Social machines are a type of network connected by interactive digital devices made possible by the ubiquitous adoption of technologies such as the Internet, the smartphone, social media and the read/write World Wide Web, connecting people at scale to document situations, cooperate on tasks, exchange information, or even simply to play. Existing social processes may be scaled up, and new social processes enabled, to solve problems, augment reality, create new sources of value, and disrupt existing practice. This book considers what talents one would need to understand or build a social machine, describes the state of the art, and speculates on the future, from the perspective of the EPSRC project SOCIAM - The Theory and Practice of Social Machines. The aim is to develop a set of tools and techniques for investigating, constructing and facilitating social machines, to enable us to narrow down pragmatically what is becoming a wide space, by asking 'when will it be valuable to use these methods on a sociotechnical system?' The systems for which the use of these methods adds value are social machines in which there is rich person-to-person communication, and where a large proportion of the machine's behaviour is constituted by human interaction.

During recent decades a strong interest has grown in actively involving service users in social work education, research and policy development. Drawing on a major European Social Fund project, this book presents an overview of inspiring collaborative models that have proven their efficacy and sustainability. Contributions from service users, lecturers and researchers from across Europe provide detailed case studies of good practice, exploring the value framework behind the model and considering their added value from a user, teacher and student perspective. The book concludes with a series of reflective chapters, considering key issues and ethical dilemmas.

A volume in Critical Constructions: Studies on Education and Society Series Editor: Curry Stephenson Malott, Queens College/CUNY Students in public schools serving poor and working-class students are inundated by the effects of high-stakes examinations. Teachers are demoralized and students suffer substandard curricular and pedagogical experiences. These effects are articulated by students and teachers in the high school that provided the setting for the critical ethnography on which this text is based. Teachers resent being judged on the basis of students' performance on standardized assessments. They are deprofessionalized as their roles are oriented toward working-class norms. Students feel alienated by content that is meaningless and test-based pedagogies that are disempowering. While these findings are disturbing, critical theory provides a foundation for seeking hope. By incorporating inquiry and dialogue, this theoretical framework opens a space where resistance can be revealed and examined. In this case, the study exposed glimmers of resistance, spaces in the structure of schooling where students and teachers critique the system and suggest ways of subverting the negative effects of the neoliberal reforms through dialogic, empowering, culturally responsive pedagogies. Collective resistance, achieved through dialogic pedagogies that build on understandings of resistance and power, can cultivate theoretical and material spaces where a cycle of praxis can enhance possibilities for social justice. To that end, the conclusion is devoted to the implementation of critical, dialogic approaches to literacies, approaches intended to interrupt the hegemonic influences that perpetuate social reproduction by capitalizing on the potential for solidarity and collective agency among the students and teachers who populate and educate the working classes. This book would interest teacher educators, teachers, and school administrators.

Statistical methods applied to social sciences, made accessible to all through an emphasis on concepts Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences introduces statistical methods to students majoring in social science disciplines. With an emphasis on concepts and applications, this book assumes no previous knowledge of statistics and only a minimal mathematical background. It contains sufficient material for a two-semester course. The 5th Edition uses examples and exercises with a variety of "real data." It includes more illustrations of statistical software for computations and takes advantage of the outstanding applets to explain key concepts, such as sampling distributions and conducting basic data analyses. It continues to downplay mathematics-often a stumbling block for students-while avoiding reliance on an overly simplistic recipe-based approach to statistics.

A new turn in mixed methods research is here: merged methods. This provocative book offers a novel analysis of current mixed methods research, complicating traditional approaches and challenging existing techniques. Moving beyond the binary quantitative-qualitative distinction, the book presents methodologically grounded ways to merge methods in social research and integrate interpretive and structural approaches in one instrument or procedure. The book: Considers the importance of merging both epistemologies and methodologies. Showcases eight merged methods research approaches, from the Delphi method to multimodal content analysis. Explores the opportunities for merging methods using computational techniques, such as text mining. This innovative book is a must-read for any postgraduate student or researcher across the social sciences wanting to develop their understanding of mixed methods research.

