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 How Does Social Science Work written by Paul Diesing and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 1992-03-15 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The culmination of a lifetime spent in a variety of fields - sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, and philosophy of science - How Does Social Science Work? takes an innovative, sometimes iconoclastic look at social scientists at work in many disciplines. It describes how they investigate and the kinds of truth they produce, illuminating the weaknesses and dangers inherent in their research.At once an analysis, a critique, and a synthesis, this major study begins by surveying philosophical approaches to hermeneutics, to examine the question of how social science ought to work. It illustrates many of its arguments with untraditional examples, such as the reception of the work of the political biographer Robert Caro to show the hermeneutical problems of ethnographers. The major part of the book surveys sociological, political, and psychological studies of social science to get a rounded picture of how social science works,Paul Diesling warns that "social science exists between two opposite kinds of degeneration, a value-free professionalism that lives only for publications that show off the latest techniques, and a deep social concern that uses science for propaganda." He argues for greater self-awareness and humility among social scientists, although he notes that "some social scientists . . . will angrily reject the thought that their personality affects their research in any way."This profound and sometimes witty book will appeal to students and practitioners in the social sciences who are ready to take a fresh look at their field. An extensive bibliography provides a wealth of references across an array of social science disciplines.

Download or read book Transparent and Reproducible Social Science Research written by Garret Christensen and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently, social science has had numerous episodes of influential research that was found invalid when placed under rigorous scrutiny. The growing sense that many published results are potentially erroneous has made those conducting social science research more determined to ensure the underlying research is sound. Transparent and Reproducible Social Science Research is the first book to summarize and synthesize new approaches to combat false positives and non-reproducible findings in social science research, document the underlying problems in research practices, and teach a new generation of students and scholars how to overcome them. Understanding that social science research has real consequences for individuals when used by professionals in public policy, health, law enforcement, and other fields, the book crystallizes new insights, practices, and methods that help ensure greater research transparency, openness, and reproducibility. Readers are guided through well-known problems and are encouraged to work through new solutions and practices to improve the openness of their research. Created with both experienced and novice researchers in mind, Transparent and Reproducible Social Science Research serves as an indispensable resource for the production of high quality social science research.

Download or read book Social Work Science written by Ian Shaw and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the role of science in social work? Ian Shaw considers social work inventions, evidence-based practice, the history of scientific claims in social work practice, technology, and social work research methodology to demonstrate the significant role that scientific language and practice play in the complex world of social work. By treating science as a social action marked by the interplay of choice, activity, and constraints, Shaw links scientific and social work knowledge through the core themes of the nature of evidence, critical learning and understanding, justice, and the skilled evaluation of the subject. He shows specifically how to connect science, research, and the practical and speaks to the novel topics this integration introduces into the discipline, including experience, expertise, faith, tacit knowledge, judgment, interests, scientific controversies, and understanding.

Download or read book Science for Social Scientists written by John Law and published by Springer. This book was released on 1984-09-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Science In Society written by Massimiano Bucchi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-07-31 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without assuming any scientific background, Bucchi provides clear summaries of all the major theoretical positions within the sociology of science, using many fascinating examples to illustrate them.

Download or read book Science and Social Inequality written by Sandra Harding and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2023-12-11 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Science and Social Inequality, Sandra Harding makes the provocative argument that the philosophy and practices of today's Western science, contrary to its Enlightenment mission, work to insure that more science will only worsen existing gaps between the best and worst off around the world. She defends this claim by exposing the ways that hierarchical social formations in modern Western sciences encode antidemocratic principles and practices, particularly in terms of their services to militarism, the impoverishment and alienation of labor, Western expansion, and environmental destruction. The essays in this collection--drawing on feminist, multicultural, and postcolonial studies--propose ways to reconceptualize the sciences in the global social order. At issue here are not only social justice and environmental issues but also the accuracy and comprehensiveness of our understandings of natural and social worlds. The inadvertent complicity of the sciences with antidemocratic projects obscures natural and social realities and thus blocks the growth of scientific knowledge. Scientists, policy makers, social justice movements and the consumers of scientific products (that is, the rest of us) can work together and separately to improve this situation.

Download or read book Web Social Science written by Robert Ackland and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although written simply enough to be accessible to undergraduates, accomplished scholars are likely to appreciate it too. Reading it taught me quite a lot about a subject I thought I knew rather well. - Paul Vogt, Illinois State University "This book brings the art and science of building and applying innovative online research tools to students and faculty across the social sciences." - William H. Dutton, University of Oxford A comprehensive guide to the theory and practice of web Social Science. This book demonstrates how the web is being used to collect social research data, such as online surveys and interviews, as well as digital trace data from social media environments, such as Facebook and Twitter. It also illuminates how the advent of the web has led to traditional social science concepts and approaches being combined with those from other scientific disciplines, leading to new insights into social, political and economic behaviour. Situating social sciences in the digital age, this book aids: understanding of the fundamental changes to society, politics and the economy that have resulted from the advent of the web choice of appropriate data, tools and research methods for conducting research using web data learning how web data are providing new insights into long-standing social science research questions appreciation of how social science can facilitate an understanding of life in the digital age It is ideal for students and researchers across the social sciences, as well as those from information science, computer science and engineering who want to learn about how social scientists are thinking about and researching the web.

