Social Science Studies Research Articles

Social, Ethical and Regulatory implications of conducting a malaria Vaccine Efficacy trial in a human infection study in Kenya (SERVE-Kenya): A study protocol

Malaria remains an important public health problem in many LMICs, including Kenya – necessitating alternative prevention and control strategies. Malaria human infection studies (HIS) – trials that involve the deliberate infection of healthy volunteers with malaria parasites to assess the efficacy of potential vaccine and drug candidates and to understand the innate and acquired protection against malaria parasites - have become an important approach to fast-track the development of a malaria vaccine. The KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) otherwise known as the KEMRI Centre for Geographic Medicine Research (Coast) (KEMRI CGMRC) has developed expertise in setting up and running research on malaria HIS, with two completed and two planned in the coming months. One of the planned studies is an EDCTP-funded Phase IIb malaria vaccine efficacy trial within a HIS. While all scientific proposals at KWTRP are carefully reviewed by national and international science and ethics review bodies and are supported by a well-developed local community engagement platform, research to understand the social, ethical and regulatory issues for HIS from a grounded perspective is in early stages of development, especially in LMICs. Given the particular opportunities provided by the KWTRP’s experience in running HIS, expertise in embedded social science research and the presence of a well-established community engagement platform, we plan to conduct a social science study within the HIS-based Phase IIb malaria vaccine trial. The overall aim is to contribute to the development of locally responsive policies on the ethical conduct of malaria vaccine efficacy studies involving the use of a HIS in Kenya. Data will be collected from a range of HIS stakeholders, including HIS participants, community members, HIS research team, ethics committees, regulatory authorities and policy makers through surveys, interviews, group discussions, participatory workshops, observations and document review. This is an EDCTP-funded Career Development Fellowship project awarded to PCC.

Discrimination of persons with mental illness: testing the principles for the protection of persons with mental illness and the improvement of mental health care in Indonesia

Background Discriminatory acts against individual freedom rights in the context of human rights and dignity in Indonesia have been in the international spotlight due to human rights violations for years. Although the condition of individuals with mental disorders in Indonesia is quite worrying when viewed from the context of human rights; however, some basic mental health services are not available in most parts of the country. Methods This qualitative research uses secondary data such as health literature, social scientific, and national legal studies. The thematic analysis in this study concentrates on answering different research questions. However, this study encountered limited scope on two grounds; the first focuses on whether the National Mental Health Act (MHA) meets the basics set by the principles of CRPD. The second was the impact of other different rights on people with mental disorders. Results The results of this study on the number of cases of shackles and the differences between International Mental Health standards and the Indonesian Mental Health Act are also presented. A total of 23 studies have been used to determine the result from the analysis. It has been observed that adequate knowledge and awareness of people about mental retardation and health issues guide to the poor attitude as well as treatment of them. As per the report of Human Rights Watch in 2019, approximately 57,000 individuals with mental illness have been humiliated once in their overall lifetime in Indonesia. Conclusions The tradition of shackles (pasung) has resulted in ongoing suffering due to ineffective actions that violate human freedom and are contrary to human values. The Indonesian government should provide proper facilities for individuals with mental disorders to protect and cure them the people who have mental disorders and structure its laws more strongly.

The New Civil Religion

Social scientific studies find that religion plays a limited role in shaping Americans’ climate attitudes. I argue that a major type of religiosity has been missed: that which is expressed in conservative media. This religiosity is not associated with religious institutions but rather takes the form of civil religion. Because the US is now religiously polarized, today’s civil religion differs from what Bellah identified in 1967: rather than serving to unify the entire country, it serves to unify the political right, setting it against what is constructed as the secular left. I show how the religious discourse Rush Limbaugh employed on his radio broadcasts exemplifies this new civil religion, and further, that he used civil religious arguments to denigrate climate action. The new civil religiosity on the right, sometimes called Christian nationalism, reduces support for climate legislation by portraying a powerful federal government as a threat to religious liberty.

