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This article starts out with a summary of Weber's views on value freedom, by emphasizing: (1) that value freedom constitutes a special constellation of values; and (2) that value freedom makes it possible for the social scientist to theorize on the basis of new and more extensive knowledge than if she had simply stated her own values and focused the analysis around these. The latter point emerges most clearly in Weber's instructions for how a social scientist should proceed when carrying out an analysis of her own preferred social policy. After the section on Weber's views on value freedom, an attempt is made to update his views. This is done by arguing that the impact of values (and value freedom) differs, depending on where these can be found: on paper, in the head of the social scientist, or in her actions. 'Actions,' in the context of value freedom, refer to the research process and especially to the element of theorizing. Value freedom helps to guide the research into new and fruitful directions and to steer it clear of propaganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the journal's invitation for submission of papers on the social psychology of precarity.

Rationale, Aims, and Objectives: This article aims to examine global population ageing and to evaluate the likely risks and dilemmas of demographic ageing within the context of the health and well-being of individuals., Methods: This paper is based on the author's research in the field of social gerontology, demography, and public health. In addition, a literature review has been carried out focused on the objectives of the research., Results: The study has identified potential risks and dilemmas that the older people may face in the globalized world. There are four main aspects that contribute to an unequal distribution of risks in later life: (a) burden of disease in epidemiological transition, (b) financial security in retirement, (c) familial resources for older peoples' care, and (d) availability of workforce for older peoples' care. Whilst population ageing is a global trend, its impact is not equal across the world, and this is highlighted in this research. There are some important dilemmas which are identified in this paper that may also fuel the potential risks and challenges facing ageing societies., Conclusions: It is apparent that older people will face numerous risks in later life and those in developing countries are likely to face more challenges than those in developed countries. The findings may be useful to policymakers for formulating future plans and policy implementation. Further research is required to identify the number of health care workers needed to tackle the challenges of an ageing societies across the globe., (© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

I discuss a published paper in political science that made a claim that aroused skepticism. The reanalysis is an example of how we, as consumers as well as producers of science, can engage with published work. This can be viewed as a sort of collaboration performed implicitly between the authors of a published paper and later researchers who want to understand or use the published work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on quality assurance in education and research using a peer‐review system at the university. It mentions views on several research topics including humanities, social science, health, engineering and natural sciences; minor political scandal at the national level in Sweden; and importance of traditional peer reviewed journals.

In the humanities and social sciences, bibliometric methods for the assessment of research performance are (so far) less common. This study uses a concrete example in an attempt to evaluate a research institute from the area of social sciences and humanities with the help of data from Google Scholar ( GS). In order to use GS for a bibliometric study, we developed procedures for the normalization of citation impact, building on the procedures of classical bibliometrics. In order to test the convergent validity of the normalized citation impact scores, we calculated normalized scores for a subset of the publications based on data from the Web of Science ( WoS) and Scopus. Even if scores calculated with the help of GS and the WoS/ Scopus are not identical for the different publication types (considered here), they are so similar that they result in the same assessment of the institute investigated in this study: For example, the institute's papers whose journals are covered in the WoS are cited at about an average rate (compared with the other papers in the journals). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this introductory paper is to provide an overview of key methodological developments in social and behavioural research in oral health. In the first section, we provide a brief historical perspective on research in the field. In the second section, we outline key methodological issues and introduce the seven papers in the theme. Conceptual models can contextualize research findings and address the 'why' and 'how' instead of 'what' and 'how many'. Many models exist, albeit they need to be evaluated (and adapted) for use in oral health research and in specific settings. The increasing availability of big data can facilitate this with data linkage. Through data linkage, it is possible to explore and understand in a broader capacity the array of factors that influence oral health outcomes and how oral health can influences other factors. With advances in statistical approaches, it is feasible to consider casual inferences and to quantify these effects. There is a need for not only individual efforts to embrace causal inference research but also systematic and structural changes in the field to yield substantial results. The value of qualitative research in co‐producing knowledge with and from human participants in addressing 'the how' and 'the why' factors is also key. There have been calls to employ more sophisticated qualitative methods together with