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This article considers whether industrial relations (IR) research is objective, impartial or value-free, and argues that many IR academics in Britain have tended to start from a social-democratic premise which makes them relatively more sympathetic to the interests and objectives of workers and their trade unions than to the business needs of employers and managers. Focusing attention on the partisanship of those who have made a distinctive 'radical/critical' contribution to IR scholarship, it advances the argument that IR can, at one and the same time, be both partisan and objective. Acknowledging the real potential dangers of bias in adopting a methodological approach that states, in the words of C. Wright Mills, 'I have tried to be objective, but I do not claim to be detached', it provides a defence of the potential merits of partisanship, provided it is underpinned by rigorous scholarly research. Keywords Bias, industrial relations, objectivity, partisanship, value-neutrality, Introduction Eric Hobsbawm (1998: 164) observed that although there has been a great deal of discussion about the nature, or even the possibility, of objectivity in the social sciences, there [...]

INTRODUCTION I. ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE, RACIAL VOTE DILUTION, AND EMPIRICAL ANSWERS TO JUDICIAL QUESTIONS II. CAMPAIGN FINANCE, POLITICAL CORRUPTION, AND EMPIRICAL QUESTIONS TO JUDICIAL ANSWERS CONCLUSION INTRODUCTION The law [...]

The recent decade has witnessed an unprecedented flurry of methodological reflection on qualitative approaches in Political Science and related disciplines. In the Anglo-Saxon world, much of this methodological reflection has [...]

1 Prendre le droit << au serieux >>: la sociologie du droit << avec le droit >> et la sociologie du droit << sans le droit >> (Niklas Luhmann) 2 [...], In this article, we argue that when interaction between law and social sciences is viewed as a backdrop, three epistemological propositions stand out as opening new horizons for empirical research in law, namely: 'decentering the subject', 'interviewing' systems by means of qualitative interviews oriented toward the observation of communication, and the 'desubstantialization of legal categories'. These epistemological premises are described as the requisite conditions for grounding an external perspective on the law. They are also considered to be favourable for the development of multi-disciplinary research in law as both law and social sciences can (under certain conditions) benefit from these three analytical strategies. Social sciences must 'take the law seriously', research in law having to be carried out 'with the law'. As for law, it may improve its observations and internal normative models by more fully integrating the knowledge generated by social sciences into its decisional premises. The author advances the hypothesis that this integration--already a reality on the judicial arena, yet still lightly problematized--will tend to continuously evolve ever more in the legal universe yet to come. Contemporary social issues (religious rights, minority rights, women's rights, native peoples' rights, the right to assisted suicide, same-sex marriage rights, reproductive rights, the rights of undocumented persons, etc.) are increasingly regulated by legal figures characterized by their 'open normative composition' (fundamental values, human rights, etc.). Social sciences will increasingly tend to be seen as valuable cognitive resources for determining and specifying legality, thereby essential for those who conceive and shape the law. Indeed, since these issues demand creativity, juristic imagination and cognitive and normative openness from juridical actors when confronted with varying regulatory options, social sciences will in this context provide vital elements for determining potential, yet still not actualized, possibilities within this context. Sur la toile de fond qui est celle du rapport entre le droit et les sciences sociales, l'article qui suit enonce trois propositions epistemologiques susceptibles d'ouvrir de nouveaux horizons pour la recherche empirique en droit: decentrer le sujet; interviewer le systeme a l'aide d'entretiens qualitatifs tournes vers l'observation de la communication; et << desubstantialiser >> les categories juridiques. Ces propositions epistemologiques sont decrites comme des conditions necessaires a la possibilite d'un regard externe sur le droit. Elles sont, par ailleurs, considerees comme favorables au developpement de la recherche multidisciplinaire en droit puisque, sous certaines conditions, autant le droit que les sciences sociales peuvent beneficier de ces trois strategies. Les sciences sociales doivent << prendre le droit au serieux >>, les recherches sur le droit devant etre realisees << avec le droit >>. De son cote, le droit peut ameliorer ses observations et ses modeles normatifs internes en integrant davantage, dans ses premisses decisionnelles, les connaissances produites par les sciences sociales. L'auteure souleve dans son texte l'hypothese que cette integration--une realite deja bien reelle sur le terrain judiciaire, mais encore peu problematisee--tendra a se developper de plus en plus dans le monde juridique a venir. Les enjeux de societe contemporains (droits religieux, droits des minorites, droits des femmes, droits des peuples autochtones, droit au suicide assiste, droit au mariage entre couples de meme sexe, droits de reproduction, droits des sans-papiers, etc.) sont de plus en plus regules par des figures juridiques caracterisees par leur texture normative ouverte (valeurs fondamentales, droits de la personne, etc.) et les sciences sociales seront davantage envisagees comme des ressources cognitives importantes de determination et de specification juridique, essentielles donc pour ceux qui pensent et disent le droit. En effet, puisque ces enjeux exigent des acteurs judiciaires de la creativite, de l'imagination juridique et de l'ouverture cognitive et normative a l'egard des differentes possibilites de regulation, devant la conception des differents << possibles >>, les sciences sociales seront, dans ce contexte, des elements importants de << determination >> des possibles encore non actualises.