This edited collection explores the multiple ways in which ethnography and health emerge and take form through the research process. There is now a plethora of disciplinary engagements with ethnography around the topic of health, including anthropology, sociology, geography, science and technology studies, and in health care professions such as nursing and occupational therapy. This dynamic and evolving landscape means ethnography and health are entangled in new and different ways, providing a timely opportunity to explore what these entanglements do and affect in the social production of knowledge. Rather than discussing the strengths (and limitations) of ethnography for engaging with health, the book asks: what does ethnography enable, make visible and possible for knowing and doing health in contemporary research settings and beyond?

Engaging with several emerging and interconnected approaches in the social sciences, including pragmatism, system theory, processual thinking and relational thinking, this book leverages John Dewey and Arthur Bentley's often misunderstood concept of trans-action to revisit and redefine our perceptions of social relations and social life. The contributors gathered here use trans-action in a more specific sense, showing why and how social scientists and philosophers might use the concept to better understand our social life and social problems. As the first collective sociological attempt to apply the concept of trans-action to contemporary social issues, this volume is a key reference for the growing audience of relational and processual thinkers in the social sciences and beyond.

For one-quarter/semester courses that focus on the basics in statistics or combine statistics with research methods. The fifth edition of Statistics for the Behavioral and Social Sciences builds off an already well-established approach - emphasizing the intuitive, deemphasizing the mathematical, and explaining everything in direct, simple language - but also goes beyond these principles to further student understanding. By using definitional formulas to emphasize the concepts of statistics, rather than rote memorization, students work problems in a way that keeps them constantly aware of the underlying logic of what they are doing. NOTE: This is the standalone book, if you want the book/access card order the ISBN below; ALERT: Before you purchase, check with your instructor or review your course syllabus to ensure that you select the correct ISBN. Several versions of Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products exist for each title, including customized versions for individual schools, and registrations are not transferable. In addition, you may need a CourseID, provided by your instructor, to register for and use Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products. 0205924182 / 9780205924189 Statistics for The Behavioral and Social Sciences: A Brief Course Plus MyStatLab for Behavioral Sciences with Pearson eText -- Access Card Package 5/e Package consists of: 0205797253 / 9780205797257 Statistics for The Behavioral and Social Sciences: A Brief Course 0205923860 / 9780205923861 New MyStatLab for Social Sciences with Pearson eText -- ValuePack Access Card

This book covers all the topics found in introductory descriptive statistics courses, including simple linear regression and time series analysis, the fundamentals of inferential statistics (probability theory, random sampling and estimation theory), and inferential statistics itself (confidence intervals, testing). Each chapter starts with the necessary theoretical background, which is followed by a variety of examples. The core examples are based on the content of the respective chapter, while the advanced examples, designed to deepen students' knowledge, also draw on information and material from previous chapters. The enhanced online version helps students grasp the complexity and the practical relevance of statistical analysis through interactive examples and is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students taking their first statistics courses, as well as for undergraduate students in non-mathematical fields, e.g. economics, the social sciences etc.

Organizations of all kinds struggle to understand, adapt, respond and manipulate changing conditions in their internal and external environments. Approaches based on the causal, linear logic of mechanistic sciences and engineering continue to play an important role, given people's ability to create order. But such approaches are valid only within carefully circumscribed boundaries. They become counterproductive when the same organizations display the highly reflexive, context-dependent, dynamic nature of systems in which agents learn and adapt and new patterns emerge. The rapidly expanding discussion about complex systems offers important contributions to the integration of diverse perspectives and ultimately new insights into organizational effectiveness. There is increasing interest in complexity in mainstream business education, as well as in specialist business disciplines such as knowledge management. Real world systems can't be completely designed, controlled, understood or predicted, even by the so-called sciences of complexity, but they can be more effective when understood as complex systems. While many scientific disciplines explore complexity principally through abstract mathematical models and simulations, Emergence: Complexity & Organization explores the emerging understanding of human systems from both the 'hard' quantitative sciences and the 'soft' qualitative perspectives. This 2010 Annual includes articles from Goktu Morcol, Lynne Hamill, Mika Aaltonen, Glenda Eoyang, Lasse Gerrits, Jean Boulton, and many more, that explore a range of complexity-related topics from philosophical concerns through to the practical application of complexity ideas, concepts and frameworks in human organizations. Also included are a series of four reproductions of classic papers in the fields of complexity and systems, each with critical introductions that explore their modern relevance: "The Science of 'Muddling' Through" by Charles E. Lindblom (originally published in 1959); "Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science?" by Thorstein Veblen (originally published in 1898); "The Theory of Emergence" by Reuben Ablowitz (originally published in 1939), and; "Determinism and Life" by Conrad Hal Waddington (originally published in 1972).