mixed methods approaches as ways of helping to address the complex or Wicked Problems in population oral health. In the final section, we outline possible future methodological directions in social and behavioural oral health research including participatory approaches and the development of core outcome sets. Our overriding goal in the paper is to facilitate a critical debate in relation to methodological issues which can be used to improve understanding and generate knowledge in population oral health and that this, in turn, will help inform oral health policy and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a debate on why Bourdieusian scholars have never fully embraced the "Introduction/Literature review/Data & methods/Results/Discussion" (ILDRD) article format which is mainstream in North American Sociological publications. This paper attempts to argue that Pierre Bourdieu, Jean‐Claude Chamboredon, and Jean‐Claude Passeron developed a different writing format – inspired by Gaston Bachelard's "applied rationalism" ‐‐ and which became more influential among French scholars. The Bourdieu inspired different writing patterns and reasoning, I argue, can be traced in the flagship journal Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales. This paper invites further debate on the differences in approaching article formats in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a new child‐centred methodology that explores children's visions of their futures, encourages self‐reflection and depth and shares children's voices with peers and researchers, as unbrokered as possible. This final stage of a longitudinal, arts‐based, social science‐informed project was delivered by partnering with schools in socially disadvantaged areas of Bristol, a UK city. Our two‐phase activity used a Tree metaphor to explore children's hopes, ambitions and support, looking forward to recovery from the COVID‐19 pandemic. The analysis combined multi‐disciplinary thematic and visual‐narrative analysis, and revealed diversity, intersection and individuality in themes that scaled out from the child and their family over different timescales. Themes included emotion (concerns; empathy), experiences (happenings, resources skills; aspirations) and relationships, linked to their recent experiences of COVID‐19 mitigation. The paper reflects critically on children's and researchers' positionality, and the complexities involved in developing research methods that encourage children's autonomy, agency and authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frustration among systems thinking practitioners and academics surfaces from time to time at the apparently limited real‐world influence of systems methodologies and frameworks. Critical systems thinking (CST), in particular, faces many of the challenges common to qualitative research and has the additional challenge that its principal modality is to offer ways of conceptualising. This paper argues that recent explorations of phronetic social science (PSS) provide a useful conceptual frame to discuss and enhance the value of CST. We outline some characteristics of phronetic models and how to conceive and evaluate systemically informed phronetic models. By way of illustration, the paper describes the phronetic framing of two practical tools to support collaborative practice, each built on existing systemic models. Finally, we discuss the potential value of informing PSS with insights drawn from CST, and CST with insights drawn from the emerging field of PSS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents and explains the phenomenon of indexjacking, which involves the systematic infiltration of hijacked journals into international indexing databases, with Scopus being one of the most infiltrated among these databases. Through an analysis of known lists of hijacked journals, the study identified at least 67 hijacked journals that have penetrated Scopus since 2013. Of these, 33 journals indexed unauthorized content in Scopus and 23 compromised the homepage link in the journal's profile, while 11 did both. As of September 2023, 41 hijacked journals are still compromising the data of legitimate journals in Scopus. The presence of hijacked journals in Scopus is a challenge for scientific integrity due to the legitimization of unreliable papers that have not undergone peer review and compromises the quality of the Scopus database. The presence of hijacked journals in Scopus has far‐reaching effects. Papers published in these journals may be cited, and unauthorized content from these journals in Scopus is thus imported into other databases, including ORCID and the WHO COVID‐19 Research Database. This poses a particular challenge for research evaluation in those countries, where cloned versions of approved journals may be used to acquire publications and verifying their authenticity can be difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Berichte zur Wissenschafts-Geschichte is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This editorial reviews recent works of historical geography published in Transactions. It highlights a number of prominent themes that bind the papers together: the historical geographies of geopolitics, the state and territory; landscape and environmental change; matters of memory and commemoration; and the production, practice and provision of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the special issue 'Towards a Social Psychology of Precarity' that develops an orienting lens for social psychologists' engagement with the concept. As guest editors of the special issue, we provide a thematic overview of how 'precarity' is being conceptualized throughout the social sciences, before distilling the nine contributions to the special issue. In so doing, we trace the ways in which social psychologists are (dis)engaging with the concept of precarity, yet too, explore how precarity constitutes, and is embedded within, the discipline itself. Resisting disciplinary decadence, we collectively explore what a social psychology of precarity could be, and view working