Download or read book Science as Social Existence written by Jeff Kochan and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this bold and original study, Jeff Kochan constructively combines the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) with Martin Heidegger’s early existential conception of science. Kochan shows convincingly that these apparently quite different approaches to science are, in fact, largely compatible, even mutually reinforcing. By combining Heidegger with SSK, Kochan argues, we can explicate, elaborate, and empirically ground Heidegger’s philosophy of science in a way that makes it more accessible and useful for social scientists and historians of science. Likewise, incorporating Heideggerian phenomenology into SSK renders SKK a more robust and attractive methodology for use by scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Kochan’s ground-breaking reinterpretation of Heidegger also enables STS scholars to sustain a principled analytical focus on scientific subjectivity, without running afoul of the orthodox subject-object distinction they often reject. Science as Social Existence is the first book of its kind, unfurling its argument through a range of topics relevant to contemporary STS research. These include the epistemology and metaphysics of scientific practice, as well as the methods of explanation appropriate to social scientific and historical studies of science. Science as Social Existence puts concentrated emphasis on the compatibility of Heidegger’s existential conception of science with the historical sociology of scientific knowledge, pursuing this combination at both macro- and micro-historical levels. Beautifully written and accessible, Science as Social Existence puts new and powerful tools into the hands of sociologists and historians of science, cultural theorists of science, Heidegger scholars, and pluralist philosophers of science.

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 Making Sense of Science written by Steven Yearley and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2005 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume demystifies science studies and bridges the divide between social theory and the sociology of 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.

Download or read book Metatheory in Social Science written by Donald Winslow Fiske and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1986-03-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the nature of the social sciences? What kinds of knowledge can they—and should they—hope to create? Are objective viewpoints possible and can universal laws be discovered? Questions like these have been asked with increasing urgency in recent years, as some philosophers and researchers have perceived a "crisis" in the social sciences. Metatheory in Social Science offers many provocative arguments and analyses of basic conceptual frameworks for the study of human behavior. These are offered primarily by practicing researchers and are related to problems in disciplines as diverse as sociology, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, and philosophy of science. While various points of view are expressed in these nineteen essays, they have in common several themes, including the comparison of social and natural science, the role of knowledge in meeting the demands of society and its pressing problems, and the nature and role of subjectivity in science. Some authors hold that subjectivity cannot be studied scientifically; others argue that it can and must be if progress in knowledge is to be made. The essays demonstrate the philosophical pluralism they discuss and give a wide range of alternative positions on the future of the social and behavioral sciences in a postpositivist intellectual world.

Download or read book Making Social Science Matter written by Bent Flyvbjerg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-15 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New approach demonstrating how social science can be successful, focusing on context, values, and power.

Download or read book Big Ideas in Social Science written by David Edmonds and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2015-11-16 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are human beings less violent than before? Why do we adopt certain moral and political judgements? Why is the gap between rich and poor getting bigger? How do we decide which criminal policies are effective? What is the Population Challenge for the 21st Century? What is social science? In Big Ideas in Social Science, David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton put these and more of our society’s burning questions to 18 of the world’s leading social scientists including Steven Pinker, Ann Oakley, Lawrence Sherman, Kate Pickett, Robert J. Shiller and Doreen Massey. The result is a collection of thought-provoking discussions that span the fields of sociology, politics, economics, criminology, geography and many more.From the people who brought us the Philosophy Bites series, Big Ideas in Social Science is a fascinating and accessible introduction to the key ideas and findings of the social sciences. The interviews for this book are based on a series of podcasts, Social Science Bites, sponsored by SAGE. Social Science Bites was inspired by the popular Philosophy Bites podcast (www.philosophybites.com), which was founded by David and Nigel in 2007 and has so far had 26 million downloads. Philosophy Bites has spawned three books, Philosophy Bites, Philosophy Bites Back and Philosophy Bites Again.

Download or read book Pathways Between Social Science and Computational Social Science written by Tamás Rudas and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-01-22 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume shows that the emergence of computational social science (CSS) is an endogenous response to problems from within the social sciences and not exogeneous. The three parts of the volume address various pathways along which CSS has been developing from and interacting with existing research frameworks. The first part exemplifies how new theoretical models and approaches on which CSS research is based arise from theories of social science. The second part is about methodological advances facilitated by CSS-related techniques. The third part illustrates the contribution of CSS to traditional social science topics, further attesting to the embedded nature of CSS. The expected readership of the volume includes researchers with a traditional social science background who wish to approach CSS, experts in CSS looking for substantive links to more traditional social science theories, methods and topics, and finally, students working in both fields.

Download or read book Quantitative Social Science written by Kosuke Imai and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Princeton University Press published Imai's textbook, Quantitative Social Science: An Introduction, an introduction to quantitative methods and data science for upper level undergrads and graduates in professional programs, in February 2017. What is distinct about the book is how it leads students through a series of applied examples of statistical methods, drawing on real examples from social science research. The original book was prepared with the statistical software R, which is freely available online and has gained in popularity in recent years. But many existing courses in statistics and data sciences, particularly in some subject areas like sociology and law, use STATA, another general purpose package that has been the market leader since the 1980s. We've had several requests for STATA versions of the text as many programs use it by default. This is a "translation" of the original text, keeping all the current pedagogical text but inserting the necessary code and outputs from STATA in their place"--