This book employs a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) methodology to analyse the language used by university careers services in the UK. Drawing on a corpus which includes the public-facing websites of careers services from 24 Russell Group and 34 Post-92 universities, the author highlights some of the potentially problematic 'common-sense' views and ideas that are currently promoted to students using these services. She argues that the language used by university websites promotes neoliberal ideology and encourages the denaturalisation of such language. This book will be of interest to linguists, sociologists, education scholars, and scholars who are otherwise interested in the notion of employability.

Putting the anthropological imagination under the spotlight, this book represents the experience of three generations of researchers, each of whom have long collaborated with the same Indigenous community over the course of their careers. In the context of a remote Indigenous Australian community in northern Australia, these researchers-anthropologists, an archeologist, a literary scholar, and an artist-encounter reflexivity and ethnographic practice through deeply personal and professionally revealing accounts of anthropological consciousness, relational encounters, and knowledge sharing. In six discrete chapters, the authors reveal the complexities that run through these relationships, considering how any one of us builds knowledge, shares knowledge, how we encounter different and new knowledge, and how well we are positioned to understand the lived experiences of others, whilst making ourselves fully available to personal change. At its core, this anthology is a meditation on learning and friendship across cultures.

In this powerful volume, six qualitative methods are used to analyze a couple therapy with a troubled young couple, illustrating the intricate processes and sub-processes of therapy through client interactions with their therapists and with each other. Increasingly popular for revealing the nuances and complexity of human interactions, qualitative approaches focus on process and discursive methods which can be particularly rewarding in multi-client settings. Through the examples that make up the text, practitioners and researchers become better acquainted with the power of qualitative perspectives and are encouraged to examine their own views on therapy as they consider these and other concepts: The development of dialogical space in a couple therapy session. Introducing novelties into therapeutic dialogue: the importance of minor shifts of the therapist. Therapists' responses for enhancing change through dialogue: dialogical investigations of change. Fostering dialogue: exploring the therapists' discursive contributions in a couple therapy. Dominant story, power, and positioning. Constructing the moral order of a relationship in couples therapy. Research Perspectives in Couple Therapy: Discursive Qualitative Methods ably demonstrates the balance between therapeutic art and science for family and couples therapists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals in research and practice.

This book covers the essential concepts and strategies within traditional and cutting-edge feature learning methods thru both theoretical analysis and case studies. Good features give good models and it is usually not classifiers but features that determine the effectiveness of a model. In this book, readers can find not only traditional feature learning methods, such as principal component analysis, linear discriminant analysis, and geometrical-structure-based methods, but also advanced feature learning methods, such as sparse learning, low-rank decomposition, tensor-based feature extraction, and deep-learning-based feature learning. Each feature learning method has its own dedicated chapter that explains how it is theoretically derived and shows how it is implemented for real-world applications. Detailed illustrated figures are included for better understanding. This book can be used by students, researchers, and engineers looking for a reference guide for popular methods of feature learning and machine intelligence.

Nowadays statistical surveys represent an important source of scientific knowledge and a consolidated decision support tool in many fields of applications: from social sciences to economics, marketing, medicine, political science, etc. Most of the methodological issues concerning statistical surveys have been investigated by scientists so that the scientific literature offers a plenty of excellent references concerning all the required steps for planning and realizing them. Nevertheless, facing real problems through statistical surveys often requires looking for operative solutions deviating from the consolidated methodology or choosing through several options. The book will focus on theory and applications of statistical surveys, providing remarks and innovative solutions to face problems in survey practice. Topics covered in the book will include all the main issues regarding a planning of a statistical survey: data collection, sampling scheme, questionnaire definition, estimation. A good balance between formal rigor and clarity will allow the book be aimed to practitioners involved in applied research but also to academics interested in recent scientific developments in the field.

China Urban Statistics 1988 is an important reference book for understanding and studying economic and social conditions in Chinese cities. This is an annual publication presenting data on economic development in 382 Chinese cities. The data in the 1988 edition are figures for 1987. There were 381 cities in China at the end of 1987. However, since the cities of Huangshan and Tunxi in Anhui Province maintained separate statistical reports in 1987 after the administration of these two cities was merged, there are a total of 382 cities included in this book. Data presented in this volume include a survey of population, surface area, agricultural and industrial production, transportation and telecommunications, urban development, trade and commerce, education and culture, public health, labor, and public finance. China Urban Statistics 1988 is a revised and improved English language edition of the official China Statistical Abstract compiled by the State Statistical Bureau of the People's Republic of China (SSB). The English Language Editorial Board was responsible for the translation and annotation of this volume. The English Language Editorial Board is composed of representatives of the China Statistical Information and Consultancy Service Center, an affiliate of the SSB, and the China Statistics Archives, a research center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. This is the sixth volume in a series of statistical annuals. The volumes so far published are China Statistical Abstract 1988, China Social Statistics 1986, China Trade and Prices Statistics 1988, China Rural Statistics 1988 and China Statistical Abstract 1989.