In 2007, the National Academy of Scholars (NAS) published The Scandal of Social Work Education, a report contending that social work education had become politicized to the extent that 'dogma, [...]

This study critically analyzes race-related research with an Asian focus in selected major communication publications with the results showing that these lines of research suffer from four major problems. First, how Asians are portrayed must, for the most part, stay in line with a dominant White, dichotomous paradigm that serves to highlight the superiority of Western communication. Second, Asians tend to be studied more as a means to illustrate cultural collectivism than as members of distinct cultures. Third, Asian scholars must struggle between positioning their studies as about Asians or about specific cultural groups, and whether to avoid possible oppositional discourse. Fourth, Asian scholars writing about Asian patterns of communication must cope with the perception that they are opportunistic. DOI: 10.1080/10417941003613222

This commentary from the perspective of the founding editor of The Howard Journal of Communications speaks to the editor's perception that communication research involving race, ethnicity, and gender inherently risks some editorial resistance. While writing about these topics raises few issues for readers, using them in an interpretive or critical analysis potentially invites negative responses from readers. DOI: 10.1080/10417941003613271

As the outlet for the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association and for the Policy Studies Organization, the Policy Studies Journal (PSJ)is the premier channel for the [...]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00428.x Byline: Daniel J. Hopkins (1), Gary King (2) Abstract: The increasing availability of digitized text presents enormous opportunities for social scientists. Yet hand coding many blogs, speeches, government records, newspapers, or other sources of unstructured text is infeasible. Although computer scientists have methods for automated content analysis, most are optimized to classify individual documents, whereas social scientists instead want generalizations about the population of documents, such as the proportion in a given category. Unfortunately, even a method with a high percent of individual documents correctly classified can be hugely biased when estimating category proportions. By directly optimizing for this social science goal, we develop a method that gives approximately unbiased estimates of category proportions even when the optimal classifier performs poorly. We illustrate with diverse data sets, including the daily expressed opinions of thousands of people about the U.S. presidency. We also make available software that implements our methods and large corpora of text for further analysis. Author Affiliation: (1)Georgetown University (2)Harvard University Article note: Daniel J. Hopkins is Assistant Professor of Government, Georgetown University, 681 Intercultural Center, Washington, DC 20057 (dhopkins@iq.harvard.edu, http://www.danhopkins.org). Gary King is Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor, Harvard University, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, 1737 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138 (king@harvard.edu, http://gking.harvard.edu).

The changing demographic landscape of the United States calls for a reassessment of the societal impacts and consequences of so-called 'natural' and technological disasters. An increasing trend towards greater demographic and socio-economic diversity (in part due to high rates of international immigration), combined with mounting disaster losses, have brought about a more serious focus among scholars on how changing population patterns shape the vulnerability and resiliency of social systems. Recent disasters, such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami (2004) and Hurricane Katrina (2005), point to the differential impacts of disasters on certain communities, particularly those that do not have the necessary resources to cope with and recover from such events. This paper interprets these impacts within the context of economic, cultural, and social capital, as well as broader human ecological forces. The paper also makes important contributions to the social science disaster research literature by examining population growth, composition, and distribution in the context of disaster risk and vulnerability. Population dynamics (e.g., population growth, migration, and urbanization) are perhaps one of the most important factors that have increased our exposure to disasters and have contributed to the devastating impacts of these events, as the case of Hurricane Katrina illustrates. Nevertheless, the scientific literature exploring these issues is quite limited. We argue that if we fail to acknowledge and act on the mounting evidence regarding population composition, migration, inequality, and disaster vulnerability, we will continue to experience disasters with greater regularity and intensity., Introduction Population growth, composition and distribution are perhaps the most important factors that have increased our vulnerability to disasters. Increasing population, particularly in coastal regions, has resulted in coastal development, [...]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2007.03.007 Byline: Ismael Vaccaro (a), Karma Norman (b) Keywords: Landscape; Conservation; Policy; Social analysis Abstract: This article develops a methodology aimed at generating a systematic social diagnosis of social and natural landscapes. The analytical process is divided into six easily replicable and causatively connected steps. The goal is two-fold: first, to present the inextricable connections between physical landscapes and the communities that occupy them. And second, to provide a fundamental tool to public policy designers that should simultaneously improve social acceptability of conservation policies and policy efficiency and effectiveness. Finally, this methodology is consciously heterogeneous from a theoretical perspective. This article puts together, in fruitful dialogue, contributions from varying places on the social theory spectrum: from political economy to poststructural theory. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Anthropology and McGill School of Environment, McGill University, Room 717, Leacock Building, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Que., Canada H3A 2T7 (b) Socioeconomics Program, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, NMFS/NOAA, 2725 Montlake Blvd. East Seattle, WA 98112-2097, USA Article History: Received 12 February 2006; Revised 1 February 2007; Accepted 10 March 2007

The relationship of management research with the related disciplines namely psychology, sociology and economics with a view to trace the evolution of management research over the last twenty five years is presented. It is noticed that the Academy of Management journal has played a very important role in shaping management research over fifty years of its publication and will continue to do so in the future.

