social science research

social science research

The Impact of Social Science Research on Society

1. Introduction to Social Science Research

Social science research is a cross-disciplinary inquiry aimed at recognizing what is happening, why it is happening, and how it can be dealt with. In the scientific quest, many disciplines, including history, geography, education, sociology, psychology, politics, economics, criminology, anthropology, and social welfare, play essential and transformative roles. This paper deals with both information and project concerns. Effective social research projects demonstrate its necessity by generating interest, its importance by contributing significantly to existing knowledge in a variety of settings, and its development by providing growth and learning opportunities through the scientific exploration and inquiry that seminally engage in the implementation of scientific inquiry.

Social science fields of study usually have several sub-disciplines, and in terms of their relationships with one another, they can be either positively integrated, additive, redundant, incommensurable, or even incompatible. Social science research helps generate more logical, consistent, and reliable conclusions and develop models/connect the logic. It answers five interconnected group questions that frame research: goals, questions asked, data presented, assumptions (including those underlying the purpose and nature of information presented), as well as results presented. This comprehensive description provides a general guideline on the practice of social research in broad application. The development of successful social science research projects is often inextricably connected with the availability of resources to support them. The importance of strength and precision for the results affects the overall quality of the solution.

2. The Role of Social Science Research in Addressing Societal Issues

There is little reference to the trickle-up effect of nonobtrusive measures. Even though the purposes of using nonobtrusive observations are learned initially from personal experiences, research infers how nonobtrusive measures can aid life struggles and then provides rules about the places and people most likely to yield the most fruitful nonobtrusive measures. The trickling-up of information during a time of societal needs gives research an added level of validity. Another example is the geodemographic scale of the population in order to learn where more mature people are living; how the population of a small town is using different businesses is beneficial to the businessman. With the increase in societal struggles, research often becomes practical in nature. The owner of the bread store ran out of bread on a Tuesday because she does not know the population pattern of the people on that road at that time. This can grow up to become social researchers. Although not directly a result of research efforts, the question may become an interest of other social researchers.

3. Ethical Considerations in Social Science Research

To the extent feasible, researchers need to strike a balance between the need to be forthcoming in obtaining informed consent and the necessity of avoiding actions that would compromise the validity of the experiment. That is, as a rule researchers should reveal as much as possible about the study and the risks and potential benefits involved in participation, while still meeting operational adjacency considerations. In simple survey/modal situations, complete confidentiality should allay most fears. With economic or psychological experiments, observers might be assured that any deception or departure from complete confidentiality was employed to achieve valid statistical and scientific results – and not for some other hidden agenda. The other three principal ethical considerations – risk, confidentiality, and the right to share in the benefits of research-funded research – are shared with all forms of research on human/animal subjects. I conclude by asking those who participate in these research programs and utilize the findings to formulate public policy to search their souls and consciences; and those who approve research projects to do the same. These actions can help ensure that the potential human/animal participant is treated as an end, not a means to an end. Overall, the social scientist needs to conduct research in a manner that reflects sound principles of social science training, not just those of legal or medical ethics. The first two guidelines encouraged both broad reflection and careful planning, not mechanical adherence to a set of rules or regulations.

Ethical practices are those that treat participants as ends in themselves and respect their autonomy, ensuring that they are not coerced or manipulated into doing something that they do not believe is in their best interest. Thus, the principle of informed consent is central. In some forms of research, relatively complete informed consent can be obtained from all participants before data are collected. However, problems of informed consent are especially severe with respect to experiments with human or animal subjects. The act of describing to individuals the dependent variables and the treatments, contrasted groups, or random assignment of these are critically important while requesting informed consent. Yet, premature release of details could compromise the integrity of the experiment. With humans, premature revelation of the dependent variable could alter their response out of concern for the dignity of the individual or the cause the individual purports to support.

4. Innovative Methodologies and Technologies in Social Science Research

The methodology section is particularly strong on new social science methodologies. Presenting work “in progress,” the authors offer real-world case illustrations, and many contributions to this handbook focus on new methodologies to support human-based (as opposed to machine processing and decision making) scientific knowledge production. The possibilities that new technology and unstructured big data offer for original, innovative approaches to good research by social scientists will be detailed and explored. The goal is to increase our knowledge about the mechanisms underlying the structure of societies.

Social scientists are making innovative strides in finding methodological approaches and tools to monitor and analyze societal and political developments. The collection of data and its analysis have needed to accommodate growing demands for up-to-the-minute analysis of events, and social scientists from a number of disciplines are working to enhance research by increasing the variety and number of sources to create the databases used for formal analysis. Whether by mining social media databases or constructing civic hacking projects and Wikipedia editor networks, researchers are developing new ways to explain social interactions and societal developments. Indeed, in trendsetting areas of research and practice, social scientists are borrowing tools from the computer science community such as big data management and data mining as well as text analysis and natural language processing.

5. Future Directions and Potential Impact of Social Science Research

However, the essay barely discusses precise impact channels as it mostly aims to discuss the importance of impact and begins to map the main actors. Finally, it is important to keep in mind that both designing and interpreting the results from methods to demonstrate the putative contributions of social science research to society are themselves rather sophisticated research topics. A future challenge that was not covered is the motivations and constraints faced by researchers, and how they themselves influence research, return on investment, and impact. On a normative plane, these motivations and constraints can be connected to debates on scientific autonomy or relevance, transdisciplinarity, or social science engaged scholarship. Yet little is known about the current gap between discussed principles and actual research behavior. A correlated research issue is the value of social science research.

This essay focuses on the people who influence social science research and the potential impact of social science research. Studying the people who influence social science research should guide what type of research funders should finance and what communication mechanisms are adequate. The content of the essay should help retrieve the return on investment from research and stimulate the practices of evidence-based policy, practice, and society. The essay also discusses the social, political, and economic roles of research, as well as potential ex ante and ex post methods to evaluate how scientific research actually influences those dimensions.