This book offers practical advice on designing, conducting and analyzing interviews with 'elite' and 'expert' persons (or 'socially prominent actors'), with a focus on criminology and criminal justice. It offers dilemmas and examples of 'good' and 'bad' practices in order to encourage readers to critically asses their own work. It also addresses methodological issues which include: access, power imbalances, getting past 'corporate answers', considerations of whether or not it is at times acceptable to ask leading questions and whether to enter a discussion with a respondent at all. This book will be valuable to students and scholars conducting qualitative research.

This proceedings volume highlights the latest research and developments in psychometrics and statistics. It represents selected and peer-reviewed presentations given at the 85th Annual International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS), held virtually on July 13-17, 2020. The IMPS is one of the largest international meetings on quantitative measurement in education, psychology and the social sciences. It draws approximately 500 participants from around the world, featuring paper and poster presentations, symposiums, workshops, keynotes, and invited presentations. Leading experts and promising young researchers have written the included chapters. The chapters address a wide variety of topics including but not limited to item response theory, adaptive testing, Bayesian estimation, propensity scores, and cognitive diagnostic models. This volume is the 9th in a series of recent works to cover research presented at the IMPS.

This book focuses on the use of the Rasch measurement model in validation studies and in analyzing the psychometric properties of a variety of test instruments, questionnaires, and scales in international contexts. It broadly examines the development and application of Rasch modeling, providing in-depth analyses of the properties of various scales used in the fields of education, and humanities and social sciences research. The book includes exemplary works on educational research and practices that highlight recent and innovative applications, as well as theoretical and practical aspects of Rasch modeling. Readers will find it helpful to understand the latest approaches to Rasch measurement in educational research, as well as practices for future studies and quantitative research. 'This book provides a diverse set of perspectives on Rasch models from scholars across the globe. The volume is both theoretical and applied. The first section of the book provides an overview of Rasch modeling and explains the theoretical and conceptual framework underlying the Rasch model. The remainder of the book highlights multiple applications of the Rasch model within educational assessment as well as several examples of how Rasch modeling can be used for validation studies. This volume showcases the wide variety of ways in which Rasch modeling can be applied to assessment data to provide insights into students' achievement and learning and to improve instruction.'-Betsy McCoach, University of Connecticut, USA. 'A well-written collection of articles. Grouped by the theoretical and applied aspects of Rasch measurement, each chapter in this edited volume makes notable contributions to knowledge and practice. Written by leading scholars in the field, these chapters were written in a clear, succinct, and assertive manner, providing readers with up-to-date information, analyses, and debates. This book should be found in the core collection of emerging researchers and established scholars in educational measurement.'-Timothy Teo, Murdoch University, Australia.

What constitutes a causal explanation, and must an explanation be causal? What warrants a causal inference, as opposed to a descriptive regularity? What techniques are available to detect when causal effects are present, and when can these techniques be used to identify the relative importance of these effects? What complications do the interactions of individuals create for these techniques? When can mixed methods of analysis be used to deepen causal accounts? Must causal claims include generative mechanisms, and how effective are empirical methods designed to discover them? The Handbook of Causal Analysis for Social Research tackles these questions with nineteen chapters from leading scholars in sociology, statistics, public health, computer science, and human development.

"Social Simulation for a Digital Society" provides a cross-section of state-of-the-art research in social simulation and computational social science. With the availability of big data and faster computing power, the social sciences are undergoing a tremendous transformation. Research in computational social sciences has received considerable attention in the last few years, with advances in a wide range of methodologies and applications. Areas of application of computational methods range from the study of opinion and information dynamics in social networks, the formal modeling of resource use, the study of social conflict and cooperation to the development of cognitive models for social simulation and many more. This volume is based on the Social Simulation Conference of 2017 in Dublin and includes applications from across the social sciences, providing the reader with a demonstration of the highly versatile research in social simulation, with a particular focus on public policy relevance in a digital society. Chapters in the book include contributions to the methodology of simulation-based research, theoretical and philosophical considerations, as well as applied work. This book will appeal to students and researchers in the field.

