Download or read book Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences written by Alexander L. George and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2005-04-15 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The use of case studies to build and test theories in political science and the other social sciences has increased in recent years. Many scholars have argued that the social sciences rely too heavily on quantitative research and formal models and have attempted to develop and refine rigorous methods for using case studies. This text presents a comprehensive analysis of research methods using case studies and examines the place of case studies in social science methodology. It argues that case studies, statistical methods, and formal models are complementary rather than competitive. The book explains how to design case study research that will produce results useful to policymakers and emphasizes the importance of developing policy-relevant theories. It offers three major contributions to case study methodology: an emphasis on the importance of within-case analysis, a detailed discussion of process tracing, and development of the concept of typological theories. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences will be particularly useful to graduate students and scholars in social science methodology and the philosophy of science, as well as to those designing new research projects, and will contribute greatly to the broader debate about scientific methods.
Download or read book International Development and the Social Sciences written by Frederick Cooper and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This superb collection assembles a number of stimulating and theoretically current contributions by outstanding scholars."—Angelique Haugerud, author of The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya
Download or read book Social Science Knowledge and Economic Development written by Vernon W. Ruttan and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The central premise of this book is that the demand for social science knowledge is derived from the demand for institutional change." --pref.
Download or read book Social Science for What written by Mark Solovey and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the NSF became an important yet controversial patron for the social sciences, influencing debates over their scientific status and social relevance. In the early Cold War years, the U.S. government established the National Science Foundation (NSF), a civilian agency that soon became widely known for its dedication to supporting first-rate science. The agency's 1950 enabling legislation made no mention of the social sciences, although it included a vague reference to "other sciences." Nevertheless, as Mark Solovey shows in this book, the NSF also soon became a major--albeit controversial--source of public funding for them.
Download or read book The Impact of the Social Sciences written by Simon Bastow and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2014-01-17 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impact agenda is set to shape the way in which social scientists prioritise the work they choose to pursue, the research methods they use and how they publish their findings over the coming decade, but how much is currently known about how social science research has made a mark on society? Based on a three year research project studying the impact of 360 UK-based academics on business, government and civil society sectors, this groundbreaking new book undertakes the most thorough analysis yet of how academic research in the social sciences achieves public policy impacts, contributes to economic prosperity, and informs public understanding of policy issues as well as economic and social changes. The Impact of the Social Sciences addresses and engages with key issues, including: identifying ways to conceptualise and model impact in the social sciences developing more sophisticated ways to measure academic and external impacts of social science research explaining how impacts from individual academics, research units and universities can be improved. This book is essential reading for researchers, academics and anyone involved in discussions about how to improve the value and impact of funded research.
Download or read book Social Science Research written by Anol Bhattacherjee and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is designed to introduce doctoral and graduate students to the process of conducting scientific research in the social sciences, business, education, public health, and related disciplines. It is a one-stop, comprehensive, and compact source for foundational concepts in behavioral research, and can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to research readings in any doctoral seminar or research methods class. This book is currently used as a research text at universities on six continents and will shortly be available in nine different languages.
Download or read book Age of System written by Hunter Heyck and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-09 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years after World War II, a new generation of scholars redefined the central concepts and practices of social science in America. Before the Second World War, social scientists struggled to define and defend their disciplines. After the war, “high modern” social scientists harnessed new resources in a quest to create a unified understanding of human behavior—and to remake the world in the image of their new model man. In Age of System, Hunter Heyck explains why social scientists—shaped by encounters with the ongoing “organizational revolution” and its revolutionary technologies of communication and control—embraced a new and extremely influential perspective on science and nature, one that conceived of all things in terms of system, structure, function, organization, and process. He also explores how this emerging unified theory of human behavior implied a troubling similarity between humans and machines, with freighted implications for individual liberty and self-direction. These social scientists trained a generation of decision-makers in schools of business and public administration, wrote the basic textbooks from which millions learned how the economy, society, polity, culture, and even the mind worked, and drafted the position papers, books, and articles that helped set the terms of public discourse in a new era of mass media, think tanks, and issue networks. Drawing on close readings of key texts and a broad survey of more than 1,800 journal articles, Heyck follows the dollars—and the dreams—of a generation of scholars that believed in “the system.” He maps the broad landscape of changes in the social sciences, focusing especially intently on the ideas and practices associated with modernization theory, rational choice theory, and modeling. A highly accomplished historian, Heyck relays this complicated story with unusual clarity.