Reviewer Acknowledgements for International Journal of Social Science Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2

International Journal of Social Science Studies (IJSSS) would like to acknowledge the following reviewers for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. Many authors, regardless of whether IJSSS publishes their work, appreciate the helpful feedback provided by the reviewers. Their comments and suggestions were of great help to the authors in improving the quality of their papers. Each of the reviewers listed below returned at least one review for this issue.Reviewers for Volume 12, Number 2Aurora Pestaño, University of San Jose Recoletos (USJR), PhilippinesDorela Kacauni, “Fan S. Noli” University, Korҫa, AlbaniaFahri ÖZSUNGUR, Adana Science and Technology University, TurkeyJehu Onyekwere Nnaji, University of Naples II,Italy and Globe Visions Network Italy, ItalyKun Yu, Universiti Putra Malaysia, ChinaMd. Nasir Uddin, Prime Minister’s Office, BangladeshSana Ali, Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad, PakistanYuhan WANG, Guangdong University of Technology, China James YoungEditorial AssistantOn behalf of,The Editorial Board of International Journal of Social Science StudiesRedfame Publishing9450 SW Gemini Dr. #99416Beaverton, OR 97008, USAURL: http://ijsss.redfame.com

What socio-cultural, emotional and relational factors shape older people's experiences of death and dying in residential aged care? A scoping review

Abstract Research internationally has revealed a range of medical and health-related issues that shape care at the end of life for people living in residential aged care facilities (RACFs), their families and the staff who care for them. Yet, less is known about the lived experiences of residents, and the broader socio-cultural, emotional and relational factors that shape experiences of dying within such settings. In this article, we present findings from a scoping review designed to establish what is known about the lived experience of residents nearing the end of life. In doing so, we identify research gaps and move towards an agenda for future research. Five electronic databases were used to identify empirical research articles investigating end-of-life experiences from the perspective of older people living in RACFs, from which we selected 22 papers for thematic analysis. Our analysis highlighted three key themes: connections and closeness; place and the end of life; and temporality, care and the anticipation of dying. A majority of the articles (15) highlighted the importance of social connectedness with staff, co-residents and family in enabling people to die with dignity and a sense of belonging in residential settings. The physical layout and living arrangements in RACFs were found to affect the ways in which residents relate within the space, especially during and after the death of a resident. Anticipatory fears of dying were oriented towards the context of illness and care, and its management within the RACF, rather than death itself. Our analysis highlights considerable evidence that ‘good deaths’ are embedded in experiences of socio-emotional wellbeing, connectedness and relationality. However, much of the extant research analysed is exploratory, pointing to the need for further social scientific study of the social and cultural embeddedness of end-of-life experiences with residential aged care.

Present Trends Discontinued: A Response to Bethamie Horowitz’s 2023 Marshall Sklare Award Address

Bethamie Horowitz was a leader of the social–psychological turn in the social scientific study of American Jewry. The 1990s were ripe for such a turn. Structural stability enabled analysts to assume “present trends continued.” Today, unsettled times are drawing attention back to the macro-level structural forces shaping the contexts in which Jews live.

Trust in embedding co-design for innovation and change: considering the role of senior leaders and managers

PurposeIn this viewpoint article, the authors recognize the increased focus in health systems on co-design for innovation and change. This article explores the role of leaders and mangers in developing and enhancing a culture of trust in their organizations to enable co-design, with the potential to drive innovation and change in healthcare.Design/methodology/approachUsing social science analyses, the authors argue that current co-design literature has limited focus on interactions between senior leaders and managers, and healthcare staff and service users in supporting co-designed innovation and change. The authors draw on social and health science studies of trust to highlight how the value-based co-design process needs to be supported and enhanced. We outline what co-design innovation and change involve in a health system, conceptualize trust and reflect on its importance within the health system, and finally note the role of senior leaders and managers in supporting trust and responsiveness for co-designed innovation and change.FindingsHealthcare needs leaders and managers to embrace co-design that drives innovation now and in the future through people – leading to better healthcare for society at large. As authors we argue that it is now the time to shift our focus on the role of senior managers and leaders to embed co-design into health and social care structures, through creating and nurturing a culture of trust.Originality/valueBuilding public trust in the health system and interpersonal trust within the health system is an ongoing process that relies upon personal behavior of managers and senior leaders, organizational practices within the system, as well as political processes that underpin these practices. By implementing managerial, leadership and individual practices on all levels, senior managers and leaders provide a mechanism to increase both trust and responsiveness for co-design that supports innovation and change in the health system.

Trust matters: The Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy in Europe Study.

This article presents the design of a seven-country study focusing on childhood vaccines, Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy in Europe (VAX-TRUST), developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study consists of (a) situation analysis of vaccine hesitancy (examination of individual, socio-demographic and macro-level factors of vaccine hesitancy and analysis of media coverage on vaccines and vaccination and (b) participant observation and in-depth interviews of healthcare professionals and vaccine-hesitant parents. These analyses were used to design interventions aimed at increasing awareness on the complexity of vaccine hesitancy among healthcare professionals involved in discussing childhood vaccines with parents. We present the selection of countries and regions, the conceptual basis of the study, details of the data collection and the process of designing and evaluating the interventions, as well as the potential impact of the study. Laying out our research design serves as an example of how to translate complex public health issues into social scientific study and methods.

