Sociological Challenges Research Articles

Ethical challenges in qualitative sociology: a systematic literature review.

Qualitative researchers often encounter ethical challenges during their research process. Due to the large number of papers in which researchers reflect on specific and various ethical challenges within their projects, it proves difficult to keep track of them. To capture these reflexive practices, we conducted a literature review of 72 papers in sociology. Our review shows who reflects on research ethics and when and where such reflections occur. We identify 11 ethical issues that sociologists reflect on. Some issues address the challenges of implementing established ethical principles, such as (1) informed consent, (2) voluntary participation, (3) avoiding harm, (4) anonymization, and (5) confidentiality. Others go beyond these principles and refer to (6) the relationship between researchers and participants, (7) power asymmetries, (8) protecting yourself as a researcher, (9) deviant actions, (10) covert research, and (11) leaving the field. Our findings help researchers gain an overview of ethical challenges, enhancing their reflexivity.

River water heat pumps to decarbonise district heating and promote the resilience of hydrosystems: Technico-economic, environmental and sociological challenges

The interdependence between water and energy (water-energy nexus) has been identified as one of the major challenges at European level, with roadmaps calling for the development of integrated approaches in this sector. The increase in river temperature is at the heart of this nexus, with anthropogenic thermal pollution adding to the effect of global warming. River Water Heat Pumps can play a major role by decarbonising district heating network (DHN) while actively cooling the aquatic resource. Hence, the objective of this short communication is to identify the scientific challenges to be met and the progress to be achieved considering the current state of the art. To illustrate the point, a rapid evaluation of the potential is performed for the city of Lyon in France resulting in an achievable cooling of ∼1.5 K which is above the minimum threshold to see an effect on aquatic ecosystem while the CO2 savings are significant for the DHN (∼ divided by a factor of 10). Because of its holistic nature, the impact assessment of such a system implies considering a wide diversity of indicators: energy, environmental, economics and sociological that need to be appropriately defined and quantified. In each field, progress beyond the state of the art to be performed has been identified, e.g. 4E analysis, cold water plume dispersion, integration of biodiversity in LCA.

The (im)possible success of disadvantaged students. Reflections on education, migration and social change

The paper focuses on the ?unexpected pathways? of successful students with an immigrant background: these biographical routes, that seems socially impossible, raise theoretical issues around the individual-society, actor-structure relationship. Disadvantaged students who succeed represent a sociological challenge in the attempt to understand atypical situations and to identify the institutional processes and the structural opportunities that facilitate them, reducing ethnic inequalities in education. This framework is the starting point of the Su.Per. project (Success in educational pathways of students with immigrant background), based on the collection of written autobiographies of 65 immigrant students, attending upper secondary education in Northern Italy. The biographical approach allows to deepen the social change that derives from the positive impact of immigration on education. Within this interpretative perspective, the article underlines the contribute of the Su.Per. project to a new ?definition of the situation?, that considers possible the educational success of immigrant students, drawing new narratives and discourses on inequalities, but also giving voice and supports to disadvantaged students, and introducing them to a field of unforeseen possibilities.

Digital Sociology in the XXI Century: the Core Issues

Society has been changing rapidly and complicatedly due to the impact of digital technology. At the end of the first decade of the XXI century, digital sociology was officially appeared, gradually contributing to the awareness, grasping of the rules and improvement of the current state of social life in the digital era. Through the synthesis and analysis from many different international academic sources, published from 2012 to the present, this article explains in depth the important issues of digital sociology such as the real science and the sub-discipline of sociology. The article focuses on analyzing: i) Short history; ii) Research object; iii) Research subject; iv) Thematic and conceptual system; v) Research method; and vi) Prospects and challenges of digital sociology. Thanks to these, the research also contributes to a systematic and up-to-date introduction of the universal knowledge of digital sociology, attracting the attention of the sociologists and suggesting in-depth research direction of this science in digital transformation at present and in the future.
 Keywords: Digital transformation, digital technologies, digital era, digital sociology.

Yesus Kristus Sang Gembala Penyembuh: Kristologi dalam Konteks Safeguarding terhadap Anak

This article aims to inspire readers' perspectives and help the Indonesian Catholic Church act appropriately and wisely when facing cases of sexual violence and abuse. The method used in this article is Theology in Creation, which is used to deepen the understanding of Christ as a healing shepherd who cares and fights for justice. The systematics of this article begins with the introduction of the problem, followed by a discussion of cases of sexual abuse that occurred in the history of the Catholic Church. Then, the article discusses power in Michel Foucault's theory and its challenges for political sociology. Next, the article highlights the importance of building a safe culture within the Church and protecting children from abuse. The novelty of this article lies in the Theology in Creation approach used to deepen the understanding of Christ as the healing shepherd. The article also invites the Indonesian Catholic Church to become more concerned and responsive to cases of sexual violence and abuse and to implement effective protection protocols.