This paper presents reflective reexaminations of, and musings about, a cross-race, cross-culture, cross-national, cross-class, but same-gender research process in the ''new South Africa' from the vantage point of hindsight. The paper aims to make the research backstage more transparent by reflecting on ongoing negotiations of self in context with abused women's shelter service providers in South Africa. Discursive attention is focused on social locations and the ways that social privileges affect the research process, as well as on giving-and-taking as a significant set of research interactions. Keywords: feminist research methods / South Africa / reflective practice / insider / outsider debate / research inequalities, 'It takes one to know one and you know 'era all' --American schoolyard taunt For research legitimacy does it really 'take one to know one' (Wolf 1996)? Were our childish [...]

The relations and differences from the perspective of an HIV clinician and clinical researcher with a background in biology and an inclination toward behavioral and social science are explored to suggest some approaches for their resolution. Biomedical researchers and clinicians need to know and integrate with their own expertise an array of features of behavioral and social science research and expertise that could inform clinical research and clinical practice, improving the lives of people living with HIV disease.

Social science research often entails the comparison of two or more groups. For example, researchers may explore differences between sexes, races, ethnicities, sexual identities, treatment conditions, diagnostic categories, or various other grouping variables. While there are a number of ways to approach these comparisons, applied social science researchers often become comfortable with only one or two and may lack the time to learn or investigate others that may be more appropriate for their research questions. This article presents discriminant analysis as one of these alternative approaches. More specifically, it describes descriptive discriminant analysis in greater detail, including an example using SPSS (Version 11.0) output.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2005.09.002 Byline: Jon Landeta Keywords: Delphi method; Consensus; Policy Delphi; Expert judgement elicitation; Delphi validity Abstract: The Delphi method is a popular technique for forecasting and an aid in decision-making based on the opinions of experts, which has been in existence for over half a century. This work evaluates its methodology and reviews its validity in the present day, especially in the area of Social Sciences. Three recent applications in this field are also explained, professional in nature, which have some characteristics that are not frequent with respect to other Delphi studies published. The main aim of two of these studies was to provide input for economic or statistical quantitative models, using the judgement of expert groups, while the third study aimed to analyse a complex social reality by means of a Policy Delphi in order to obtain reliable information before taking a policy decision. These applications highlight how this technique may be adapted to different social realities and requirements, making a positive contribution to social progress, provided it is applied with the necessary methodological rigour and with a good knowledge of the social medium in which it is being applied. Finally, there is an explanation of a number of lessons learned from the theory and aforementioned experiences, which may contribute to the successful outcome of a Delphi exercise. Author Affiliation: Institute of Applied Business Economics of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), C/ Lehendakari Aguirre, 83 48015 Bilbao, Spain Article History: Received 7 July 2005; Revised 7 September 2005; Accepted 8 September 2005

New knowledge is produced at great speed and fed into a global epistemic machinery of data banks, publications, and think tanks. In reverse, global knowledge is absorbed and used locally. Locally produced knowledge is on the increase as society moves towards a knowledge society. Social science research adds to knowledge of societies. If it is locally produced, it can be interpreted as reflexive modernization in so far as it provides paradigms for an interpretation of social processes and structures. This article traces the development of social science research on Southeast Asia and its increasing localization. A model is developed to summarize the output of interpretative schemes and published documents. Statistical data on the global absorption of locally produced knowledge are used to measure the extent of the move towards a knowledge society. Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines have relatively high local social science output, whereas Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Laos have low output rates. We diagnose four different paths from 1970 to 2000: Indonesia shows a stable high level of dependence, Malaysia and the Philippines are increasing local output but also increasing dependence, whereas Singapore is increasing output with decreasing dependence on global social science knowledge. Keywords: globalizing local knowledge, social science research, knowledge-based societies, academic dependency, reflexive modernization, Southeast Asia., 1. Academic Dependency and Reflexive Modernization Southeast Asian academics, observing the development of the social sciences in Southeast Asia, have bemoaned the 'academic dependency' on North American and European scholarship [...]

The role of research in the social work profession is examined and the current changes, directions, and challenges in the pursuit of research funds is discussed. Career Development Awards, specially the Mentored Research Scientist Development Award or the K01 mechanism offered by the National Institutes of Health is highlighted.