Digital Death and Spectacular Death

Throughout human history, individuals, communities and societies have always had to confront and tackle the problem of death. Consequently, death remains a topic of social scientific relevance, highlighting the need for its study and for theorising around it. This article analyses the development of the social scientific study of death and dying, taking inspiration from Philippe Ariès’s historical stages to discuss the recent developments in the field, namely the study of digital death. The article begins with a discussion of the visibility of death in modern society in the context of spectacular death. The analysis emphasises its four dimensions: mediatisation, commercialisation, re-ritualisation and the revolution in end-of-life care. The article moves on to discuss the emergence of digital death as the current stage and reflects on its similarities to spectacular death and its transformation of public imaginaries around death in contemporary society. The article concludes with a reflection on future developments in the field, specifically the emergence and study of artificial intelligence (AI) in digitalised death culture.

Reviewer Acknowledgements for International Journal of Social Science Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1

International Journal of Social Science Studies (IJSSS) would like to acknowledge the following reviewers for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. Many authors, regardless of whether IJSSS publishes their work, appreciate the helpful feedback provided by the reviewers. Their comments and suggestions were of great help to the authors in improving the quality of their papers. Each of the reviewers listed below returned at least one review for this issue. Reviewers for Volume 12, Number 1Aurora Pestaño, University of San Jose Recoletos (USJR), PhilippinesEncarnación ABAD ARENAS, National University of Distance Education (UNED), SpainIvan Lenard, Elementary school Ladimirevci, CroatiaJehu Onyekwere Nnaji, University of Naples II,Italy and Globe Visions Network Italy, ItalyJibrin Ubale Yahaya, National Open University of Nigeria NOUN, NigeriaMei-Ling Lin, National Open University, TaiwanNadarajah Pushparajah, University of Jaffna, Sri LankaSana Ali, Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad, Pakistan James YoungEditorial AssistantOn behalf of,The Editorial Board of International Journal of Social Science StudiesRedfame Publishing9450 SW Gemini Dr. #99416Beaverton, OR 97008, USAURL: http://ijsss.redfame.com

Transport makes cities: transit maps as major cognitive frames of metropolitan areas.

Spatial representations play a fundamental role in navigation, decision-making, and overall interaction with our environments. Understanding how individuals construct and use them holds significant importance in spatial cognition research, and even bears practical implications for urban planning as it can explain how we interact with the spaces we inhabit. In large urban areas, transit maps stand as prominent visual aids, guiding people through public transportation systems. These maps, while designed for navigational purposes, may influence how individuals perceive and represent their cities. For instance, Vertesi (Social Studies of Science 38:09-35, 2008) showed through a series of interviews including a "sketch mapping" phase, that London Tube Map seems to structure residents' spatial representation of their city. However, thorough quantitative research on this subject have not been carried out yet. Two experimental studies have been conducted to demonstrate how residents' representations of metropolitan areas closely resemble the schematic representations of their public transport networks. First, we show that residents of Greater Paris-public and private transport users alike-plot city landmarks in a layout more closely resembling that of the Parisian transit map than the geographical map. Next, we asked Greater Berlin, London and Paris residents to place landmarks of their cities on different map backgrounds. A similar procedure was followed for landmarks from an unknown city, after a dedicated learning phase. For known cities, the sketch maps produced were closer to transit maps than to the geographical ones, although less so if the test map background presented topographical elements (e.g., rivers, etc.). For learnt cities, participants' sketch maps were almost exclusively dependent on the map provided during the learning phase. These results suggest that familiarity with transit maps has a direct impact on the metric properties of spatial representation in memory, a phenomenon we propose to call the 'schema effect'.

Quantitatively Interpreting Residents Happiness Prediction by Considering Factor–Factor Interactions

Exploring the high-effect factors of residents’ happiness is good for a wide range of policy-making for economics and politics in most countries. Limited to the concerns of sociologists, previous efforts manually predefined the relationship among multifactors to analyze the factor–factor interactions with high interpretability by regression models. Recently, deep learning methods show great promising prediction accuracy by automatically learning additive interaction between factors, while it meets the challenges of interpretability. To this end, an unbiased post-hoc and model-agnostic method is promising to quantitatively interpret the results of the happiness prediction model. Thus, this article proposes a novel solution based on the deep neural network (DNN) and the Shapley value to compute the factor–factor interactions in different coalitions based on coalitional game theory. Aiming at evaluating the pairwise interactions interpretability quality of our solution, experiments are conducted on the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) and European Social Survey (ESS) questionnaire datasets. By systematic reviews, the experimental results are highly consistent with academic studies in social science. Analyzed by different factor categories, the new finding is that some factors, e.g., body mass index (BMI) and social media, play a crucial role in happiness prediction but are rarely considered in social science studies. Specifically, there are some heavy interactions across multicategories, such as personal information (health and age) with economics (insurance and income). Therefore, this solution can theoretically support the implications of social decision-making.

