Social Science Research Research Articles

Kompetencje cyfrowe Polaków w świetle teorii przyspieszenia społecznego

The dynamic development and spread of information and communication technologies have caused contemporary society, also known as modern or information society, to undergo constant changes. These are taking place both in the technological, economic and social spheres, becoming the focus of researchers in social, economic, engineering and technical sciences. As a result of these changes, we can even, according to Hartmut Rosa (2020), speak of a society of acceleration, in which technological acceleration is accompanied by an acceleration of the pace of living. As part of numerous consequences, acquiring new skills and improving those already acquired, especially in the use of ICT, becomes particularly important. Achieving an appropriate level of expertise turns out to be almost indispensable, both at the micro level - the realm of work and everyday life of individuals, and at the macro level, as a condition for stable and systematic socio-economic development. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to analyze the level of digital competence of Poles, primarily focusing on the level of overall digital skills and its changes over recent years, the type of digital skills that pose particular challenges, as well as to determine the rank of Poland as compared to other European Union member states regarding the subject matter. The source material is statistical data from Eurostat and Poland Statistics.

Securities Markets in Which Some Investors Receive Information About Cash Flow Betas

We analyze a single-factor setting in which there is private information regarding cash flows as well as their betas. Private information about betas, together with market makers’ risk aversion and mean betas’ nonnegativity, implies a nonlinear price schedule whose stochastic slope covaries positively with order flow when the expected factor payoff is positive and vice versa. We predict a negative relation between the covariance and expected returns and an attenuation of the beta anomaly in asset returns after accounting for this relation. Empirical tests confirm these predictions. This paper was accepted by Lukas Schmid, finance. Funding: L. Yang acknowledges the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Grant 435-2021-0040] and Bank of Canada Fellowship for financial support. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.02061 .

Agency and structure in regional development: in search of a social science research programme

ABSTRACT As a concept, agency stretches from philosophical and meta-theoretical elaborations to studies documenting largely idiosyncratic happenings in a particular empirical context, which could be dismissed as anecdotal. In between, and the source for the recent revival of scholarly interest, lies the promise to explain transformation processes, multiplex governance, and varieties in wellbeing and development pathways, which are needed in a world overshadowed by crises. Have studies on agency and structure lived up to the promise? Only partly, we argue and suggest that we need to develop a common ontological commitment as well as adequate mid-range theories and methods coherent with such a commitment. We suggest critical realism as the backbone of such a common ontological commitment and discuss potential ways forward for a social science research programme with emancipatory potential, this is to say to contribute to our capabilities to make a difference in the world.

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.

Teaching poetry using Instagram: An international, interdisciplinary study with adolescents mobilizing literacy and the arts

Young people engage daily with various social media platforms to communicate with each other across the globe. Adolescents not only share text, but also use images and sound to express themselves on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok to provide access to user-created content. The recent emergence of InstaPoetry—poetry with images on Instagram—has been part of such communication and provides a good entry point into adolescents’ engagement with literature and the arts. Limited research exists, however, on how this literate practice, paired with virtual and in-person museum visits, influences young people’s self-expression. In this article, we offer ways of integrating and involving these dynamic dimensions into research projects based on four sites of inquiry located in Canada and Australia. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, this research project provides concrete avenues to investigate teachers’ methods to foster adolescents’ engagement with literature and the arts (i.e., contextual design, procedures, environment) in (post) COVID-19 times.

Bringing the Ocean to the Stage: Performing Coastal Values and Marine Management

Recent years have witnessed a seemingly constant call for improved understanding of human–ocean relationships, resulting in a “boom” of marine social science research, sometimes framed through the lens of ocean literacy. Defined as having an understanding of your influence on the ocean, and its influence on you, ocean literacy has gained traction in recent years as a way of better understanding the complexities of human–ocean relationships. However, despite this interest in the human dimensions of the ocean, coasts and seas, and a corresponding increase in broader marine social sciences research, qualitative and arts‐based research approaches continue to remain on the periphery of ocean research. This article explores the role of two ocean research “outliers,” intersecting arts‐based practice and marine social sciences through the lens of interconnected performances designed to explore the diverse values held by communities about their marine and coastal environment. Undertaken as part of the Diverse Marine Values project, the performances brought together ocean scientists, coastal and marine managers, and community members to create original performance pieces in Lerwick, Shetland, Scotland, and Portsmouth, England. Drawing heavily on applied theatre practice and scholarship, these distinct but interrelated performances utilised elements of forum theatre, devised theatre, and storytelling to address marine issues important to each respective community, with a view to understanding and fostering ocean literacy. In each location, the performance work illustrated ways in which theatre can serve as not only a tool for science communication, but also a research method to explore a range of ocean literacy dimensions. The performances helped the research team, comprised jointly of specialist theatre practitioners and experts in ocean literacy, coastal management, and plastics pollution to reshape data collection and stakeholder engagement. This collaborative theatre‐making process led to deeper conversations and embedded engagement within each coastal community. It also led to a fundamental reshaping of the questions and approaches that the marine managers and scientists asked of the communities in question. The article presents a discussion of the challenges of bridging these related, but often distant, disciplines, and highlights the role of arts‐based research practice in broader ocean literacy research and discourse.

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.