A "how to" guide for applying statistical methods to biomarker data analysis Presenting a solid foundation for the statistical methods that are used to analyze biomarker data, Analysis of Biomarker Data: A Practical Guide features preferred techniques for biomarker validation. The authors provide descriptions of select elementary statistical methods that are traditionally used to analyze biomarker data with a focus on the proper application of each method, including necessary assumptions, software recommendations, and proper interpretation of computer output. In addition, the book discusses frequently encountered challenges in analyzing biomarker data and how to deal with them, methods for the quality assessment of biomarkers, and biomarker study designs. Covering a broad range of statistical methods that have been used to analyze biomarker data in published research studies, Analysis of Biomarker Data: A Practical Guide also features: A greater emphasis on the application of methods as opposed to the underlying statistical and mathematical theory The use of SAS(R), R, and other software throughout to illustrate the presented calculations for each example Numerous exercises based on real-world data as well as solutions to the problems to aid in reader comprehension The principles of good research study design and the methods for assessing the quality of a newly proposed biomarker A companion website that includes a software appendix with multiple types of software and complete data sets from the book's examples Analysis of Biomarker Data: A Practical Guide is an ideal upper-undergraduate and graduate-level textbook for courses in the biological or environmental sciences. An excellent reference for statisticians who routinely analyze and interpret biomarker data, the book is also useful for researchers who wish to perform their own analyses of biomarker data, such as toxicologists, pharmacologists, epidemiologists, environmental and clinical laboratory scientists, and other professionals in the health and environmental sciences.

Are you planning a desk-based qualitative research project, but aren't sure how to get started? This essential book provides all the guidance and advice you'll need to complete your project. Using two key visual pedagogical tools, the Metaphorical Tent and the Research Triangle, the book shows you how to produce vibrant and stimulating in-depth qualitative research that draws on high-quality data readily available via the internet. The book * takes you through the research process step-by-step, from choosing a topic to writing up conclusions; * examines a wide range of written, visual and audio data sources; * includes helpful case studies to demonstrate the practical application of concepts. Concise, practical and jam-packed with valuable tips, features and examples, this book will enable you to complete a successful desk-based research project you can be proud of.

This edited collection brings together voices of the strongest thought leaders on diversity, equity and inclusion in the field of statistics and data science, with the goal of encouraging and steering the profession into the regular practice of inclusive and humanistic leadership. It provides futuristic ideas for promoting opportunities for equitable leadership, as well as tested approaches that have already been found to make a difference. It speaks to the challenges and opportunities of leading successful research collaborations and making strong connections within research teams. Curated with a vision that leadership takes a myriad of forms, and that diversity has many dimensions, this volume examines the nuances of leadership within a workplace environment and promotes storytelling and other competencies as critical elements of effective leadership. It makes the case for inclusive and humanistic leadership in statistics and data science, where there often remains a dearth of women and members of certain racial communities among the employees. Titled and non-titled leaders will benefit from the planning, evaluation, and structural tools offered within to contribute inclusive excellence in workplace climate, environment, and culture.

This book examines the lifestyles, expectations and plans of Millennials and Generation Z and how they are redefining tourism. It demonstrates that if the tourism industry is to enjoy future growth, it must understand and meet the particular needs of these two generations. The volume explores the present and future challenges faced by the tourism industry as a result of the generational turnover, and seeks to answer the following questions: What contribution can the new generations make to the future of tourism? How are technological advancements and social networks shaping future travel trends? Can a generational perspective be useful to help the tourism industry recover from the COVID-19 crisis? The book will be of interest to researchers and students of sociology and tourism studies, as well as tourism professionals.