This book presents a series of analyses of educational policies - largely in the UK, but some also in Europe - researched by a team of social scientists who share a commitment to social justice and equity in education. We explore what social justice means, in educational policy and practice, and how it impacts on our understanding of both 'educational science' and 'the public good'. Using a social constructivist approach, the book argues that social justice requires a particular and critical analysis of the meaning of meritocracy, and of the way this term turns educational policies towards treating learning as a competition, in which many young people are constructed as 'losers'. We discuss how many terms in education are essentialised and have specific, and different, meanings for particular social groups, and how this may create issues in both quantitative survey methods and in determining what is 'the public good'. We discuss social justice across a range of intersecting social characteristics, including social class, ethnicity and gender, as they are applied across the educational policy spectrum, from early years to postgraduate education. We examine the ways that young people construct their identities, and the implications of this for understanding the 'public good' in educational practice. We consider the responsibilities of educational researchers to acknowledge these issues, and offer examples of researching with such a commitment. We conclude by considering how educational policy might contribute to a socially just, equitable and inclusive public good.

This book offers a unified treatment of my research in the foundations of expected utility theory from around 1965 to 1980. While parts are new, the presentation draws heavily on published articles and a few chapters in my 1970 monograph on utility theory. The diverse notations and styles of the sources have of course been reconciled here, and their topics arranged in a logical sequence. The two parts of the book take their respective cues from the von Neumann-Morgenstern axiomatization of preferences between risky options and from Savage's foundational treatment of decision making under uncertainty. Both parts are studies in the axiomatics of preferences for decision situations and in numerical representations for preferences. Proofs of the representation and uniqueness theorems appear at the ends of the chapters so as not to impede the flow of the discussion. A few warnings on notation are in order. The numbers for theorems cited within a chapter have no prefix if they appear in that chapter, but otherwise carry a chapter prefix (Theorem 3.2 is Theorem 2 in Chapter 3). All lower case Greek letters refer to numbers in the closed interval from o to 1. The same symbol in different chapters has essentially the same meaning with one major exception: x, y, ... mean quite different things in different chapters. I am indebted to many people for their help and encouragement.

The Handbook series provides a compendium of thorough and integrative literature reviews on a diverse array of topics of interest to the higher education scholarly and policy communities. Each chapter provides a comprehensive review of research findings on a selected topic, critiques the research literature in terms of its conceptual and methodological rigor, and sets forth an agenda for future research intended to advance knowledge on the chosen topic.

This book introduces readers to the latest advances in and approaches to intuitionistic fuzzy decision-making methods. To do so, it explores a range of applications to practical decision-making problems, together with representative case studies. Examining a host of decision-making methods, most of which are based on intuitionistic fuzzy aggregation operators, its goal is to offer readers a new way to study decision-making methods in the intuitionistic fuzzy environment. Chiefly intended for practitioners and researchers working in the areas of risk management, decision-making under uncertainty, and operational research, the book can also be used as supplementary material for graduate and senior undergraduate courses in these areas.

The intention behind this book is to illustrate the deep relation among human behavior, data-centric science, and social design. In fact, these three issues have been independently developing in different fields, although they are, of course, deeply interrelated to one another. Specifically, fundamental understanding of human behavior should be employed for investigating our human society and designing social systems. Insights and both quantitative and qualitative understandings of collective human behavior are quite useful when social systems are designed. Fundamental principles of human behavior, theoretical models of human behavior, and information cascades are addressed as aspects of human behavior. Data-driven investigation of human nature, social behavior, and societal systems are developed as aspects of data-centric science. As design aspects, how to design social systems from heterogeneous memberships is explained. There is also discussion of these three aspects-human behavior, data-centric science, and social design-independently and with regard to the relationships among them.

Social capital is fundamentally concerned with resources in social relations. This Handbook brings together leading scholars from around the world to address important questions on the determinants, manifestations and consequences of social capital. Various mechanisms of formal and informal social involvement, its relationship with other forms of social exclusion and its role in civic, instrumental and expressive domains of our socio-economic and community lives are explored. This unique Handbook: * combines cutting-edge theory with appropriate data and methods * explores the mechanisms of formal and informal social involvement including the role of parental class and cultural influence, and the consequences for our personal and community lives * links social capital with other domains of social inequality such as cultural practice and philanthropic behaviour in an in-depth examination of the social stratification processes * conducts a thorough analysis of formal and informal social involvement, and bonding and bridging social ties on trust, tolerance, community cohesion, educational attainment, labour market position, quality of life and ethnic entrepreneurism * analyzes social capital as both an outcome and as a mediating variable at the micro, meso and macro levels. Accessible yet rigorous, this Handbook presents a challenge to both social capital researchers interested in explaining social inequality and to policy-makers with responsibility for designing effective measures for combating social exclusion. It will also be essential reading for students in sociology, political science, developmental economics and management studies. Contributors: N. Allum, R. Andersen, L. Becares, Y. Bian, F. Buscha, C. Cheng, R.R. Cote, D. Cutts, N. Demireva, F. Devine, J.K. Dhillon, L. Donato, B.H. Erickson, J. Fiel, J. Field, E. Fieldhouse, A. Gamoran, A. Garcia-Macias, D. Griffiths, A. Heath, X. Huang, P.S. Lambert, J. Laurence, Y. Li, M. Lubbers, J.L. Molina, J. Nazroo, J. Pampalona, R. Patulny, J. Rodriguez Menes, M. Savage, M. Shoji, P. Sturgis, E.M. Uslaner, H. Valenzuela-Garcia, P.-P. Verhaeghe, W. Wang, A. Warde, M. Western, L. Zhang, L. Zhang, W. Zhang