Assessment of Supporting Visual Learning Technologies in the Immersive VET Cyber-Physical Learning Model

Humanity faces diverse technological, societal, and sociological challenges. Digitalization is being integrated into every aspect of our lives. Technologies are developing rapidly and the ways in which we live and learn are changing. Young people are acquiring information and learning in a different way than in the recent past. Education systems are no longer keeping up with the development of technology. Education systems need to adapt and introduce technologies that motivate students and ultimately contribute to higher learning goals. To this end, we need to develop modern learning models that support education and technological development. In previous research, we developed and evaluated a state-of-the-art learning model, the CPLM. We built on this with a new study, in which we assessed the difference between the cognitive activities of attention and meditation in students during the viewing of a classical educational video, a 360° video, and an AR app on a screen. We found that the 360° video had the greatest impact on students’ attention and is consequently suitable for initially motivating students in the proposed learning model. We made a proposal for a modern educational model and possibilities for further research.

Toward Effective Teaching: What Teachers Need to Know About Anxiety and Bipolar Disorder

The current dynamic societal changes increase stress and depression. COVID-19 pandemic, though, creates an uncertain atmosphere in classrooms. Therefore, students and teachers experience many mental health disparities. Despite the expanded discussions about students, and teachers’ well-being, there is a dire need to resolve the understanding of the mental health issues among the learning and teaching communities. For effective teaching, educators should be aware of learners’ psychological and psychosocial changes related to the development of autonomous personal life. For learning progression, students must cope with the academic and social demands they could encounter in schools and their professional careers. Covid-19 raised many psychological and sociological challenges that shaped developing systems and intervention methods that prevent or at least reduce the collateral mental problems such as anxiety and depression. This article attempts to portray the learners’ mental instability during the Covid-19 pandemic and then discusses some teaching tools that lead to controlling the disruption in the educational industry. It introduces anxiety and depression among learners to increase educators’ awareness of the symptoms and the pedagogical tools to guide their students properly. It also reports some easy-to-follow pedagogical strategies to assess and control students’ anxiety and depression in learning environments.

Chosen and collective friendship: Negotiating contradictory social ideals and demands at an Israeli elementary school classroom

Friendship has been predominantly conceptualised as a highly positive and voluntary relationship. This article contributes to recent sociological challenges to these notions by ethnographically examining how conflicting friendship ideals are negotiated in everyday life. It is based on a year-long study of friendship socialisation and friendship between girls in an Israeli elementary school classroom, from the perspectives of both the girls and their teachers. I argue that the teachers promoted two contradictory friendship ideals: one of ‘chosen’ friendship between specific students, which recognised the children’s agency and preferences; and the other, of ‘collective’ friendship between all the class group members, directed at engendering social cohesion and preventing loneliness. The article delineates how the girls and teachers negotiated relationships between the students under the framework of both friendship ideals – and in doing so, exposed the tensions and entanglements between the two. Moreover, the girls and teachers’ friendship discourses and practices shed light on the hefty social demands placed on children’s friendship ties in school, and how friendship can incorporate both collective and individual meanings.

Challenges of Junior High School Chemistry Learners in an Enriched Virtual Mode

This study identified the experienced challenges of junior high school chemistry learners of private and public schools in parts of Nueva Vizcaya in the enriched virtual mode. A qualitative approach was used to describe the lived and actual experiences of the learners. Responses gathered from the Google Form link of the four open-ended questions were coded, clustered into categories, and derived into emerging themes. Results from the learners’ responses revealed three emerging themes regarding their challenges—pedagogical, technological, and sociological. Pedagogical challenges revolved around their learning environment, inability to understand the lesson, quality of learning materials, limited access to learning resources, and overloaded lesson activities. Problems with technological insufficiency and technological literacy were under technological challenges and time management, lack of interest, lack of confidence, too many social media distractions, lack of support, difficulty in establishing connection and communication, and compromised health and wellness of the learners were among the specific sociological challenges. In conclusion, the unprecedented uncertainties brought by the sudden shift of learning modalities brought immense difficulties on the part of chemistry learners. Keywords: pedagogical challenges, technological challenges, sociological challenges, distance learning modalities