with/in precarity as fundamental to addressing broader calls for the social responsiveness of the discipline. The contributing papers, which are methodologically pluralistic and provide rich conceptualisations of precarity, challenge reductionist individualist understandings of suffering and coping and extend social science theorizations on precarity. They also highlight the ways in which social psychology remains complicit in perpetuating different forms of precarity, for both communities and academics. We propose future directions for the social psychological study of precarity through four reflexive questions that we encourage scholars to engage with so that we may both work with/in, and intervene against, 'the precarious'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recent advances in the psychological understanding of health‐related behaviour have focused on producing a comprehensive framework to model such behaviour. The Capability‐Opportunity‐Motivation‐Behaviour (COM‐B) and its associated Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) allow researchers to classify psychological and behavioural constructs in a consistent and transferable manner across studies. Aim: To identify oral and dental health‐related studies that have used the TDF and/or COM‐B as frameworks to guide research and examine the ways in which these concepts have been practically used in such research. Method: Narrative review of published literature. To be included, the paper had to (1) state that the TDF or COM‐B had been used and to have targeted at least one construct identified in either framework, (2) include primary empirical data, (3) focus on a behaviour directly related to oral or dental‐related health (eg brushing, applying fluoride varnish, flossing) and/or attitudes, intentions and beliefs related to the behaviour. Studies could include any research design, and participants of any age or gender and include patients, parents or dental health professionals. Findings: Nine studies were identified that had drawn on the COM‐B and/or TDF as the framework for their research. Seven of the studies were based on the TDF only, with one employing both the COM‐B and Health Belief Model, and one using the TDF with COM‐B. The nine studies covered a broad range of oral health‐related behaviours including child tooth brushing, fluoride varnish application and non‐ or micro‐invasive management of proximal caries lesions. The populations in the studies included dentists, dental teams and parents of children. All studies adopted only a subset of the constructs within the TDF, often without justification. Conclusions: It is encouraging that oral health researchers are adopting standardized psychological frameworks to develop their research and oral health interventions. Future work should build on the small number of studies identified in this review and consider using standardized tools to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the rate of citation-capture across the social sciences, sciences, business school disciplines and economics. It also explores differences in the rate of citation-capture between leading journals in economics and a representative science category, and between higher and lower ranked economics journals. Short-term citation counting as used in impact factors and journal ranking schemes is shown to favour sciences over social sciences. In addition, within economics, short-term impact factors are systematically biased towards lower ranked journals. Our results imply that the use of leading multidisciplinary journal rankings as a proxy for direct citations introduces an unreported bias in research assessment. Such biases are in addition to those attributable to the well-known differences in the total number of cites received by papers across various disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study of scholarly communication behaviour among Arab scholars. The main objective of this study is to determine how Egyptian and Saudi Arabian social sciences and humanities scholars engage in scholarly communication practices. The study used a mixed‐methods approach. A questionnaire was answered by a sample of 104 participants, followed by interviews with 36 participants to gain insight into the scholarly communication behaviour of the Arab scholars. The analysis demonstrated that participants use different styles of scholarly communication approaches. Most of the participants do use informal (social media) channels to communicate their research findings (particularly ResearchGate and Facebook), although priority is given to formal over informal publication in peer reviewed journals. Responses showed that the promotional systems of both countries dictate publication choices of scholars, reducing the amount of collaboration by ranking co‐publications lower than sole publications and favouring printed journals over online‐only journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To review research published in the AJA in terms of authors' positions and disciplinary backgrounds, and the settings in which research was done. Methods: Eighty two papers by 373 authors, in Vol. 35 No 1, March 2016, to Vol 37 No 2, June 2018, were reviewed. Results: Different clusters of authorship were found for research using surveys or database analyses, research in hospitals and aged care settings. Two out of three authors held academic positions, and professional practitioners in hospitals were much more likely to have academic affiliations than in aged care settings. Differing research cultures are seen to contribute to these outcomes. Conclusions: Editorial policies have been central to maintaining publication standards. The Journal's publication partners could take a number of actions to advance recognition of professionals in different roles as authors and to expand the range of research published, especially nursing and social science research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous series of papers (Sutherland, Dicks, Everard, & Geneletti,), we summarise the use of a range of social science methods in conservation decision‐making. Moon et al. () claim that the special feature risks narrowing the scope of social science research and suggest that we presented a limited perspective on the field. They thereby criticise the special feature for not doing something that it never intended to do in the first instance. We did not claim that the list of articles covered in the special feature is a comprehensive list (which it obviously is not) and we are unclear why anyone would think it is.While we consider the Moon et al. () paper to be a useful contribution for conservation scientists as a supplementary paper, it serves less as a critique to the special feature. Moon et al.