Aristotelian Flourishing and Contemporary Philosophical Theories of Wellbeing

Several philosophical theories of wellbeing claim Aristotelian ancestry and employ an Aristotelian construct of flourishing. Yet it is not clear how we should interpret Aristotle’s notion of flourishing or eudaimonia (εὐδαιμονία). In this article, we offer an analysis of Aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia and consider to what extent it can be categorized within the framework of contemporary philosophical theories of wellbeing. We stress the active character of Aristotelian flourishing and its focus on the development of living things over time, which contrasts with the static and passive character of contemporary philosophical accounts of wellbeing. We suggest that Aristotle is closest to a perfectionist theory of wellbeing, though even this requires some qualification. While rational activity in accord with virtue is central to Aristotle’s account of living well, Aristotle also states that a range of practical human activities and propitious life circumstances are necessary (and, on some interpretations, constitutive) features of the flourishing life. As such, Aristotelian flourishing includes elements of moral and cognitive perfectionism as well as an objective list of external goods and presupposes one’s embeddedness within communities. We close with a consideration of the implications of our argument for the philosophical and social scientific study of flourishing. Contemporary well-being philosophers should be mindful of ways in which Aristotelian eudaimonia extends beyond the dominant philosophical categories of wellbeing that have a static focus and concern themselves with subjective experience or the possession of objective goods. Social scientists should be transparent about the limits of invoking an Aristotelian pedigree to motivate their own theories of wellbeing and should understand the implications of more limited conceptions.

토픽 모델링을 활용한 이민자의 디지털 불평등(Digital Inequality) 관련 국제 연구 경향 분석

The study aims to analyze key issues and research trends in international research on the digital inequality of immigrants. Based on a total of 401 articles on digital inequality of immigrants published in Web of Science registered journals between 2000 and February 2023, the authors identified key research topics. The analysis reveals an increasing number of articles on immigrants’ digital inequality, starting with two articles in 2006, and showing a sharp increase since 2020. Research areas on the digital inequality of immigrants are led by various academic fields, including social science, medicine, and multidisciplinary studies. Five topics were identified through topic modeling and word network analysis: ‘immigrants’ digital inequality in health’, ‘COVID-19 and immigrants’ digital inequality’, ‘Immigrants’ digital inequality in education’, ‘Immigrants’ inequality in the digital age’, and ‘Digital inequality of migrant workers’. It was shown that topics of ‘immigrants’ digital inequality in health’ and ‘Immigrants’ inequality in the digital age’ have been attracting significant attention.

How Caste Shapes the Origin and Transformation of Work and Employment in India

Studies in social sciences have an extensive literature that deals with caste as a governing social institution and its relevance in India’s socio-political and economic realms. For instance, research on labour segmentation and its linkages with material inequality or economic status has a long history. This article contextualises the history of caste order in India, which recognised the predominant role of occupation and the related socio-economic superiority of work, value and reward. Based on an analytical review of available literature, it suggests that in addition to the debates on the policy of reservations in India, there is an equally pertinent question: Why the direct impact to disintegrate caste-occupational affiliations continues to remain at numerically miniscule levels (central government data) despite an elaborate constitutional mechanism to secure valued positions of formal employment in place?

Disputed expertise and chaotic disinformation: COVID-19 and denialist physicians in Brazil.