First published Open Access under a Creative Commons license as What is Inclusive Research?, this title is now also available as part of the Bloomsbury Research Methods series. This book describes and defines inclusive research, outlining how to recognize it, understand it, do it, and know when it is done well. In doing so it addresses the areas of overlap and distinctiveness in relation to participatory, emancipatory, user-led and partnership research as well as exploring the various practices encompassed within each of these inclusive approaches. The author, Melanie Nind, focuses on how and why more inclusive approaches to research have evolved. She positions inclusive research within the key debates and shifts in policy, defines key ideas and terms, discusses the contested nature of inclusive research and illustrates a range of approaches using exemplars. The aim is to discuss the range of challenges involved and to examine the degree to which these challenges have so far been met.

This book presents a new research agenda for improvements in Quality of Life research. It includes topics such as: -Studying QoL in particular subpopulations and selected subgroups -Disentangling the difficult task of identifying determinants of QoL -Perfectionating the measurement of conceptual dimensions -Defining new indicators able to measure and monitor particular social conditions and shows that these are not separated fields of studies but intersect each other and produce different outcomes which can be with difficulty classifiable, consistent with the idea of the complexity of our reality. The volume presents micro perspectives by taking into account the macro situation through both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Bayes Factors for Forensic Decision Analyses with R provides a self-contained introduction to computational Bayesian statistics using R. With its primary focus on Bayes factors supported by data sets, this book features an operational perspective, practical relevance, and applicability-keeping theoretical and philosophical justifications limited. It offers a balanced approach to three naturally interrelated topics: Probabilistic Inference - Relies on the core concept of Bayesian inferential statistics, to help practicing forensic scientists in the logical and balanced evaluation of the weight of evidence. Decision Making - Features how Bayes factors are interpreted in practical applications to help address questions of decision analysis involving the use of forensic science in the law. Operational Relevance - Combines inference and decision, backed up with practical examples and complete sample code in R, including sensitivity analyses and discussion on how to interpret results in context. Over the past decades, probabilistic methods have established a firm position as a reference approach for the management of uncertainty in virtually all areas of science, including forensic science, with Bayes' theorem providing the fundamental logical tenet for assessing how new information-scientific evidence-ought to be weighed. Central to this approach is the Bayes factor, which clarifies the evidential meaning of new information, by providing a measure of the change in the odds in favor of a proposition of interest, when going from the prior to the posterior distribution. Bayes factors should guide the scientist's thinking about the value of scientific evidence and form the basis of logical and balanced reporting practices, thus representing essential foundations for rational decision making under uncertainty. This book would be relevant to students, practitioners, and applied statisticians interested in inference and decision analyses in the critical field of forensic science. It could be used to support practical courses on Bayesian statistics and decision theory at both undergraduate and graduate levels, and will be of equal interest to forensic scientists and practitioners of Bayesian statistics for driving their evaluations and the use of R for their purposes. This book is Open Access.

This book presents a method for creating a working model of society, using data systems and simulation techniques, that can be used for testing propositions of scientific and policy nature. The model is based on the example of New Zealand, but will be applicable to other countries. It is expected that collaborators in other countries can emulate this example with their data systems for teaching and policy purposes, producing a cross-national "collaboratory". This enterprise will evolve with, and to a degree independently of, the book itself, with a supporting website as well as teaching and scientific initiatives. Readers of this text will, for the first time, have a simulation-based working model of society that can be interrogated for policy and substantive purposes. This book will appeal to researchers and professionals from various disciplines working within the social sciences, particularly on matters of demography and public policy.