('s () paper makes very few direct and substantive criticisms of points raised in the special feature. We respond to areas of contention referring specifically to research philosophy, bias, and data reporting.Moon et al. () criticise the set of papers for perpetuating an objectivist view of the world. We believe that it would be rather disconcerting for the research community if there were no social truths to discover. Rather, social science research methods conducted in specific places can be good ways of exploring how truths vary in different contexts.We also note that Moon et al. () completely missed the point we were trying to make about psychological biases, which are quite different to the issues associated with researcher bias highlighted by them.We encourage readers to pay close attention to the use of social science methods in conservation science. We reiterate, however, that the main purpose of the special feature was to ensure that social science methodologies for decision‐making are accessible for all conservation scientists to use, regardless of disciplinary background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accompanying the ageing of contemporary ageing societies is an increase in age associated morbidity, with dementia having an important impact. Mental frailty in later life is a source of fear for many and a major policy concern to all those concerned with health and welfare services. This introduction to the special issue on 'Ageing, dementia and the social mind' situates the selected papers within the context of debates about dementia and its social relations. In particular it draws attention to the importance of the social imaginary of the fourth age and what this means for the issue of personhood, care, social representations of dementia and its social contextualisation. The papers illuminating these themes draw on a variety of disciplines and approaches; from the social sciences to the humanities and from the theoretical to the empirical in order to help orientate future researchers to the complexities of dementia and the social and cultural matrix in which it exists. This paper provides an introduction to the potential for a more extended sociology of dementia; one which could combine the insights from medical sociology with the concerns of social gerontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: As educational theories are increasingly used in medical education research there are concerns over how these theories are used, how well they are presented and what the authors intend. Communities of practice (CoP) is one example of an often‐used theory and conceptual framework. This paper presents a critical analysis of how CoP theory is used in medical education research. Methods: A critical literature analysis was undertaken of articles published between 1998 and 2018 in eight internationally recognised medical education journals. From a total of 541 articles, 80 articles met the inclusion criteria and were analysed and mapped according to various patterns of use. Results: We discerned five categories of use, two misleading and cosmetic, off target and cosmeticising, and three functional, framing, lensing and transferring. A considerable number of articles either misrepresented the point of communities of practice or used it in a cosmetic fashion. The remainder used the theory to frame an ongoing study in relation to other work, as a lens through which to design the study and collect or analyse data, or as a way of discussing or demonstrating the transferability of the findings. Conclusions: We conclude that almost half of the reviewed articles did not offer a functional and rigorous definition of what is meant by CoP; instead, they used it in a potentially misleading or cosmetic manner. This study therefore calls on editors, reviewers and authors alike to increase clarity and quality in the application of CoP theory in medical education. McGrath et al. use Communities of Practice literature to analyze how theory is used in health professional education. Their findings? Often in a predominantly cosmetic way, requiring more critical thought about how to advance our research strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While description is a valuable aspect of meaningful sociological work, this paper takes issue with Mike Savage's argument that the social sciences, and sociology in particular, should seek to prioritize description over practices of explanation and analysis, and attention to questions of causality. The aim of this paper is not to take issue with descriptive forms of sociology in themselves, but to argue that the answer to the problems identified by Savage and Burrows in their landmark paper "The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology" is not to follow commercial forms of research by prioritizing practices of description and classification at the cost of asking fundamental questions about the "why?" and the "how?" of social life and politics. Rather, this paper argues that it is imperative that sociology does not simply describe inequalities of different types, but questions, explains, and analyses the structures and mechanisms through which they are created, reproduced, and sustained. The argument will be developed in three stages. First, this paper will restate the main points of Savage's call for descriptive sociology; second, it will address his critique of "epochalist thinking" and