Download or read book The Contribution of Social Sciences to Sustainable Development at Universities written by Walter Leal Filho and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-06 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first of its kind to present contemporary, state-of-the-art examples of how social science theories, models, and findings can advance all aspects of campus sustainability, an area that has so far been largely neglected. The individual chapters reflect the broad diversity of research on sustainable campus development conducted within and across basic and applied social science disciplines, drawing on a range of methods and case studies from around the world. Institutions of higher education have been among the leading promoters of sustainable development. However, efforts to transition to sustainability have been largely dominated by technological “solutions” and universities and colleges are increasingly recognizing that this transition cannot be achieved without attention to the human dimension. Administrators, campus sustainability officers and other university staff, faculty members and students, as well as alumni and external constituents all help to shape which sustainability innovations and initiatives are considered and pursued, and their participation determines the ultimate success of sustainability efforts. The book’s individual contributions illustrate how the social sciences can broaden visions of what may be possible, identify the advantages and disadvantages of different instrumental and emancipator approaches, evaluate interventions’ effectiveness, and offer processes for learning from mistakes and successes in ways that support continuous advances toward sustainability. Given that the majority of social science research stems from universities, the level of trust in these institutions, and their mission to develop societal leaders, higher education institutions are ideally suited for testing, assessing and modeling the social innovations needed to achieve sustainability on campuses and beyond.
Download or read book Fundamental Development of the Social Sciences written by Donald Fisher and published by American Mathematical Soc.. This book was released on 1993 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sociologist Donald Fisher studies the history and sociology of the social sciences
Download or read book Cold War Social Science written by Mark Solovey and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how the social sciences became entangled with the global Cold War. While duly recognizing the realities of nation states, national power, and national aspirations, the studies gathered here open up new lines of transnational investigation. Considering developments in a wide array of fields – anthropology, development studies, economics, education, political science, psychology, science studies, and sociology – that involved the movement of people, projects, funding, and ideas across diverse national contexts, this volume pushes scholars to rethink certain fundamental points about how we should understand – and thus how we should study – Cold War social science itself.
Download or read book The Logic of Social Science written by James Mahoney and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mahoney's starting point is the problem of essentialism in social science. Essentialism--the belief that the members of a category possess hidden properties ("essences") that make them members of the category and that endow them with a certain nature--is appropriate for scientific categories ("atoms", for instance) but not for human ones ("revolutions," for instance). Despite this, much social science research takes place from within an essentialist orientation; those who reject this assumption goes so far in the other direction as to reject the idea of an external reality, independent of human beings, altogether. Mahoney proposes an alternative approach that aspires to bridge this enduring rift in the social sciences between those who take a scientific approach and assume that social science categories correspond to external reality (and thus believe that the methods used in the natural sciences are generally appropriate for the social sciences) and those who take a constructivist approach and believe that because the categories used to understand the social world are humanly-constructed, they cannot possibly follow the science of the natural world. As the name suggests, scientific constructivism brings in aspects of both views and attempts to unite them. Drawing from cognitive science, it focuses on using the rational parts of our brain machinery to overcome the limitations and deeply seated biases (such as essentialism) of our evolved minds. Specifically, Mahoney puts forth a "set-theoretic analysis" that focuses on "sets" of categories as they exist in the mind that are also subject to the mathematical logic of set-theory. He spends the first four chapters of the book establishing the foundations and methods for set-theoretic analysis, the next four chapters looking and how this analysis fits with the existing tools of social science, and the final four chapters focusing on how this approach can be used to study and understand cases"--
Download or read book Evidence Based Policy Making in the Social Sciences written by Stoker, Gerry and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2016-09-29 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gathers an expert group of social scientists to showcase emerging forms of analysis and evaluation for public policy analysis. Each chapter highlights a different method or approach, putting it in context and highlighting its key features before illustrating its application and potential value to policy makers. Aimed at upper-level undergraduates in public policy and social work, it also has much to offer policy makers and practitioners themselves.