The Good Research Guide provides practical and straightforward guidance for those who need to conduct small-scale research projects as part of their undergraduate, postgraduate or professional studies. The 7th edition covers topics in a clear, user-friendly style outlining the key points and explaining why they are important. The new edition has been updated throughout and has additional material on topics such as social media research, online surveys, image-based research and participatory action research. It also features new chapters on how to prepare for a research project, with specific guidance on: * how to undertake a literature review * how to write a research proposal * how to ensure the research is ethical * how to locate the project within a research paradigm Full of practical advice and valuable examples, this is the go-to book for students looking to improve their research skills. "Having this book at your side is like having your hand held from start to finish and every decision in between... I very much welcome a new edition for my students" Melanie Nind, Professor of Education, University of Southampton and Co-director, National Centre for Research Methods, UK "Comprehensively updated, this book remains the indispensable student guide to the research process... It's not just good, it's great!" Dr Tom Clark, Lecturer in Research Methods, The University of Sheffield, UK "The text is informative, concise, and attractive. Each chapter presents sections in an easy-to-read format with further reading ideas and link ups to the numerous topics covered throughout the book." Dr Alaster Scott Douglas, Reader in the School of Education, University of Roehampton, UK Martyn Denscombe is Emeritus Professor at De Montfort University. He has a research background in the fields of sociology, education and business studies and has published widely on research methods in the social sciences.

This book gathers together novel essays on the state-of-the-art research into the logic and practice of abduction. In many ways, abduction has become established and essential to several fields, such as logic, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, philosophy of science, and methodology. In recent years this interest in abduction's many aspects and functions has accelerated. There are evidently several different interpretations and uses for abduction. Many fundamental questions on abduction remain open. How is abduction manifested in human cognition and intelligence? What kinds or types of abduction can be discerned? What is the role for abduction in inquiry and mathematical discovery? The chapters aim at providing answer to these and other current questions. Their contributors have been at the forefront of discussions on abduction, and offer here their updated approaches to the issues that they consider central to abduction's contemporary relevance. The book is an essential reading for any scholar or professional keeping up with disciplines impacted by the study of abductive reasoning, and its novel development and applications in various fields.

This book introduces demographic applications which employ current demographic concepts and theories and cutting-edge methods and findings, all of which have and will continue to have an impact in the broad area of social demography. Through providing an introduction to new and current developments in demography, methodological and statistical issues, data issues, issues of health, aging and mortality, and issues in social demography, this book gives new insights into data, substantive issues, and methodological approaches that will assist readers in their use of demography in their research. At the same time it shows demographers, sociologists, economists, statisticians, methodologists, planners, and marketers how they may learn and improve upon the quality and relevance of their demographic investigations now and in the future.

Political science is an intensely quantitative discipline, and models are central. Political scientists use models-formal and informal, statistical and qualitative-to investigate and illuminate causal mechanisms, generate comparative data, and understand the conditions under which certain outcomes are expected to occur. But even though the use of models has grown dramatically in the discipline, there is very little understanding among political scientists of the role or function that models play in the scientific enterprise more generally. Moreover, theoretical models and empirical models have traditionally been treated as separate (hence the division between theorists and empiricists). Today, however, the emphasis is on using models to generate testable predictions that serve as hypotheses for subsequent data analysis. But how do we justify and rationalize the method? Why test predictions from a deductive, and thus truth-preserving, system? David Primo and Kevin Clarke tackle these central questions in this novel work of methodology. They argue that the lack of a suitable justification for model testing is not the only reason to revisit the role of models in political science. Most importantly, they contend that models should be seen as 'objects' and thus neither true nor false. Rather, they should be evaluated in the same fashion as models are evaluated in the physical sciences-good models are useful for particular purposes. Nothing more, nothing less. Divided into two parts, the book first establishes that no social scientific endeavor is philosophy-free. The second part focuses on different types of models, and closes with a framework for integrating theoretical and statistical models.