subsequent opposition to the idea of neoliberalism; and third, it will respond to his use of Thomas Piketty's work as a model for developing sociological descriptions of class and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Consumer psychology is an interdisciplinary subject that ties together theories and methods from psychology, marketing, advertising, economics, sociology, and anthropology. Since the 1960s, the field of consumer psychology has been the focus of hundreds of research contributions and has emerged as a major research field. However, no study has yet provided a unified perspective on the evolution of the field. This research provides a holistic, quantitative overview of 728 papers in consumer psychology from 1960 to 2016. Utilizing a bibliometric approach and networking methods, it maps out the evolution of the research, provides a comprehensive view of the dynamics of the field, and identifies the key authors and their collaboration networks. Results show that this field has grown dramatically, especially since 2006, with research focusing on psychology, business, and social science, with themes extending to cross culture and gender difference. The findings also indicate that the field of consumer psychology is still developing and many themes remain undeveloped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper discusses the role that qualitative methods can and should play in engineering systems research and lays out the process of doing good qualitative research. As engineering research increasingly focuses on sociotechnical systems, in which human behavior and organizational context play important roles in system behavior, there is an increasing need for the insights qualitative research can provide. This paper synthesizes the literature on qualitative methods and lessons from the authors’ experience employing qualitative methods to study a variety of engineering systems. We hope that by framing the key issues clearly, other engineers who hope to join the qualitative path will build on what we have learned so far to enable greater insight into engineering systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article broadens the knowledge about the experience of academics in relation to how the internationalization of research has changed in a southern country and tensions that have risen depending on the different disciplines. This work resulted from interviews and documentary data collected mainly through semi‐structured interviews with 57 administrators (including University rectors, provosts, vice‐rectors and deans from multiple disciplines) who had been involved in developing the research strategies. Findings suggest that trends between disciplines differ notoriously. Publishing in foreign countries is more likely to happen to academics from hard sciences. Social sciences and humanities' research activities are often performed in books and book chapters. This translates into an initial disadvantage for social sciences in terms of internationalization since the result of their work is often less visible abroad than scientific indexed papers. This difference might be problematic if used as an indicator of academic productivity and recognition without considering disciplinary differences, especially in countries where research capacities and internationalization are still under development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy PointsFaced with urgent threats to human health and well‐being such as climate change, calls among the academic community are getting louder to contribute more effectively to the implementation of the evidence generated by our research into public policy.As interest in knowledge translation (KT) surges, so have a number of anxieties about the field's shortcomings. Our paper is motivated by a call in the literature to render useful advice for those beginning in KT on how to advance impact at a policy level.By integrating knowledge from fields such as political science, moral psychology, and marketing, we suggest that thinking and acting like marketers, lobbyists, movements, and political scientists would help us advance on the quest to bridge the chasm between evidence and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports a longitudinal analysis of the topical and methodological development of Library and Information Science (LIS). Its focus is on the effects of researchers' disciplines on these developments. The study extends an earlier cross‐sectional study (Vakkari et al., Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2022a, 73, 1706–1722) by a coordinated dataset representing a content analysis of articles published in 31 scholarly LIS journals in 1995, 2005, and 2015. It is novel in its coverage of authors' disciplines, topical and methodological aspects in a coordinated dataset spanning two decades thus allowing trend analysis. The findings include a shrinking trend in the share of LIS from 67 to 36% while Computer Science, and Business and Economics increase their share from 9 and 6% to 21 and 16%, respectively. The earlier cross‐sectional study (Vakkari et al., Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2022a, 73, 1706–1722) for the year 2015 identified three topical clusters of LIS research, focusing on topical subfields, methodologies, and contributing disciplines. Correspondence analysis confirms their existence already in 1995 and traces their development through the decades. The contributing disciplines infuse their concepts, research questions, and approaches to LIS and may also subsume vital parts of LIS in their own structures of knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social psychological scholarship has emphasized the importance of effective leadership during the COVID‐19 pandemic. However, the wider material contexts of these dynamics have often remained understudied. Through a critical discursive lens, this paper investigates differences in the social constructions used by leaders of richer and poorer nations during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We identify a sharp economic