring disciplines. In our study, we focus on gender-stereotypical body-posing in self-portraits on social media. While sociology has examined gender stereotypes for decades, research lacks empirical evidence on representations in digital contexts as well as novel forms of stereotyping. We present a scalable and transferable methodology for analyzing body poses in images on the social media platform Instagram by combining neural network pose detection with an unsupervised learning approach. Based on a clustering algorithm applied to gender-annotated imagery, we identify 150 body posing clusters. Our results reveal significant gender differences in 20 percent of clusters, many of which represent gender-stereotypical body poses addressed in sociological literature. Moreover, we can identify new stereotypical poses related to smartphone technology and social media trends. This study represents a novel approach to utilizing large-scale image data for social science research and contributes to a better understanding of the consolidation and reproduction of gender stereotypes in digital realms.

New Normative Values for the German Short Version of the Resilience Scale (RS-13)

In a representative survey conducted in Germany, normative values for the German short version of the RS-13 resilience scale were updated and compared with the data from a previous representative survey conducted in 2001. In a representative study conducted by the social science research institute USUMA GmbH in 2021, people aged 16 to 95 years (N=2,505) were randomly selected and interviewed by telephone. Data were compared to representative data collected in 2001 (N=2,045), and the influence of demographic variables on resilience was examined. The internal consistency of the RS-13 was α=0.92. Current norm data of the RS-13, differentiated by gender and age, were generated. Access to these data is provided by an online tool, which can be used for the norm-oriented interpretation of individual resilience values (http://rs13.shinyapps.io/RS13). In the current 2021 sample, the mean resilience score was significantly higher than in 2001 (d=0.28, 95% CI [0.22-0.34]). Age was significantly negatively associated with resilience, education and net household income showed a significant negative correlation. The RS-13 has good psychometric properties. Providing updated normative values of the RS-13 is justified due to the significantly higher scores in 2021 compared to 2001. The updated normative values allow for the comparison of future data with those of the German general population. In addition, the online tool can be used for the norm-oriented interpretation of individual resilience scores as part of diagnostic procedures. The RS-13 is a reliable, valid and economical instrument for assessing resilience in its theoretical understanding of a stable personality trait. Future studies investigating resilience should consider age, education and income as relevant influencing variables.

The Carceral State: Implications for Information and Technology Research and Practice

ABSTRACTThis systematic literature review synthesizes published sources from the ASIS&T Digital Library and the ACM Digital Library to develop a definition of the carceral state and to show how the term has been used in contemporary technology‐focused research. The carceral state concept has been adopted and applied widely in multiple areas of social scientific research to refer to the formal institutions of the criminal justice system proper and other social arrangements, ideologies, practices, and technologies that punish, surveil, and contain populations. Our review reveals a recent and increasing engagement with the carceral state in the collections surveyed. Encouraged by this increasing attention, this review is an attempt to introduce the carceral state as a guiding framework for tech‐society research and to consider implications for advancing responsibility, reflexivity, and care in the creation and evaluation of information systems, programs, and services.

Climate risk maps as boundary objects for future forests

Climate change poses significant threats to ecosystems and biodiversity. Conventional management strategies often fall short, leading to uncertainties in addressing these challenges. Natural and environmental scientists play a crucial role by providing evidence-based guidance. Social science research, at the same time, highlights the complexity of transferring and applying knowledge across different social and professional groups and shows that further research is needed. Using a German case study, my research addresses this issue by examining the dynamics between predictive climate risk maps, intended as decision-support tool for forest management, the developing scientists, the receiving environmental managers and further political actors. Semi-structured qualitative interviews with representatives from these groups were conducted and analyzed, revealing that climate risk maps can function as predictive boundary objects, balancing flexibility and robustness. With their high level of visual and epistemic power, these maps generate knowledge tensions, facilitate interactions, and foster the implicit co-production of broader environmental management discourse. At the same time the maps are continuously contested, discussed, and updated through feedback, becoming themselves part of an ongoing informal co-productive process. This dual role creates ambiguity: they provide concrete answers to specific management related questions while highlighting simultaneously limitations that prompt more fundamental inquiries, driving an overall societal learning process. Hence, future efforts should enhance formal support for co-productive processes to ensure evidence-based advisory tools are scientifically robust, contextually adapted, and democratize knowledge dynamics through continuous dialogue, mutual learning, and integration of scientific as well as local knowledge.