Students’ struggles with EMI in Kazakhstani universities

Introduction. Fascination with English medium instruction (EMI) is fast growing in higher education institutions in non-native English-speaking countries, including Kazakhstan. The Kazakhstani government adopted a trilingual education policy in 2007 and the Bologna Process in 2010. Both these initiatives motivated universities to offer academic programmes in the English language. As a result, EMI programmes are offered in over 70 higher education institutions across Kazakhstan. In addition, there are four major Kazakhstani universities which offer academic programmes in English only. Despite the increase in the number of EMI programmes, there is a lack of empirical evidence about the difficulties and challenges faced by students in the EMI programmes.Aim. The present study aimed to investigate the nature, forms, and levels of challenges graduate students face in academic reading and writing in English and the way they cope with these challenges. The study was conducted with graduate students and faculty in 10 selected Kazakhstani universities, which offer academic programmes in EMI.Research methodology and methods. The study is based on a mixed-method design, involving an online survey and semi-structured interviews. The closed-ended questions have been analysed using SPSS software (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). The grounded theory analysis was utilised to scrutinise open-ended questions and interview transcripts.Results and scientific novelty. The study’s results indicated two major challenges faced by graduate students in academic reading and writing: the personal-psychological challenge and sociological challenge. The first challenge includes students’ previous academic backgrounds, exposure, and learning experiences. The second challenge is related to English academic culture and students’ worldviews, concepts, and values about English as a language and medium of instruction. As a result, graduate students experienced a lack of vocabulary, inadequate academic literacy skills, unfamiliarity with academic writing styles in English, and lack of skills to synthesise reading materials.Practical significance. Hence, this study recommends systematising English language programmes across secondary and higher education institutions to help students acquire advanced English language proficiency. Also, the study results suggest that local faculty members should be trained according to international standards in terms of their English language skills and innovative teaching methods.

Optimism Predictive Ability and Psychological Flexibility among Students during COVID-19 Pandemic

This study investigated the optimism predictability and its relationship with psychological flexibility in a convenience sample of 487 Jordanian basic stage students who have faced a lot of psychological and sociological challenges during the outbreak of COVID-19 which has affected the formation of students’ personality, social relationships, psychological and sociological psychology, academic achievement and more importantly their optimism and psychological flexibility. A descriptive analytical approach was used to analyze the data. The results showed that the levels of optimism and psychological flexibility were moderate among students, and there was a positive statistically significant correlation between them in favor of females. The study recommended parents and school teachers, social workers and decision-makers to develop the students’ skills of optimism predictive ability and psychological flexibility among students as there is a strong positive relationship between optimism predictive ability and psychological flexibility among Students during COVID-19 Pandemic. It also recommended conducting similar studies on optimism and psychological flexibility through employing different qualitative tools such as observation and interviews to obtain thick and authentic information about the students' real behaviors and perspectives to understand the impact of Coronavirus pandemic on their optimism and psychological flexibility levels and sociological psychology.
 
 Received: 15 July 2022 / Accepted: 27 August 2022 / Published: 2 September 2022

Xeoretical and methodological problems of digital sociology

This article is devoted to the theoretical and methodological problems of conceptualizing a new branch of sociological knowledge — digital sociology. The transfer of various aspects of human life to the virtual space (to social networks and new media) has created a number of challenges for the classical social sciences that have never been faced before. The main one is the assessment of the impact of social processes taking place in virtual space on the reality around us. Today, the phenomena emerging on the Internet are invading our “physical” world with increasing intensity, the so-called “real virtuality” is being formed. At the same time, an important aspect is the reverse effect on the virtual world of the processes taking place in social reality.The response to the virtualization of social life was the emergence of a new branch of sociological science — digital sociology. Having originated in the mid-2000s, it is actively developing: the problem Jeld is being clarified, its subject is being concretized, and the methodological toolkit is expanding. At the same time, there are also problems, “bottlenecks” that require comprehension and scientific overcoming.Within the framework of this scientific article, the processes of virtualization of public life, the essence and features of an electronic social network account are considered, the author’s definition of digital sociology is formed, the methodological toolkit is characterized, and the advantages and challenges of digital sociology are identified.

