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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]

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]

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]

Background: Norwegian public health nurses prevent diseases and promote health in children and young people aged 0–20 and their families. Public health nursing programs prepare students for their practical role and provide relevant theoretical knowledge. Objectives: To gain knowledge of the literature in the Norwegian public health nursing curricula, and to examine further the nursing base in these curricula. Design: An explorative and descriptive design was chosen. Sample: Reading lists based on syllabus documents from the 10 higher educational institutions in Norway offering programs in public health nursing. Measurements: A summative content analysis and a categorization of content from reading lists were performed. Results: Numerical information on the content and categorization of reading lists shows that social science and humanities literature dominates, followed by psychology and medicine. Nursing texts, theories and philosophy comprise only a minor part of the curricula. Conclusion: The paper provides valuable data on the theoretical focus in Norwegian public health nursing and raises important questions about the paucity of nursing texts in the curriculum. The imbalance in reading lists in Norway should be studied further and similar studies conducted in other countries to encourage reflection on the theoretical content of public health nursing education globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The puzzle of causal explanation is a core issue for social science. Searches for causal patterns can be overly mechanistic, seen for example in the desire for the magic bullet in policy, or the lionising of the celebrity policy interventions of the moment. Emphasis in policy interventions on transferable practice is often dismissed as naive for failing to recognise the importance of context, contingency, and complexity. However, a focus on highly context‐specific narratives, drawn from single cases, can be equally problematic and exacerbate rather than help the problem of reification of knowledge. This paper makes a reflective theoretical contribution to the debate on the need to tackle the dilemma of contingency versus certainty in causal explanation in the social sciences. It attempts to address this issue through the lens of a specific concrete puzzle of explanation; that of citizen participation in policy. Citizen participation is a salient policy topic, which demands a thorough understanding of causation. Using extended empirical examples of citizen participation in policy serves to highlight the intractability of different traditions of causal explanation and grounds the need for greater compatibility in approaches. The paper then offers two propositions centring on the notions of transdisciplinarity and hybridity in research practices and methodologies. It concludes with a discussion of more and less desirable forms of hybridity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Recent interest in applications of games and gaming methods has stimulated discussion of their use in engineering systems research. Simulation games or gaming simulations are interactive environments which simultaneously model a technical system through simulation and a social system with role‐play participants. Their boundary‐spanning nature aligns with challenges in engineering systems to consider both technical and social factors in design. This paper outlines a class of gaming methods for research in engineering systems. Key contributions synthesize diverse bodies of literature to classify gaming applications as generating generalizable and contextual knowledge to benefit participants and principals, identify intellectual foundations in related social sciences, and describe the dual purpose of games as a research method for analytical or design science objectives. Conclusions highlight opportunities and challenges for gaming research methods to accommodate social science research in design‐centric activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The Demand-Control (DC) and Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) models predict health in a work context. Self-report measures of the four key constructs (demand, control, effort, and reward) have been developed and it is important that these measures have good content validity uncontaminated by content from other constructs. We assessed relevance (whether items reflect the constructs) and representativeness (whether all aspects of the construct are assessed, and all items contribute to that assessment) across the instruments and items.Methods: Two studies examined fourteen demand/control items from the Job Content Questionnaire and seventeen effort/reward items from the Effort-Reward Imbalance measure using discriminant content validation and a third study developed new methods to assess instrument representativeness. Both methods use judges' ratings and construct definitions to get transparent quantitative estimates of construct validity. Study 1 used dictionary definitions while studies 2 and 3 used published phrases to define constructs.Results: Overall, 3/5 demand items, 4/9 control items, 1/6 effort items, and 7/11 reward items were uniquely classified to the appropriate theoretical construct and were therefore 'pure' items with discriminant content validity (DCV). All pure items measured a defining phrase. However, both the DC and ERI assessment instruments failed to assess all defining aspects.Conclusions: Finding good discriminant content validity for demand and reward measures means these measures are usable and our quantitative results can guide item selection. By contrast, effort and control measures had limitations (in relevance and representativeness) presenting a challenge to the implementation of the theories. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? While the reliability and construct validity of Demand-Control and Effort-Reward-Imbalance (DC and ERI) work stress measures are routinely reported, there has not been adequate investigation of their content validity. This paper investigates their content validity in terms of both relevance and representativeness and provides a model for the investigation of content validity of measures in health psychology more generally. What does this study add? A new application of an existing method, discriminant content validity, and a new method of assessing instrument representativeness. 'Pure' DC and ERI items are identified, as are constructs that are not fully represented by their assessment instruments. The findings are important for studies attempting to distinguish between the main DC and ERI work stress constructs. The quantitative results can be used to guide item selection for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]