Social Research Research Articles

Examining Islamic Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Current and Future Research– A Bibliometric Analysis

This bibliometric analysis offers a comprehensive look at the current research trends in Islamic environmental, social, and governance (ESG) over 12 years, from 2012 to 2023. The study encompasses a dataset of 54 papers from the SCOPUS database and employs various bibliometric metrics, including author-based, country-based, and organization-based citations. The results indicate a variable growth in the number of publications in this research domain over the period, with a particularly significant surge observed between 2021 and 2023. The descriptive analysis identifies the most prolific countries and document types within Islamic environmental, social, and governance realms. The citation analysis identifies the most influential authors, organizations, and countries shaping this field. In summary, the results show that environmental, social, and governance (ESG) research and practices that include Islamic teachings and values still demonstrate a significant gap, and recommendations are provided for future research based on the primary issues and gaps discovered from the current trends. These findings are valuable for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers seeking insights into this study area.

Social care research: international cooperation is vital to prepare for future health shocks

Social care research: international cooperation is vital to prepare for future health shocks

Marginalized measures: The harmonization of diversity in precision medicine research.

The production of large, shareable datasets is increasingly prioritized for a wide range of research purposes. In biomedicine, especially in the United States, calls to enhance representation of historically underrepresented populations in databases that integrate genomic, health history, demographic and lifestyle data have also increased in order to support the goals of precision medicine. Understanding the assumptions and values that shape the design of such datasets and the practices through which they are constructed are a pressing area of social inquiry. We examine how diversity is conceptualized in U.S. precision medicine research initiatives, specifically attending to how measures of diversity, including race, ethnicity, and medically underserved status, are constructed and harmonized to build commensurate datasets. In three case studies, we show how symbolic embrace of both diversity and harmonization efforts can compromise the utility of diversity data. Although big data and diverse population representation are heralded as the keys to unlocking the promises of precision medicine research, these cases reveal core tensions between what kinds of data are seen as central to 'the science' and which are marginalized.

Good Friends Have Boundaries: Provider Strategies for Creating Support Boundaries in Friendships

ABSTRACT Minimal social support research has studied support boundaries, defined as a support provider’s parameters around the amount and/or type of support they are willing to offer. I argue that evaluating support boundary creation is one communicative pathway for understanding difficult supportive relationships and how support providers navigate no longer offering the same amount and/or type of support to their friends. Analyzing 22 semi-structured, narrative-focused interviews, this study proposes an initial typology for how support providers create support boundaries. Participants utilized indirect (i.e., implicit strategies and behaviors to minimize support seeking and provision), direct (i.e., explicit parameters around the support they were willing to provide), and collaborative (i.e., open and honest conversations with their friend to establish mutually agreed upon expectations) support boundary creation strategies with their friends. By creating boundaries skillfully, providers can mitigate and manage potential negative outcomes of support, as well as protect themselves and their friendships. Investigating how providers create support boundaries is crucial for current research gaps in understanding challenging supportive relationships from the provider’s perspective, and how support providers navigate discrepancies between their needs and the needs of support seekers.

Exploring the influence of contextual factors on social entrepreneurial intentions: A study of generation Z

With the increasing trend of social entrepreneurship intention research, the literature is majorly fragmented into examining the influence of individual personality level factors. Little attention has been given to the role of contextual factors which affect the social entrepreneurial intention process. The purpose of the study is to explore the inter-relationships between contextual factors i.e., perceived support and perceived barriers with social entrepreneurship intentions of Generation Z in the presence of theory of planned behaviour. Data was collected from 610 students in undergraduate and postgraduate courses. PLS-SEM 4.0 was used for the analysis. PLSpredict and IPMA were employed. Results of our study highlights the significant positive impact of perceived support and negative impact of perceived barriers on social entrepreneurial intentions. Theory of planned behaviour holds different significant as a mediator for both the contextual factors. Majority of the current body of literature on social entrepreneurship has focused on testing intentions of older generations. Therefore, empirically testing the impact of contextual factors (combined) from entrepreneurship support system framework on social entrepreneurial intentions among the Generation Z in a developing economy context provides valuable insights.

