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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 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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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

Collaborative research papers are widely acknowledged to be more impactful than single‐authored studies in higher education amidst subject area known to alter citation counts. While preceding studies have mostly recognised these two as the antecedents of research impact separately, it needs to be clarified whether the interaction of research area and type of collaboration causes any moderation. Comprehensive knowledge of differences in impact caused by a certain combination of type and area is important because, if citation impact is associated only with a particular combination, the impact‐based research stimulation programs without regard to combination consequences may be cost‐ineffective if not self‐destructing. This study investigates how research collaborations in academia impact the productivity and impact of university faculty. The focus is on the impact variation due to the type of academic collaboration (internal, domestic, international) and the research area. For the empirical test of this study, publicly open data from 1368 faculty in one of the leading Russian higher education institutions—HSE University. Results have two‐fold nature. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) researchers are more likely to collaborate with domestic co‐authors. This result accentuates the specifics of the academic traditions in the research areas highly recognised for having a long and successful history and worldwide impact on science. The collaborations built on international coauthorship are associated with higher publication visibility rates for researchers from emerging fields in Russia, like those in social sciences and humanities, whereas institutional collaborations are found to be positively related to the share of cited documents. This article sheds light on the differences in academic collaboration mechanisms influencing research productivity and impact in two distinct research areas. It invites revisiting policies stimulating collaborative activities in universities, demonstrating their potentially discrepant consequences. The study's substantial contribution also refers to the use of panel data on personal attributes, research productivity and impact, which is a rare case for research collaboration studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a significant increase in academic research in the realm of social sciences. As such, there is an increasing need for the scientific community to adopt effective and efficient methods to examine the potential role and contribution of social sciences in the fight against COVID-19. Objectives: This study aims to identify the key topics and explore publishing trends in social science research pertaining to COVID-19 via automated literature analysis. Methods: The automated literature analysis employed utilizes keyword analysis and topic modelling technique, specifically Latent Dirichlet Allocation, to highlight the most relevant research terms, overarching research themes and research trends within the realm of social science research on COVID-19. Results: The focus of research and topics were derived from 9733 full-text academic papers. The bulk of social science research on COVID-19 centres on the following themes: 'Clinical Treatment', 'Epidemic Crisis', 'Mental Influence', 'Impact on Students', 'Lockdown Influence' and 'Impact on Children'. Conclusion: This study adds to our understanding of key topics in social science research on COVID-19. The automated literature analysis presented is particularly useful for librarians and information specialists keen to explore the role and contributions of social science topics in the context of pandemics. [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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Interdisciplinary research is widely recognized as necessary to tackle some of the grand challenges facing humanity. It is generally believed that interdisciplinarity is becoming increasingly prevalent among Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. However, little is known about the evolution of interdisciplinarity in the Social Sciences. Also, how interdisciplinarity and its various aspects evolve over time has seldom been closely quantified and delineated. This paper answers these questions by capturing the disciplinary diversity of the knowledge base of scientific publications in nine broad Social Sciences fields over 55 years. The analysis considers diversity as a whole and its three distinct aspects, namely variety, balance, and disparity. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are also conducted to investigate whether such change, if any, can be found among research with similar characteristics. We find that learning widely and digging deeply have become one of the norms among researchers in Social Sciences. Fields acting as knowledge exporters or independent domains maintain a relatively stable homogeneity in their knowledge base while the knowledge base of importer disciplines evolves towards greater heterogeneity. However, the increase of interdisciplinarity is substantially smaller when controlling for several author and publication related variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a cross‐genre study of how academics show authorial stance in two increasingly popular but underexplored academic genres: academic blogs and Three Minute Thesis (3MT) presentations. Based on a corpus of 75 academic blogs and 75 3MT talks from social sciences, we explore how academics represent themselves and their research to non‐specialist audiences in two very different contexts. We found that the 3MT presenters used more stance resources and took stronger positions, largely by indicating certainty and creating a more visible authorial presence. Academic bloggers, on the other hand, preferred to downplay their commitment and highlight affect. The variations are explained in terms of mode and context, especially the time‐constrained and face‐to‐face competitive nature of the spoken genre and the potential for critical feedback in the blogs. The findings demonstrate the salience of stance in the two genres and role of context in academic communication. It has important implications for scholars who are seeking to take their work to new audiences in perhaps unfamiliar genres. [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.