Decolonizing Sociology for Social Justice in Bangladesh: Delta Scholarship Matters

Sociology is one of the major disciplines to foster understanding and protection of the livelihoods of local people. For instance, the discipline can describe the linkage between the environment and people and the effects of environmental change on local groups of people in a Delta country such as Bangladesh. However, the imperial philosophy of modernity that dominates the discipline and which is evident in the Sociology department at the University of Dhaka (UofD) underscores a considerable distance between academic conceptualizations of local perspectives on issues such as climatic change and the actual views of the local people of Bangladesh. Grounded on this assertion, this paper explores a question: What are the challenges for Sociology to represent Delta people and protect their social justice? The paper depends on the content analysis of sociological practices at UofD: imperial modernity and climatic adaptation. The findings of the paper argue that Sociology has been failing to represent the local meanings of climatic change due to the domination of imperial conceptualizations of modernity. Climate finance conceptualized by a Western perspective, and Sociology, as a discipline, fails to represent locally contextualized meanings related to climate finance; thus, the marginalized groups of people are increasingly facing survival challenges responsible for climate apartheid. Only a decolonized Sociology can challenge this imperial domination and play an effective role in reducing the discipline’s gap of understanding of the local people and in promoting social justice in Delta Bangladesh.

Ahead of the Curve: The Arc Institute Aims to Reshape the Biomedical Research Landscape

Ahead of the Curve: The Arc Institute Aims to Reshape the Biomedical Research Landscape

GOOD AND BAD SOCIOLOGY: DOES TOPIC MODELLING MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

The changing social reality, which is increasingly digitally networked, requires new research methods capable of analysing large bodies of data (including textual data). This development poses a challenge for sociology, whose ambition is primarily to describe and explain social reality. As traditional sociological research methods focus on analysing relatively small data, the existential challenge of today involves the need to embrace new methods and techniques, which enable valuable insights into big volumes of data at speed. One such emerging area of investigation involves the application of Natural Language Processing and Machine-Learning to text mining, which allows for swift analyses of vast bodies of textual content. The paper’s main aim is to probe whether such a novel approach, namely, topic modelling based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm, can find meaningful applications within sociology and whether its adaptation makes sociology perform its tasks better. In order to outline the context of the applicability of LDA in the social sciences and humanities, an analysis of abstracts of articles published in journals indexed in Elsevier’s Scopus database on topic modelling was conducted. This study, based on 1,149 abstracts, showed not only the diversity of topics undertaken by researchers but helped to answer the question of whether sociology using topic modelling is “good” sociology in the sense that it provides opportunities for exploration of topic areas and data that would not otherwise be undertaken.

Complex concepts with varying connotations: In search for conceptual definitions

One of the fundamental challenges for sociology is the interpretation of its key terms, which is determined by the fact that many words of everyday language and scientific discourse are the same despite implying a much higher level of generalization as sociological categories. Certainly, such challenges are more typical for the empirical research - when sociologists turn their theoretical concepts into sets of empirical indicators which have to be clear enough for the respondent to understand and answer the questionnaire and for the sociologist to interpret these answers correctly. Nevertheless, the lack of generally recognized conceptual definitions is no less important, because the general picture of social reality is necessarily made of them (the society is described as either fair, consisting of trustworthy institutions that provide opportunities for being happy, or in the opposite statements). The article presents a possible reconstruction of the strategy that sociologists use in the search for conceptual definitions for such complex concepts with varying connotations as love, happiness, trust and justice. This strategy consists of two steps: focus on the macro-sociological dimension of the phenomena under study as determining its various manifestations and everyday interpretations (the key step in the study of love and happiness); and identification of objective and subjective indicators of the phenomenon under study (the key step in the study of trust and justice). For instance, in the study of love and happiness, there is the obvious micro-sociological perspective that implies personal responsibility for being happy and loved, and the hidden macro-sociological perspective that implies social standards for identifying and achieving love and happiness; trust is defined as a source of social order, cooperation, institutional, organizational and everyday interactions, which reduces the level of uncertainty; in the searches for the conceptual definition of justice, there are two main approaches - the first approach considers justice as one of many grounds for developing some theoretical model; the second approach reconstructs justice either as an ideal political-philosophical model of social order or as a means of the comparative analysis of its practical implementations.

Current challenges and solutions for use of sociology
 in healthcare management

In 2021, the sociological service of State Budgetary Institution «Research Institute for Healthcare Organization and Medical Management of Moscow Healthcare Department» celebrates its 5th anniversary; this article partly reflects on the experience gained during its operation. The article examines the current challenges for medical sociology in healthcare management, among which are the need to change present work culture with feedback, poor skills in medical and sociological research (problems of sampling, creating tools, collecting data, determining reference values) and weak practice-orientation in research. The article outlines important directions for development of medical sociology

Black/African American Breastfeeding Experience: Cultural, Sociological, and Health Dimensions Through an Equity Lens.