The 360 diary method in experiential education: using social media as a complementary method to interviews and audio diaries

Although social media platforms with visual and audio storytelling features can provide rich qualitative data that offers deep insight into forms of outdoor experiential education, particularly for college-aged participants, few studies have investigated its potential in this field. This paper aims to extend understandings of social media research by drawing on a phenomenological study that employed the 360 Diary Method – an approach combining more ‘traditional’ qualitative approaches (interviews and audio diaries) with social media (Instagram and TikTok) – to explore the experiences of four college students who backpacked over 2,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail together. By comparing themes from multiple forms of qualitative data, findings show how Instagram and TikTok generate new understandings while texturizing what is shared verbally in audio diaries and interviews. Findings also highlight emerging theoretical and epistemological tensions when using social media in research due to its orientation towards performativity. This study concludes that in the digital age, utilising social media as a data source remains valuable but may be best employed in conjunction with other complementary qualitative methods to investigate the multi-layered nature of participant experiences in outdoor settings.

Supporting traceability and biosecurity in the sheep and goat industries in NSW: understanding barriers to implementing electronic identification.

Efficient traceability is paramount for Australia's biosecurity system and market access. Electronic identification (eID) offers higher traceability performance than that achieved with visual and mob-based identification used for the sheep and goats National Livestock Identification System (NLIS). The current study aims to gain an understanding of the barriers and motivations of using eID for NLIS sheep and goats in New South Wales (NSW) and to provide recommendations to support the transition to eID. A social research study using a mixed-methods approach was used through semi-structured interviews and a cross-sectional epidemiological and behavioural study among sheep and goat producers. The COM-B behaviour change model based on capabilities, opportunities and motivations was used as a framework for the study. A total of 269 participants informed this study: 25 interviews were conducted with government, industry and private stakeholders, and 184 and 58 sheep and goat producers participated in the cross-sectional study, respectively. The study identified poor understanding of the purpose and importance of NLIS among producers, with over two-thirds not supporting eID implementation. The main barriers identified to the eID implementation were practical, including costs, technology quality and increased workload. Attitudinal, behavioural and knowledge barriers, such as the perception of the current system providing efficient traceability and the perceived lack of benefits of eID were also identified. This study provides an in-depth analysis of practices and perceptions of stakeholders and producers on sheep and goat traceability and recommendations to address barriers identified, based on education and appropriate behavioural and technical support.

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

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

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.

Ideas and the changing relationship between states and markets in social policy: A review essay

AbstractThis review essay takes stock of the recent literature about the role of ideas in social policy, with a particular focus on a key issue in social policy research: the changing interactions between states and markets over time. Specifically, our aim is to examine how the ideational literature discusses and explains prominent contemporary social policy evolutions: the rise of social investment and the financialization and technocratization of the welfare state. This is done based on the scholarship on state/market interactions and the role of ideas in social policy, and by utilizing key insights of scholars of ideational influences on state/market interactions. The article ends with a short agenda for future research on ideas and discourses as a crucial factor in the evolution of the welfare state as a key space in which states and markets interact.

Language matters: what can social workers learn from the transgender community?

ABSTRACT Questions of language and its contribution to constructing and preserving the social order have gradually entered social work research. This paper seeks to add to this professional scholarship by examining the concrete impact of language usage on real persons in everyday interactions. It is based on an interview study with eleven members of the transgender community in Israel and anchored in the feminist social work perspective. Transgender individuals challenge seemingly natural social conventions and do not necessarily conform to expected coherency between biology and gender. Since most Hebrew grammatical forms make clear distinctions based on gender, these individuals often lack adequate means for conducting a dialogue consistent with their sense of self. The interviewees’ descriptions highlight the pivotal role Hebrew plays in realizing their identity, thus providing a better opportunity for enhancing our understanding of the strategic power of language than the discourse of members of predominant social groups. These findings have potential implications for social work teaching and practice, especially in relation to undoing injustice.

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 by combining neural network pose detection with an unsupervised learning approach and applying this methodology to data from the social media platform Instagram. 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.

The Medaka Approach to Evolutionary Social Neuroscience

Previously, the integration of comparative biological and neuroscientific approaches has led to significant advancements in social neuroscience. This review elucidates the potential and future directions of evolutionary social neuroscience research utilizing medaka fishes (the family Adrianichthyidae) including Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes). We focus on medaka's social cognitive capabilities and mate choice behavior, particularly emphasizing mate preference using visual cues. Medaka fishes are also advantageous due to their abundant genetic resources, extensive genomic information, and the relative ease of laboratory breeding and genetic manipulation. Here we present some research examples of both the conventional neuroscience approach and evolutionary approach involving medaka fishes and other species. We also discuss the prospects of uncovering the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the diversity of visual mate preference among species. Especially, we introduce that the single-cell transcriptome technology, particularly in conjunction with 'Adaptive Circuitry Census', is an innovative tool that bridges comparative biological methods and neuroscientific approaches. Evolutionary social neuroscience research using medaka has the potential to unveil fundamental principles in neuroscience and elucidate the mechanisms responsible for generating diversity in mating strategies.