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]

This article explores how audio diaries enable researchers to make sense of issues pertaining to intersectionality, positioning and gender in workplace learning narratives. Literature supports the utility of audio diary methods as they offer researchers a unique lens to explore interactions between verbal and non‐verbal cues to investigate intersecting identities and positions with participants. In this paper, the author combines the richness of audio diaries with intersectionality and positioning theories to explore how identities are negotiated over time. This paper presents a narrative case study that examines intersectionality, gendered identities and professionalism in the context of male‐ or female‐dominated healthcare environments. The case sheds light on how audio diaries embrace complex qualitative data that can be utilised as a tool to cross disciplinary boundaries in the social sciences. The article demonstrates how underpinning audio diaries with feminist theory empowers participants to make sense of their intersecting identities, whilst nurturing an intimate dialogue between researcher and participant to explore tensions between language and identity. Further discussion considers how reflections are facilitated using audio diaries, with a focus on how theory and time can enable and strengthen the quality of the research process, data and analysis between researcher and participant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a search system for grammatically analyzed corpora of Finnish parliamentary records and interviews with former parliamentarians, annotated with metadata of talk structure and involved parliamentarians, and discuss their use through carefully chosen digital humanities case studies. We first introduce the construction, contents, and principles of use of the corpora. Then we discuss the application of the search system and the corpora to study how politicians talk about power, how ideological terms are used in political speech, and how to identify narratives in the data. All case studies stem from questions in the humanities and the social sciences, but rely on the grammatically parsed corpora in both identifying and quantifying passages of interest. Finally, the paper discusses the role of natural language processing methods for questions in the (digital) humanities. It makes the claim that a digital humanities inquiry of parliamentary speech and interviews with politicians cannot only rely on computational humanities modeling, but needs to accommodate a range of perspectives starting with simple searches, quantitative exploration, and ending with modeling. Furthermore, the digital humanities need a more thorough discussion about how the utilization of tools from information science and technologies alter the research questions posed in the humanities. [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]

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]