Download or read book An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations written by Adam Smith and published by . This book was released on 1822 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book History as a Social Science written by and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Laboratory Experiments in the Social Sciences written by Murray Webster and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2007-07-03 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laboratory Experiments in the Social Sciences is the only book providing core information for researchers about the ways and means to conduct experiments. Its comprehensive regard for laboratory experiments encompasses “how-to explanations, investigations of philosophies and ethics, explorations of experiments in specific social science disciplines, and summaries of both the history and future of social science laboratories. No other book offers such a direct avenue to enlarging our knowledge in the social sciences. This collection of original chapters combines instructions and advice about the design of laboratory experiments in the social sciences with the array of other issues. While there are books on experimental design and chapters in more general methods books on design, theory, and ethical issues, no other book attempts to discuss the fundamental ideas of the philosophy of science or lays out the methods comprehensively or in such detail. Experimentation has recently prospered because of increasing interest in cross-disciplinary syntheses, and this book of advice, guidelines, and observations underline its potential and increasing importance. · Provides a comprehensive summary of issues in social science experimentation, from ethics to design, management, and financing · Offers "how-to" explanations of the problems and challenges faced by everyone involved in social science experiments · Pays attention to both practical problems and to theoretical and philosophical arguments · Defines commonalities and distinctions within and among experimental situations across the social sciences
Download or read book Social Philosophy of Science for the Social Sciences written by Jaan Valsiner and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-12-11 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an international and interdisciplinary volume that provides a new look at the general background of the social sciences from a philosophical perspective and provides directions for methodology. It seeks to overcome the limitations of the traditional treatises of a philosophy of science rooted in the physical sciences, as well as extend the coverage of basic science to intentional and socially normative features of the social sciences. The discussions included in this book are divided into four thematic sections: Social and cognitive roots for reflexivity upon the research process Philosophies of explanation in the social sciences Social normativity in social sciences Social processes in particular sciences Social Philosophy of Science for the Social Sciences will find an interested audience in students of the philosophy of science and social sciences. It is also relevant for researchers and students in the fields of psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, education, and political science.
Download or read book How Social Science Got Better written by Matt Grossmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-05 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It seems like most of what we read about the academic social sciences in the mainstream media is negative. The field is facing mounting criticism, as canonical studies fail to replicate, questionable research practices abound, and researcher social and political biases come under fire. In response to these criticisms, Matt Grossmann, in How Social Science Got Better, provides a robust defense of the current state of the social sciences. Applying insights from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science and providing new data on research trends and scholarly views, he argues that, far from crisis, social science is undergoing an unparalleled renaissance of ever-broader understanding and application. According to Grossmann, social science research today has never been more relevant, rigorous, or self-reflective because scholars have a much better idea of their blind spots and biases. He highlights how scholars now closely analyze the impact of racial, gender, geographic, methodological, political, and ideological differences on research questions; how the incentives of academia influence our research practices; and how universal human desires to avoid uncomfortable truths and easily solve problems affect our conclusions. Though misaligned incentive structures of course remain, a messy, collective deliberation across the research community has shifted us into an unprecedented age of theoretical diversity, open and connected data, and public scholarship. Grossmann's wide-ranging account of current trends will necessarily force the academy's many critics to rethink their lazy critiques and instead acknowledge the path-breaking advances occurring in the social sciences today.