bifurcation in global discourses of pandemic leadership. Pandemic leadership in wealthier nations exercises power in abundance by mobilizing institutions and inspiring communities through discursive frames of coordination and collaboration. Conversely, pandemic leadership in poorer settings negotiates agency amid scarcity by tactically balancing resources, freedoms and dignity within discursive frames of restriction and recuperation. Implications of these findings are unpacked for understanding leadership especially during an international crisis, highlighting the need for critical sensitivities to wider societal structures for a genuinely global social psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces ' Virtue and Virtuousness: When will the twain ever meet?' a special edition of B usiness E thics: A E uropean R eview. The Call for Papers invited contributions that could inform the relationship between organisational virtuousness, as conceptualised by positive organisation studies, and the classical conception of virtues pertaining to individual women and men. While the resources of particular virtue traditions - Aristotelian, Catholic, Confucian, and the like - could inform their own debates as to whether virtue extends beyond individuals, the debate between virtue traditions and positive organisation studies has a different dimension. The question is whether the claims of positive social sciences as such are compatible with those of any virtue tradition. We argue that positive social science and virtue traditions are indeed rivals such that adherence to the claims of the one precludes adherence to the other. Resolution to such conflicts requires that one tradition is able to resolve questions that exhaust the resources of the other. This paper suggests that at least one area of incoherence in the findings of positive social sciences can be resolved by virtue traditions, and introduces the remaining papers in the special edition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terms like 'levels' and 'nested' are used to describe relationships between components of conceptual systems (theories, models etc.). However, they have not been fully explored. This paper investigates levels to better understand how theories are structured and so how we may develop more useful theories and models to better support more effective practice. We find a horizontal dimension (represented by causal connections between concepts at one ontological level) and a vertical dimension (represented by connections of emergence between concepts of differing ontological levels). This view of emergence offers a new way to structurally distinguish between conceptual components of a theory, thus supporting a new approach to building theories that better reflects our systemic world. A third, perspectival, approach may be applied to aid in the understanding of both dimensions. A typology is proposed as are conventions for diagramming theories and new criteria for improving the structure of theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the importance of the visual expression of factor decomposition in regression analysis, which is particularly worthwhile for undergraduate students whose majors are not mathematics but social science. The conventional purpose of regression analysis is to examine specific hypotheses empirically. In particular, the statistical significance of the explanatory variable was tested, which may have been difficult for many students to understand mathematically. To remedy this, factor decomposition is introduced in the same way that human body composition is broken down into water, fat, and muscle. As an illustrative example, multiple regression was applied to the determinants of housing rents in Japan. The explanatory variables were the living area, building age, and walking time from the nearest station. The findings suggest that, with the help of visual expression, a student can easily appreciate which variable significantly affects housing rents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing methods in social [oral] epidemiology primarily utilize statistical models that assume static characteristics of individuals and environments. While useful, an over reliance on these methods in the social and behavioural sciences can unnecessarily limit perspective and progress as even the most advanced statistical methods cannot capture complex behaviour over time given that systems evolve, environments respond, and behaviours and beliefs crystalize or deteriorate based on a variety of social, environmental and access variables. The recent consensus statement on Future Directions for the Behavioral and Social Sciences in Oral Health acknowledges that dental, oral and craniofacial health emerge from the complex interplay of multiple factors at multiple levels over time and highlights the need for the incorporation of new and underutilized methodologies. Complex Systems Science offers a suite of tools and methodologies that are responsive to the generative mechanisms and processes that underlie population distributions of oral health and disease. Specifically, they assume intricate, dynamic interactions between individuals and groups, they facilitate the study and synthesis of interconnections between people (e.g. patients, healthcare providers and policy makers), how these change over time, any differences across settings, and provide an opportunity to guide future longitudinal data collection and intervention science more effectively. This paper aims to provide an introduction to foundational principles of complex systems, complex systems thinking, and methods found in complex systems science, including social network analysis, system dynamics models and agent‐based models, and offers perspectives on the challenges faced and opportunities afforded in the incorporation of these methods into the population oral health sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major sociohistorical processes have profound effects on oral health, with impacts experienced through structural oppression manifested in policies