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 explores parallels between the morphological thought of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the structuralism of Claude Lévi‐Strauss, and the formalism of Vladimir Propp, with emphasis on the manner in which each of these three thinkers adopts an "epistemological attitude" critical of, and external to, conventional philosophical discourse. The core commonality between them lies in their skepticism about the separability of the ideal from the real, and in the seeking of meaning within the observable constitutive structures of a phenomenon rather than any noumenal essence. The first part of the article examines the way Goethe and Lévi‐Strauss negotiate the relation between abstract thought and concrete observation; the second part turns to the way Lévi‐Strauss and Propp negotiate that question within the context of twentieth‐century social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of collective memory (CM) forms a platform for dialogue between top‐down (CM as publicly available symbols) and bottom‐up approaches (CM as aggregated across individuals), and between the idiographic (case specific) and nomothetic (universal) approaches across the social sciences and humanities. The availability of symbolic resources from history to serve as foundations for systems of belief is critical for defining human science as an open system involving synchronic and diachronic analyses that theorize about the making and breaking of political culture: including concepts, processes, and organizations coming into being, or disappearing, and as they do so, changing what phenomena can be observed and why. This Special Issue contains ten articles, one cluster of which centering around Europe, and the collective remembering of World War II. This contributed to the making of the European Union, but national structures also limit popular identification with this supranational structure. Despite the best efforts of states, the bottom‐up surveys reported here demonstrate the heterogeneity of CM, as mediated by mass communications, and age cohorts. In contexts ranging from memory of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, to protest movements in Hong Kong, Japanese occupation of Korea, and social representations of the histories of Singapore, Morocco, and Egypt, the papers collected here show consistently that CM is heterogeneous, and different CMs are associated with different political attitudes and behavior. History as a symbolic resource is best conceptualized as something that can be mobilized by an identity entrepreneur, not as something fixed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Britain is rich in longitudinal population cohort studies that posit valuable data resources for social science. However, education researchers currently underutilize these resources. Aims: The current paper (1) outlines the power and benefits of secondary data analyses for educational science and (2) provides a practical guide for education researchers on the characteristics, data, and accessibility of British population cohort studies. Methods: We identified eight British population cohort studies from the past 40 years that collected scholastic performance data during primary and secondary schooling, including (1) Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents And Children (ALSPAC), (2) Twins Early Development Study (TEDS), (3) Effective Pre‐School, Primary and Secondary Education Project (EPPSE), (4) Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), (5) Born in Bradford (BiB), (6) Next Steps (LYSPE1), (7) Understanding Society (US), and (8) Our Future (LYSPE2). Participants across these studies were born between 1989 and 2010, and followed up at least once and up to 68 times, over periods of 7 to 29 years. For each study, we summarize here the context and aims, review the assessed variables, and describe the process for accessing the data. Conclusions: We hope this article will encourage and support education researchers to widely utilize existing population cohort studies to further advance education science in Britain and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer‐assisted instruction can change the way introductory statistics and quantitative methods courses are taught. Using a two‐group pretest–posttest design, we conducted an experiment using an undergraduate social science student sample to investigate whether the introduction of statistical software to teaching quantitative methods would improve knowledge acquisition and attitudes toward quantitative methods courses. Our project confirmed that implementing computer‐assisted instructional methods increased knowledge acquisition in quantitative methods courses compared with students' academic performance in other courses, measured by grade point average. We also found that student attitudes have weak and mostly nonsignificant influence on quantitative methods knowledge tests. Additionally, the paper suggests a curriculum‐level approach to teaching quantitative methods to undergraduate students. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: Computer‐assisted learning environments are more effective in teaching statistics than traditional lecture instructionsStudents' attitudes toward the subject matter are important for their knowledge acquisitionStudents' attitudes toward quantitative methods are overall negativeComputer‐assisted learning helps improve student attitudes in some cases What this paper adds: Computer‐assisted instruction had higher impact on knowledge acquisition than students' overall academic performanceStudent attitudes have lower effect on knowledge acquisition than the introduction of computer‐assisted instruction or grade point averageStudents' attitudes toward quantitative methods courses change slowly similar with any other attitudesComputer‐assisted instruction is effective in cultural settings other than those in the western world Implications for practice and/or policy: Knowledge acquisition of quantitative methods depends on instructional choices and students' overall academic performance. Universities should address students' attitudes toward quantitative methods at the curriculum level. [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]

This paper explores how the Japanese inhabitants of a densely populated urban neighbourhood negotiate proximity and distance in their social relationships. Based on ethnography of a community salon in the city of Osaka, the paper explores how topics and styles of conversation, modes of interaction between salon‐goers, are constituted with respect to a pervasive concern for manners and for the emotions of others. Focusing on the importance of ‘form’ and its relevance for morality, I argue that formality serves as an enabling device for creating new relationships among older Japanese, preserving sociality while protecting oneself and others from the burdens of emotion and excessive proximity. By focusing on the ethics of ‘doing things properly’ (chanto suru) I explore the relationship of manners and care. By taking manners into account, I turn my attention in this article to those relationships crafted and maintained amongst those to whom one is not very close, and with whom one may not wish to become intimate. In this way I explore the question of how to treat well those towards whom one wishes to maintain distance: in other words, how to care for those who are not one's friends? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) can provide inner loop feedback about steps within tasks, and outer loop feedback about performance on multiple tasks. While research typically addresses these feedback types separately, many ITSs offer them simultaneously. This study evaluates the effects of providing combined inner and outer loop feedback on social sciences students' learning process and performance in a first‐year university statistics course. In a 2 x 2 factorial design (elaborate inner loop vs. minimal inner loop and outer loop vs. no outer loop feedback) with 521 participants, the effects of both feedback types and their combination were assessed through multiple linear regression models. Results showed mixed effects, depending on students' prior knowledge and experience, and no overall effects on course performance. Students tended to use outer loop feedback less when also receiving elaborate inner loop feedback. We therefore recommend introducing feedback types one by one and offering them for substantial periods of time. Lay Description: What is already known: Intelligent tutoring systems often provide feedback at the level of steps within tasks (inner loop) and at the level of multiple tasks (outer loop).Inner loop feedback may support learning by guiding students through the solution process of a single taskOuter loop feedback may support learning by advising or selecting appropriate tasks and study materialWhether both feedback types indeed support learning depends on many design choices and student characteristics. What this paper adds: Students who receive elaborate inner and outer loop feedback tend to use outer loop feedback less.In this implementation, inner and outer loop feedback did not influence each other's effects on course performance.Lower‐achieving students benefit more from outer loop feedback than higher‐achieving students.Students need time to familiarize themselves with elaborate inner loop feedback. Implications for practitioners: Providing both inner and outer loop feedback may increase the number of students receiving useful feedback.This study advises to implement feedback types one by one and allow sufficient familiarization time and guidance. [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]