Background: Disparities in breastfeeding (BF) continue to be a public health challenge, as currently only 42% of infants in the world and 25.6% of infants in the United States are exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months of life. In 2019, the infants least likely to be exclusively breastfed at 6 months are African Americans (AA) (17.2%).Materials and Methods: A scoping review of the literature was undertaken by using Arksey and O'Malley's six-stage framework to determine key themes of AA women's experience BF through an equity lens. Electronic databases of CINAHL and PubMed were searched for peer-reviewed, full-text articles written in the English language within the past 5 years by using the terms BF, AA, Black, sociological, cultural, equity, health, attitude, exposure, initiation, continuation, barriers, and facilitators.Results: Initially, 497 articles were identified, and 26 peer-reviewed articles met the eligibility criteria. Through an equity lens, three main themes emerged, which summarized AA women's BF experience: cultural (family, peers and community support; misconceptions; personal factors), sociological (prejudices, racism, home environment; financial status; sexuality issues; BF role models; employment policies), and health dimensions (family involvement; timely and honest information from staff; baby-friendly hospital initiatives; postnatal follow-up; special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children).Conclusion: For AA women, exclusively BF is beset with diverse cultural, health, and sociological challenges. Multifaceted approaches are needed for successful resolution of BF challenges to bridge the racial gap in BF in the United States. Future studies may explore interventions targeted to modifiable barriers to improve BF outcomes.

Zadruga u savremenom privrednom okruženju

The purpose of this paper is to point out the importance of the cooperative as an economic entity, through representation of modern trends of cooperative association in Europe and beyond. Through their association, cooperative development covers key connecting factors of individuals, while finding models for reducing the differences between cooperatives as economic entities and companies for the benefit of companies. The subject of research in the paper represents an analytics of cooperatives and the need for new legal solutions, which would support the development of cooperatives as independent economic entities in the future. The key hypothesis the paper starts with is that cooperative association is of great importance in dealing with many economic, market and sociological challenges, which is of special significance for the economic development of our country. The previous legal solutions of the cooperative association, in addition to positive changes, have not given expected results so far. In the conclusion, it is pointed out that legally regulated area of cooperatives as specific economic subjects is the foundation of development of their economic activity. Based on the critical illumination of the cooperative legislation, recommendations are given for its improvement, while taking into account the ever-present needs for improving the business of cooperatives and their convergence with the business of other economic entities.

The Trend and Prospect of Medical Sociology: Its Concepts and the Interface with Medical History.

Medical sociology has a long history, and it has been institutionalized and developed since the 1940s. This paper is about the history, trends, and prospects of medical sociology from the perspective of concepts as well as its interface with medical humanities. Sociology is a discipline that conceptualizes and theorizes social phenomena on the basis of collected data to best understand them. For this reason, we think that one of the best ways to understand medical sociology is to track the changes and developments in the concept and theory of medical sociology over time. Moreover, the development of concepts and theories does not occur only within the discussion of experts but also actively in interactions with the institutional position of medical sociology, medical knowledge and institutions and society. By reflecting on the changes in the theory and concept of medical sociology over the past 70 years from the 1950s to the present, we were able to understand the changes in research interests and research subject of medical sociology. Medical sociology has developed in response to the needs of the medical community and society. On the one hand, it developed a diverse understanding of healthcare, one of the key elements of the structure and culture of modern society, and on the other hand, it developed an understanding of how each individual experiences medical care as a dominant power. Since the 1990s, these seemingly conflicting two areas integrated into one through research subjects such as the growth of the general population and the health and social movement. Furthermore, the emergence of biotechnology, which began to develop in earnest beginning in the 1980s, presented a challenge for medical sociology. If the role of Parsons in the 1950s was to reflect the American medical system based on bacteriology and therapeutic drugs, after the 1960s, chronic disease became an important health problem due to changes in American society, and the experiences of patients suffering from chronic diseases became an important research subject. However, the rapid development of biotechnology from the 1980s was powerful enough to change the way we perceive our bodies. Our society has regarded our body as a sum of cells and a combination of various organs and body parts since the birth of modern medicine, but with the development of biotechnology, including genetics, we began to recognize our body as an expression of information contained in genes. The capitalist force driving biotechnology has degraded our bodies to the extent of our resources for the accumulation of genomic information. Finally, the concepts and theories developed by medical sociology can also be applied to understand the trends of medical history in the Korean Journal of Medical History provided that medical sociology and the medical history were embedded in the particular Korean historical context. Therefore, we hope these two medical disciplines cooperate further on the medical issues in Korea.