ORSO: The Organizational Structure Ontology

ABSTRACT Organizational structure information is deeply embedded in the different functional activities of accounting. This paper presents ORSO (ORganizational Structure Ontology), an ontology for describing organizational structures that can be reasoned with as part of accounting applications, developed following the principles and guidelines of design science research. ORSO allows the representation of key organizational constructs to meet internal and external accounting needs, including financial reporting requirements, analysis of an organization’s governance structure, economic analysis of agent and group performance, the definition and monitoring of controls, and responding to political and social inquiries about agents and other needs. A prototype is presented that demonstrates three possible types of applications of ORSO systems: (1) analysis of organizational structures, (2) accounting analysis through the integrated use of Resource-Event-Agent (REA) transaction data and ORSO specifications, and (3) constraint definition and monitoring. Data Availability: Additional information is available from the authors. JEL Classifications: M4.

Democratizing Social Scientists’ Words and Distinctions: Where and Why Moral Reasons Are Decisive

Sitting at your desk, working on your social science paper, you take yourself to be free to use key words and distinctions as you see fit. I argue that these decisions aren’t up to you. Instead, they should be made collectively, by the social science community you’re embedded in, talking to, and contributing to, along with its stakeholders. Such democratic and deliberative processes will be driven by the common good, as opposed to benefiting particular social scientists, schools, research programs, methods, or regions of the world. My book, Words and Distinctions for the Common Good, is an invitation: I invite social science communities to democratically work on how to use their key words and distinctions—and which epistemic and moral goods these uses should help attain.

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.

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

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

Social work research from a gender perspective into intimate partner violence against older women in Spain

ABSTRACT Intimate partner violence against older women is a hidden problem in Spain, which needs the involvement of institutions, professionals and families. This research aimed to shed light on social workers’ practices, and how they propose to perform ethical, efficient social work with older women who have been victims of intimate partner violence. In this descriptive, qualitative and exploratory study, we have compiled the expert voices of various social workers from urban and rural areas of Spain using a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The results reveal the role of the family and social workers in early detection, together with the need to provide a more efficient professional response, and to create specific resources and devices to provide comprehensive, individualised solutions for each woman.

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.

Tackling Inequalities in Access to Medicines for People Experiencing Homelessness: A Meta-Ethnography and Qualitative Systematic Review.

Despite increased awareness of the detrimental relationship between homelessness and health, people experiencing homelessness remain an underserved population in health and social care research. Due to barriers affecting the accessibility of medicine and healthcare services, as well as reported competing priorities such as food and shelter, evidence has demonstrated that people experiencing homelessness are less likely to undergo routine examinations, receive diagnoses and adhere to prescribed medical treatments. To enhance service design and access for those experiencing homelessness, it is critical to better recognise, understand and address the barriers these individuals face. This meta-ethnography aims to identify barriers, enablers and interventions to begin addressing this inequality gap. A systematic literature search was undertaken in October and re-ran in December 2023 across four databases: MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL and Scopus. Qualitative studies were included if they addressed barriers, enablers and interventions aimed at tackling medicines and health service inequalities among populations experiencing homelessness. Study quality was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute critical appraisal checklist. Data were synthesised using a meta-ethnographic approach, as outlined by Noblit and Hare. The review was registered on PROSPERO (CRD42024511502) and performed according to PRISMA guidelines. This meta-ethnographic systematic review synthesised data from eight studies across multiple countries. Three overarching third-order constructs (termed 'themes') were developed through reciprocal translation and centred around: recognising and acknowledging the discrimination, stigma and barriers experienced when using current services; exploring safe and practical use of medicines and the promotion of general health education and appreciating strategies to tackle inequalities, namely community outreach programmes designed for homeless communities. This work highlighted the barriers, enablers and interventions that sought to address the inequalities affecting people experiencing homelessness in accessing medication and healthcare services. Future research should utilise lived-experience narratives and co-design to further explore ways to tackle wider healthcare accessibility inequalities for this minoritised population. Not applicable, as this is a systematic review. Public contributors (minority research champions and one public health research champion, H.K.G. and T.G.) informed and shaped this project during study design and conceptualisation. They helped to ensure that the study was conducted, and the findings were reported with sensitivity.