This article aims to show how incorrect ideas about COVID-19 were promoted by physicians in Brazil, contributing to a catastrophic response at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, and to examine the implications of this episode for the social studies of science, technology and medicine. The literature on the relationship between science and society takes two broad approaches, which are sometimes at odds with each other: (i) there is a traditional critique of science that points to unsupported claims of certainty and thus undue interference in general human affairs; (ii) there are many examples of attempts to undermine reasonable scientific claims, when they clash with economic and/or political interests of certain groups. Navigating those extremes is particularly critical in situations in which accurate knowledge is necessary for intervening in people's lives, as is the case in health-related issues. Determining who has actual epistemic expertise is a key factor in solving this conundrum. This became painfully clear during the unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted the uncertainties of science in guiding decisions being made in real time, and provided opportunities for many forms of disinformation and conspiracy theories that hampered public health measures and promoted useless or even dangerous "treatments". This article discusses an instructive example of such developments in the chaotic response to the pandemic challenge in Brazil, which saw, among other unfortunate situations, physicians aligned with the denialist federal government advocating for unproven - or proven as ineffective - treatments and disseminating unfounded doubts about vaccines. Presumed expertise on the basis of professional training clearly did not translate into actual expertise in the necessary domains to ascertain the validity of such claims and scientific advice was overridden by ideology.

Consuming unregulated “diet weed”: The social context of motivations and risk among users of Delta‐8 THC

AbstractA relatively novel, laboratory‐produced, hemp‐derived psychoactive cannabinoid called “Delta‐8 THC” has become widely available to consumers since 2020. Lack of federal oversight and a loose patchwork of regulations by states have resulted in numerous “adverse events” reported by poison control centers and the CDC, and even warnings from the industry itself. Yet consumer demand for cannabinoids like Delta‐8 THC has risen sharply. Published social science studies of Delta‐8 THC use are in their infancy and have yet to document the social context of use, consumer preferences and motivations, behaviors, embodied experiences, perceptions of risk, and risk mitigation. We conducted 25 in‐depth, qualitative interviews with consumers of Delta‐8 THC to give insight into consumer practices and preferences. Data show that consumers of Delta‐8 are aware of supply chain vulnerabilities but deploy personal calculations of risk‐benefit and personal strategies of risk mitigation to reduce perceived threats.

Diminished diversity-of-thought in a standard large language model

We test whether large language models (LLMs) can be used to simulate human participants in social-science studies. To do this, we ran replications of 14 studies from the Many Labs 2 replication project with OpenAI’s text-davinci-003 model, colloquially known as GPT-3.5. Based on our pre-registered analyses, we find that among the eight studies we could analyse, our GPT sample replicated 37.5% of the original results and 37.5% of the Many Labs 2 results. However, we were unable to analyse the remaining six studies due to an unexpected phenomenon we call the “correct answer” effect. Different runs of GPT-3.5 answered nuanced questions probing political orientation, economic preference, judgement, and moral philosophy with zero or near-zero variation in responses: with the supposedly “correct answer.” In one exploratory follow-up study, we found that a “correct answer” was robust to changing the demographic details that precede the prompt. In another, we found that most but not all “correct answers” were robust to changing the order of answer choices. One of our most striking findings occurred in our replication of the Moral Foundations Theory survey results, where we found GPT-3.5 identifying as a political conservative in 99.6% of the cases, and as a liberal in 99.3% of the cases in the reverse-order condition. However, both self-reported ‘GPT conservatives’ and ‘GPT liberals’ showed right-leaning moral foundations. Our results cast doubts on the validity of using LLMs as a general replacement for human participants in the social sciences. Our results also raise concerns that a hypothetical AI-led future may be subject to a diminished diversity of thought.

Foucault and Hegel: A Theoretical Encounter for Studying Subjectivity and Knowledge in the Contemporary University

Abstract This paper brings Foucault and Hegel together in a productive way in the context of examining the relationship between subjectivity and knowledge within the contemporary university. While acknowledging the differences between their intellectual projects, I argue that Foucault’s ethical turn and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit can complement each other in studying subjectivity-constitution. They share a fundamental premise: transforming the subject’s being is needed to access the truth. These modifications of the subject’s being are carried out by techniques of the self (Foucault) or the path of despair (Hegel). Drawing on the inseparability of epistemology and ethics, I propose an analytical framework for studying the subjectivity-constitution of the subject of knowledge – scholars, academics or researchers – in the contemporary university. The paper aims to contribute to the study of the relationship between subjectivity and knowledge in the modern university, an area often overlooked in higher education and social studies of science.

Biomedicalization and responses to aids in Brazil: research notes

This text addresses the process of biomedicalization in the responses to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (aids), based on field research in Rio de Janeiro and document and literature reviews. Considering the socio-anthropological perspective and social studies of science, the current predominance of preventative biomedical strategies implies both reconfigurations of the scientific and institutional order and interventions in health and sexuality. These transformations reveal an established definition of the epidemic as a clinical problem, reconfiguration of debates on sexuality and stigma, and erasure of the discussion on structural inequalities and human rights, and new studies on HIV/aids within social sciences and humanities are needed.