The application of behavioral science theory is instrumental in advancing nursing research and practice. Nurses can benefit from a thorough understanding of theoretical perspectives related to health behavior change. Behavioral science theory can provide a conceptual context for understanding patient behavior, it can guide research on the determinants of health behavior and health service delivery, and it can offer alternative approaches to nursing practice that may improve the effectiveness of patient care. The aim of this paper is to provide some examples of behavioral theories that can be used in nursing research and practice, and provide an example of how one theory, Stages of Change (Transtheoretical Model), can be applied to older adult fall prevention. Given the critical role behavior plays in premature morbidity and mortality, public health nurses and researchers can benefit by broadening the use of theory in the design and implementation of interventions, using behavioral theory as their guide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This essay addresses the problem of the essentiality of nursing knowledge and what kind of theory, if any, is essential to nursing practice. The overarching aim of the essay was to argue for the thesis that nursing may be described as a kind of philosophical activity, and, consequently, that philosophy is the kind of “theory” that is essential to nursing practice and to the nursing discipline at large. The essay consists of two papers. The present paper, Part I, is a critical examination of Mark Risjord's discussion of the problem of the theory‐practice gap in his Nursing Knowledge: Practice, Science, Philosophy, from 2010. According to Risjord, the cause of the theory‐practice gap originates in an erroneous conception of science (logical positivism) which had a decisive influence upon the way nursing scholars appropriated theoretical frameworks for the nursing discipline. This philosophical influence is considered in effect to have generated the theory–practice gap. In order to bridge the gap, Risjord suggests, the nursing discipline needs to adopt a standpoint epistemology conjoined with a postpositivist conception of scientific theory. In this way, a legitimate brand of nursing science may be developed and the theory–practice gap overcome. I will argue that neither Risjord's diagnosis of the problem, nor his recommended cure, may succeed in rescuing the nursing discipline from the theory–practice gap. Rather, the real cause of the theory–practice gap, I will claim, derives from an erroneous conception of nursing (not of science), namely the conception of nursing as a kind of science (roughly speaking). On my view, to overcome the gap, the nursing discipline needs to make salient the inherently philosophical character of nursing. In the second paper (Part II), I will continue the discussion of nursing knowledge and delineate the thesis of nursing as a kind of concrete philosophy. [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]

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]