and practices across the lifespan. Structural oppression drives oral health inequities and impacts population‐level oral health. In this global perspective paper, we challenge old assumptions about oral health inequities, address misleading conceptualizations in their description and operation and reframe oral health through the lens of intersecting systems of oppression. Furthermore, we emphasize the need for oral health researchers to explore causal pathways through which oppression harms oral health and engage in social science concepts to understand the root causes of oral health inequities fully. Finally, we call on policymakers, dental scholars and decision makers to consider health equity in all policies and to take a systems‐oriented approach to effectively address oral health inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curriculum, as a policy and way of moving through educational experience, is entwined with an ongoing history of invasion in Australia and similar invader‐colonial contexts. As a result of this, the conceptual foundations of curriculum in Australia reproduce colonial epistemologies as normative modes of knowing and consideration. One way of seeing how this is possible and easily reproduced is through a consideration of how renderings and representations of "place" – the complex entanglements of lands, histories, and identit(y/ies) – mediate both how (a) invasion can be normalised as a historical, geographic, and political "placial" reality, and (b) students and teachers might experience education in and of place. Indeed, "place" is a central guiding concept in official curriculum policy just as much as place is an experienced curriculum both within the school and in the broader world. In this respect, this paper looks to unpack how the concept of place is represented in curriculum policy and the attendant assumptions and implicit discourses that this (re)produces about the experiences of people in/of invaded place. Through a look at the coming revision to the Humanities and Social Science's learning area of the Australian Curriculum, I look to how the curriculum as policy frames place as synonymous with invader place epistemically and how this mediates what students can know and themselves feel about the embodied experience of learning about/in/of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contains a novel and coherent reading of Weberian ideal type construction, based on recent philosophical approaches to conceptual engineering. This reading makes transparent the dialectics of Weber's approach, resulting in a more nuanced interpretation of his methodological work. It will become apparent that Weber, when introducing his notion of an ideal type, did not merely summarize his views on methodology in the social sciences, but, rather, presented a two‐step argument in favor of these views. The reconstruction will directly bear on issues in the methodology of the social sciences. Weber not only presented a methodology that is, at some level of abstraction, strikingly similar to Carnapian explication (the canonical point of reference in the contemporary debate on conceptual engineering). He also diagnosed, in a systematic fashion, types of problems we face when dealing with ordinary and scientific concepts that play a key role in the description of social reality, and he foreshadowed what is today sometimes described as "debunking" projects. From a philosophy of science perspective, I propose Weber's view (on the reconstruction proposed here) as a serious candidate for an adequate theory of concept replacement in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fundamental cause theory (FCT) is among the most widely recognised and accepted social science frameworks used to examine the processes driving health inequalities. Despite the wide influence of the theory, it remains largely underutilised in practical and applied research on health disparities. This paper proposes that Pierre Bourdieu's theories of capital and symbolic power can be integrated with FCT to address limitations in the latter theory, making it more useful in health disparities research. Using a case study of U.S. health insurance claim denials for genetic testing among women with a breast cancer diagnosis, this work illustrates how the theoretical constructs of FCT and Bourdieu's work articulate, and consequently deepens our appreciation for the durable relationship between socioeconomic status and health. Study results reveal the multiple and complex mechanisms that play a role in access to healthcare services, which has significant implications for how we think about the role of health policy in addressing health disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically explores the research and development of 'digital phenotyping', which broadly refers to the idea that digital data can measure and predict people's mental health as well as their potential risk for mental ill health. Despite increasing research and efforts to digitally track and predict ill mental health, there has been little sociological and critical engagement with this field. This paper aims to fill this gap by introducing digital phenotyping to the social sciences. We explore the origins of digital phenotyping, the concept of the digital phenotype and its potential for benefit, linking these to broader developments within the field of 'mental health sensing'. We then critically discuss the technology, offering three critiques. First, that there may be assumptions of normality and bias present in the use of algorithms; second, we critique the idea that digital data can act as a proxy for social life; and third that the often biological language employed in this field risks reifying mental health problems. Our aim is not to discredit the scientific work in this area, but rather to call for scientists to remain reflexive in their work, and for more social science engagement in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal's special issue is presented in which the guest editors discuss the use of the system dynamics approach (SD).