This book shows how information theory, probability, statistics, mathematics and personal computers can be applied to the exploration of numbers and proportions in music. It brings the methods of scientific and quantitative thinking to questions like: What are the ways of encoding a message in music and how can we be sure of the correct decoding? How do claims of names hidden in the notes of a score stand up to scientific analysis? How many ways are there of obtaining proportions and are they due to chance? After thoroughly exploring the ways of encoding information in music, the ambiguities of numerical alphabets and the words to be found "hidden" in a score, the book presents a novel way of exploring the proportions in a composition with a purpose-built computer program and gives example results from the application of the techniques. These include information theory, combinatorics, probability, hypothesis testing, Monte Carlo simulation and Bayesian networks, presented in an easily understandable form including their development from ancient history through the life and times of J. S. Bach, making connections between science, philosophy, art, architecture, particle physics, calculating machines and artificial intelligence. For the practitioner the book points out the pitfalls of various psychological fallacies and biases and includes succinct points of guidance for anyone involved in this type of research. This book will be useful to anyone who intends to use a scientific approach to the humanities, particularly music, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the intersection between the arts and science.With a foreword by Ruth Tatlow (Uppsala University), award winning author of Bach's Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance and Bach and the Riddle of the Number Alphabet."With this study Alan Shepherd opens a much-needed examination of the wide range of mathematical claims that have been made about J. S. Bach's music, offering both tools and methodological cautions with the potential to help clarify old problems." Daniel R. Melamed, Professor of Music in Musicology, Indiana University

Qualitative comparative methods - and specifically controlled qualitative comparisons - are central to the study of politics. They are not the only kind of comparison, though, that can help us better understand political processes and outcomes. Yet there are few guides for how to conduct non-controlled comparative research. This volume brings together chapters from more than a dozen leading methods scholars from across the discipline of political science, including positivist and interpretivist scholars, qualitative methodologists, mixed-methods researchers, ethnographers, historians, and statisticians. Their work revolutionizes qualitative research design by diversifying the repertoire of comparative methods available to students of politics, offering readers clear suggestions for what kinds of comparisons might be possible, why they are useful, and how to execute them. By systematically thinking through how we engage in qualitative comparisons and the kinds of insights those comparisons produce, these collected essays create new possibilities to advance what we know about politics.

This book offers a new look at well-established quantification theory for categorical data, referred to by such names as correspondence analysis, dual scaling, optimal scaling, and homogeneity analysis. These multiple identities are a consequence of its large number of properties that allow one to analyze and visualize the strength of variable association in an optimal solution. The book contains modern quantification theory for analyzing the association between two and more categorical variables in a variety of applicative frameworks. Visualization has attracted much attention over the past decades and given rise to controversial opinions. One may consider variations of plotting systems used in the construction of the classic correspondence plot, the biplot, the Carroll-Green-Schaffer scaling, or a new approach in doubled multidimensional space as presented in the book. There are even arguments for no visualization at all. The purpose of this book therefore is to shed new light on time-honored graphical procedures with critical reviews, new ideas, and future directions as alternatives. This stimulating volume is written with fresh new ideas from the traditional framework and the contemporary points of view. It thus offers readers a deep understanding of the ever-evolving nature of quantification theory and its practice. Part I starts with illustrating contingency table analysis with traditional joint graphical displays (symmetric, non-symmetric) and the CGS scaling and then explores logically correct graphs in doubled Euclidean space for both row and column variables. Part II covers a variety of mathematical approaches to the biplot strategy in graphing a data structure, providing a useful source for this modern approach to graphical display. Part II is also concerned with a number of alternative approaches to the joint graphical display such as bimodal cluster analysis and other statistical problems relevant to quantification theory.

With a highly pragmatic, yet rigorous and pragmatically driven approach, this edited book explores demonstrates qualitative research with an applied approach. Using not only theory but real world setting, readers are introduced to the function and relevance of qualitative methods in psychological research. Exemplified through the contributions of various experts from across the different sub-disciplines of psychology, this text takes a versatile approach to explaining methods in research and covers a broad range of methods in a variety of settings. This book will appeal to those with an interest in qualitative methods across the spectrum of psychology and beyond. Offering an introduction to applied qualitative research in psychology with a distinctively applied approach, this title is apt for undergraduate psychology students taking modules in research methods, executing research-based projects or those undertaking Masters and taught doctoral level programs in psychology.