Accessible summary: Everyone can be part of research.Some may need extra time and attention to decide if they want to take part in a research study, also called assent.This paper gives ideas to support people with learning disabilities in making their own choices. Background: Research assent is a term used with those deemed vulnerable, for whom modifications and additional considerations are required when requesting their voluntary agreement to participate in research. Methods: The authors' research experiences and inclusive research principles were integrated with a review of literature on research assent with individuals with significant learning disabilities. Findings: Vulnerability can be reconceived through the value and voice of participation in research. We provide practical suggestions for those who oversee social science research, as well as offer guidance to researchers considering inclusive research but for whom practical considerations are required. Conclusion: To enhance participant diversity and a generative contribution to knowledge, consideration about research assent is needed. The absence from research can perpetuate exclusion from society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of secularization is of enduring interest in the social science of religion. Numerous recent papers have established downward cohort trends as characterizing religious change. We examine potential mechanisms by assessing cultural participation and secular engagement during the formative period of one cohort. We provide estimates of active and nominal religiosity, nonreligion and religious belief for those born between 1933 and 1942, using multiple surveys fielded between 1957 and 2018. We model the association between religiosity and secular cultural and social participation for this cohort in 1957, then examine how cultural socialization in childhood relates to religiosity in their later adulthood using surveys fielded between 2005 and 2007. Increased secular competition is found to be associated with less active religiosity. These trends were underpinned by an ethic of increasing autonomy for the young. We conclude by affirming the link between increasing secular competition, long‐run modernization, and changing cultural socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Drawing from the philosophical work of Hans‐Georg Gadamer and the perspectives of theorists Mikhail Bakhtin and Kenneth Burke, the aim of this paper is to critically reflect on the meaning of the word "shared." Method: The authors draw on the concept of epistemic justice, which they argue permeates the clinical encounter, to discuss how various forms of, and claims to, knowledge may influence the attainement of shared decision‐making in health care contexts. The specific objectives are twofold: first, the authors draw key concepts from key Gadamerian, Burkean, and Bakhtinian philosophical perspectives to consider shared decision‐making in relation to two types of epistemic injustice: testimonial and hermeneutic epistemic injustice. Second, building on philosopher Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy, the authors emphasize that major changes in educational structures and systems are required to promote the critical reflexivity required to address issues of epistemic justice, in the broader pursuit of authentic shared decision‐making. Results: They propose three main areas of focus for helath professions education: (a) changes in content (moving from a focus on biomedical knowledge to more content on social sciences) and methods of teaching (more dialogue and the creation of moments of dissonance); (b) a re‐examination of teachers' role in promoting epistemic justice; and (c) inclusion of patients as partners. Conclusions: Without major transformation in what, how, and with whom we teach, future clinicians may be unprepared to enact shared decision‐making in a manner that does justice to the various ways of knowing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appeal of meritocracy is plain to see, because it appears to promote equality of opportunity. However, in this paper we argue that meritocracy is also a deeply elitist project. Firstly, we place Michael Young in context to show how his critique of meritocracy should be understood as a socialist vision to ameliorate class divides. Secondly, we show how economic inequality in the UK has not generated systematic resistance: in fact, inequality and belief in meritocracy have gone hand in hand. Thirdly, we argue that people see their own lives as meritocratic rather than ascribed, and that such values are deeply embedded in popular life. We offer two explanations for how such views have come about, and show how they have helped construct a more unequal society. [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]

This study focuses on the agency of governments engaged in implementation processes that take place over a number of years and through multiple stages. The long timeframes associated with staged implementation leave reforms vulnerable to the institutional effects that may ultimately derail policy aspirations. Governments engaged in staged implementation need to be able to plan longitudinally (foresight capacity) and analyse whether implementation processes are creating endogenous sources of institutional change and the likely impact of such change (reflective capacity). In this paper, we argue that being able to exercise foresight capacity and reflective capacity is necessary but not sufficient, if long‐term policy goals are to be realised. Governments must also be able to navigate the inconsistent objectives that arise across the different stages of an implementation process by modifying implementation approaches in ways that reduce the likelihood of unwanted implementation effects occurring—what we have labelled "mitigation capacity." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to Nick Gane's "Against a descriptive turn". I argue that descriptive research strategies are more open and inclusive than those which purport to be causal where explanatory adequacy is assessed by expert insiders. I also show how open descriptive strategies can assist a wider explanatory purpose when these are conceived in non‐positivist ways. I argue that epochalist sociology lacks an adequate temporal ontology because it collapses descriptive specificity back into overarching epoch descriptions. Finally, I argue that if the entire range of publications associated with the Great British Class Survey are considered, that it has demonstrated a productive way of recognising the significance of class which has facilitated major research advances in its wake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a broadened understanding of the social scientific thought of a leading logical empiricist and advocate of the unity of science. Often portrayed as a reductive physicalist on account of his temperamental interventions against geisteswissenschaftliche obscurantists in the time of the Weimar Republic, Otto Neurath in fact was a defender and practitioner of interpretive methods who warned against their abuse inside and outside of academic social science and history. After placing Neurath's efforts in the context of the Vienna Circle, his talk of "social behaviorism" and his criticisms of Max Weber are clarified (both represent prominent stumbling blocks for an appreciation of Neurath's views) and his view on the role of empathetic understanding is reconstructed. Further support for this interpretation is then adduced from various instance of his pre‐Vienna Circle work (incl. his critique of Spengler and his own work in economic history and history of ideas). Having been trained in the Historical School, Neurath never abandoned his hermeneutic insights but sought to integrate them in a non‐dichotomous conception of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]