Objectives: There are growing concerns that social isolation presents risks to older people's health and well‐being. Thus, the objective of the review was to explore how technology is currently being utilised to combat social isolation and increase social participation, hence improving social outcomes for older people. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted across the social science and human‐computer interaction databases. Results: A total of 36 papers met the inclusion criteria and were analysed using a four‐step process. Findings were threefold, suggesting that: (i) technologies principally utilised social network services and touch‐screen technologies; (ii) social outcomes are often ill‐defined or not defined at all; and (iii) methodologies used to evaluate interventions were often limited and small‐scale. Conclusion: Results suggest a need for studies that examine new and innovative forms of technology, evaluated with rigorous methodologies, and drawing on clear definitions about how these technologies address social isolation/participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Decision‐making is a complex process that typically includes a series of stages: identifying the issue, considering possible options, making judgements and then making a decision by combining information and values. The current status quo relies heavily on the informational aspect of decision‐making with little or no emphasis on the value positions that affect decisions. There is increasing realization of the importance of adopting rigorous methods for each stage such that the information, views and judgements of stakeholders and experts are used in a systematic and repeatable manner. Though there are several methodological textbooks which discuss a plethora of social science techniques, it is hard to judge the suitability of any given technique for a given decision problem. In decision‐making, the three critical aspects are “what” decision is to be made, “who” makes the decisions and “how” the decisions are made. The methods covered in this paper focus on “how” decisions can be made. We compare six techniques: Focus Group Discussion (FGD), Interviews, Q methodology, Multi‐criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), Nominal Group Technique and the Delphi technique specifically in the context of biodiversity conservation. All of these techniques (with the exception of MCDA) help in understanding human values and the underlying perspectives which shape decisions. Based on structured reviews of 423 papers covering all six methods, we compare the conceptual and logistical characteristics of the methods, and map their suitability for the different stages of the decision‐making process. While interviews and FGD are well‐known, techniques such the Nominal Group technique and Q methodology are relatively under‐used. In situations where conflict is high, we recommend using the Q methodology and Delphi technique to elicit judgements. Where conflict is low, and a consensus is needed urgently, the Nominal Group technique may be more suitable. We present a nuanced synthesis of methods aimed at users. The comparison of the different techniques might be useful for project managers, academics or practitioners in the planning phases of their projects and help in making better informed methodological choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews work in geography concerned with the spatialities of 'the subject' after non-representational theory (NRT). The paper looks at what talking about 'the subject' might refer to, particularly amid the aftermath of the decentering of the subject that took place in the latter part of the 20th century across the humanities and social sciences. The paper then provides an overview of the impacts that NRT has had on how geographers have understood and approached the subject. In particular, the paper focuses on recent work in human geography which takes the subject to be in some way emergent from encounters with various more-than human others/alterity. Reflecting on that work, the paper broaches questions around difference and distribution. Here, a range of questions and lines of enquiry which might now be pursued in developing this work further are offered. These are summarised around the need for a 'spacing' of the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Earth system models (ESMs) are the primary tool used to understand and project changes to the climate system. ESM projections underpin analyses of human dimensions of the climate issue, yet little is known about how ESMs are used in human dimensions research. Such foundational information is necessary for future critical assessments of ESMs. We review applications of a leading ESM, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Earth System Model (CESM), to human dimensions topics since 2004. We find that this research has grown substantially over this period, twice as fast as CESM research overall. Although many studies have primarily addressed long‐term impacts on physical systems with societal relevance, applications to managed, societal, and ecological systems have grown quickly and now make up more than half of CESM human dimensions work. CESM applications focused nearly equally on global and regional analyses, most often using multimodel ensembles, although the use of single simulations remains prevalent. Downscaling and bias correction of output was infrequent and most common for regional studies. U.S.‐based, university‐affiliated authors primarily drove human dimensions work using CESM, with only 12% of authors based at NCAR. Our findings identify important questions that warrant further investigation, such as reasons for the infrequent use of downscaling and bias correction techniques; motivations to continue to use older model versions after newer model versions have been released; and model development needs for improved human dimensions applications. Additionally, our synthesis provides a baseline and framework that enables continued tracking of CESM and other ESMs. This article is categorized under:Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change The Community Earth System Model (CESM) has been applied to study a wide range of outcomes, with over half of published studies since 2004 focused on relevant physical systems; but applications to managed, societal, and ecological systems have been rapidly growing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]