The use of quasi-experiments in the social sciences: a content analysis

This article examines the use of various research designs in the social sciences as well as the choices that are made when a quasi-experimental design is used. A content analysis was carried out on articles published in 18 social science journals with various impact factors. The presence of quasi-experimental studies was investigated as well as choices in the design and analysis stage. It was found that quasi-experimental designs are not very often used in the inspected journals, and when they are applied they are not very well designed and analyzed. These findings suggest that the literature on how to deal with selection bias has not yet found its way to the practice of the applied researcher.     

Modeling the act of measurement in the social sciences

Motivated by time-series experimental designs, we develop a model of the act of measurement in the social sciences. Meaningful measurements are represented by operators that obey a non-commutative algebra. Thus, the order in which information is extracted matters. In addition, responses to questions about an attribute depend on whether information about another attribute has previously been extracted. Measurement “forces” the subject to obtain one value of the attribute, the one measured by the observer. An uncertainty principle imposes a fundamental limit on the ability to extract detailed information about two distinct attributes within a short period of time.     

Computer assisted text analysis in the social sciences

We use the term “Computer Assisted Text Analysis” in a broad sense to refer to a range of current techniques from quantitative social science and content analysis to ‘data mining’ and ‘text classification’, including the analysis of open-ended survey questions, transcribed interviews and speeches, wherever, in fact, the researcher is confronted with data in the form of natural language texts of social scientific interest. These methods are often used in exploratory data analysis, but can also be applied systematically with moderate statistical rigour in the development and testing of hypotheses at various theoretical levels, ranging from the statistics of word usage to changes within or between discourses over time. The general approach is in the tradition of content analysis, by which words which occur together in relatively close proximity in the same context are interpreted as relating to a common theme or concept in the discourse studied. We review a comprehensive set of tools to identify and visualize structures of co-occurrence of words and concepts both within, and in comparing, a number of texts. These produce results not essentially different from those reached by representing word co-occurrences in terms of network analysis or neural network programming using schematic linguistic templates of various kinds. A comparison of the relational data analysis vs. a dictionary-based MDS approach shows that these provide very close if not identical results, despite the fact that the underlying assumptions are frequently represented as different theoretical approaches.     

Causality as validity: some implications for the social sciences

We analyse the concept of causality in the social sciences, whose development is insufficient and lesser than the methodology developed for its study. The nature of the causal process as the production of effects remains unclear and the relationships considered to be manifestations of that process cannot be taken for proof of its existence. Given these difficulties, we suggest that, aside from the inherited interpretations, the practice of the concept of causality makes reference to correctly specified relationships not confounded by others; characteristics identical to those which define validity. In that way, causality is equivalent to the validity of a relationship. Beyond merely re-understanding causality, this proposal permits the deduction that the temporal precedence of the cause is a necessary condition only for one type of causality, making it possible to consider other types, not admitted by the traditional notion, in which the cause is consequent or simultaneous to the variable to be explained. Examples and characteristics of these types of causality are presented and considered to be useful for the social sciences.     

A regularity theory of causality for the social sciences

Quality & Quantity - This article discusses a regularity theory of causality (RTC) for the social sciences. With RTC, causality is a relationship between X and Y characterized by three...     

Publication bias in the German social sciences: an application of the caliper test to three top-tier German social science journals

Systematic research reviews have become essential in all empirical sciences. However, the validity of research syntheses is threatened if the preparation, submission or publication of research findings depends on the statistical significance of these findings. The present study investigates publication bias in three top-tier journals in the German social sciences, utilizing the caliper test. For the period between 2001 and 2010, we have collected 156 articles that appeared in the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (KZfSS), the Zeitschrift für Soziologie (ZfS) and the Politische Vierteljahresschrift (PVS). In all three journals, we found empirical evidence for the existence of publication bias at the 10 % significance level. We also investigated possible causes linked to this bias, including single versus multiple authorship as well as academic degree. We found only weak support for the relationships between individual author characteristics and publication bias.     

Measurement in metrology,psychology and social sciences: data generation traceability and numerical traceability as basic methodological principles applicable across sciences

Quality & Quantity - Measurement creates trustworthy quantifications. But unified frameworks applicable to all sciences are still lacking and discipline-specific terms, concepts and practices...     

Software as a facilitator of quality processes in social sciences research

The objective of this work is to evaluate the strategy of triangulation in the validation of information by integrating quantitative/qualitative information based on the use of different statistics software packages In our case, we opted to begin with a quantitative strategy and use IBM SPSS AMOS Statistics; we then replicated the study with a qualitative strategy using NVIVO. To this end, we used as an example case a study conducted on a sample of 445 university teaching personnel regarding intentions to use the blended learning teaching model in their usual teaching practice. We did so to analyse the extent to which it is possible to explain the process of adopting this educational method as well as its use and its dissemination in higher-education contexts, taking as a theoretical reference the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology and the Theory of Diffusion of Innovation, proposed by E. Rogers. The analyses carried out verified the convergence or overlap of the results obtained after the application of different methods of data collection (a questionnaire and interviews) for the same study object. The results confirm the benefit of using data-processing software as a resource to facilitate multimethod strategies in educational research owing to its strengthening of results and the examination of the level of convergence or divergences within them.     

首都城乡一体化进程中创新社会管理的着力点探析

创新社会管理是推进城乡一体化进程的助推器。本文认为,在首都城乡一体化进程中,应从创新社会管理的理念,明确社会管理的方向,增强社会管理的活力,实现社会管理的科学化,营造和谐的社会环境,提升社会的"软"管理等方面努力探寻创新社会管理的着力点,积极构建与中国特色世界城市相适应的社会管理体系,把首都构建成繁荣文明、和谐宜居的首善之区。     

Event history and survival analysis in the social sciences II. Advanced applications and recent developments

A previous paper (Hutchison, 1988) in this journal has provided an introduction to the basic concepts of survival and event history analysis, originally developed in medical research, econometrics and engineering, and argued the case for their wider application in the social sciences. This paper introduces some further complications that the researcher is likely to meet, and offers some guidelines for handling problems that arise in applying such methods to the highly complex social situations involved.