Across the social welfare and human services fields, interest is growing in how to apply research to influence policy and practice; simultaneously, with globalization's advance, it is clearer than ever that an international perspective is vital in understanding how social, political, and institutional contexts affect research and dissemination practices. This volume, with contributions from an array of eminent researchers and practitioners, provides valuable insight into effective research practice and the factors involved in putting research findings to use. Leading with experience - narratives of six child welfare case studies from the UK, Ireland, Israel, South Africa, and the US - the book frames those cases in the context of relevant literatures to build up a cross-case analysis that distills lessons, throws enduring questions into relief, and lays a foundation for informing future practice. It mines the cross-national experience to develop perspective for a better understanding of the importance of different policy and cultural environments, while nonetheless emphasizing issues that are applicable across borders. The ground prepared by the case studies allows the volume to tease out themes and lessons, placing the empirical findings against relevant theoretical frameworks and developing guidelines for improving research practice in this arena.

This proceedings volume highlights the latest research and developments in psychometrics and statistics. It represents selected and peer reviewed presentations given at the 84th Annual International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS), organized by Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile and held in Santiago, Chile during July 15th to 19th, 2019. 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 large variety of topics including but not limited to item response theory, multistage adaptive testing, and cognitive diagnostic models. This volume is the 8th in a series of recent volumes to cover research presented at the IMPS.

Nearly 20% of the population has a disability. Despite this, mainstream research often does not explicitly address the methodological and practical issues that can act as barriers to disabled people's participation in social research. In this book, Aidley and Fearon provide a concise, practical introduction to making it easier for everyone to take part in research. Requiring no prior knowledge about accessible research methods, the book: * explains how removing barriers to participation will improve the quality of the research; * covers the research process from design, to collecting data, to dissemination and publication; * includes checklists and further reading, as well as useful examples and vignettes to illustrate how issues play out in practice. This book will be invaluable to researchers from a variety of backgrounds looking to increase participation in their research, whether postgraduate students, experienced academic researchers, practitioners or professionals.

In the social sciences, phenomena tend to be hierarchically structured, so that individuals belong to groups, and groups belong to larger organizations and societies. Multilevel research stresses this hierarchical structure of social life, and necessarily assumes the existence of a particular organization of the procedures of investigation. This organization, which is fundamental to the research, is called a research design. Because the research is hierarchical, it uses a multilevel design.

This book provides a detailed overview of the theoretical and methodological aspects of multilevel research based on the multilevel definition of social structure. Six chapters discuss the foundations of multilevel research and the applications of its research in the social sciences. An annotated bibliography follows, which is divided into eight sections on theoretical and methodological issues and on applications of multilevel research. Included are books and articles published from 1980 through 1993.

Public health policy prospectively and retrospectively addresses the consequences of events ranging from the commonplace to the catastrophic. Informing policymakers and stakeholders by enhancing their understanding of complex causation to justify remedial or precautionary actions is a critical science-policy task. In this book, the key aspects of catastrophes (regardless of their nature) and routine events are identified through a common framework for their analyses, and the analyses of the consequences associated with the potential occurrence of these events also are discussed. The book is not about disaster planning; instead, it is focused on analysis and causation in the context of informing - rather than formulating - public health policy. The author aggregates and fuses scientific information and knowledge in public health policy-science using alternative but complementary methods. The book first focuses on the analysis of catastrophes and commonplace events; the focus then shifts to causal models of multifactorial diseases, particularly at low doses or dose-rates, associated with these events. Topics explored among the chapters include: Policy and Legal Aspects of Precautionary Choices Catastrophes, Disasters, and Calamities: Concepts for Their Assessment Uncertainty: Probabilistic and Statistical Aspects Aggregating Judgments to Inform Precautionary Decision-making The aim of the book is to show that the analyses of events are fundamentally similar, regardless of whether the concern is a global catastrophe or commonplace. Analysis of Catastrophes and Their Public Health Consequences is a text that should engage students, instructors, and researchers in public health, science policy, and preparedness research, as well as serve as a useful resource for policy analysts, practitioners, and risk managers.

The practice-based approach to the study of work and organizing has been widely adopted in recent years, yet its theoretical and methodological systematization has only just begun. Silvia Gherardi expertly provides an overview on the topics and issues addressed by practice-based studies. By means of a series of examples drawn from the best-known analyses using this approach, the book provides methodological guidance on how to conduct empirical research on practices, and how to interpret them from three perspectives: practices 'from outside' practices 'from inside', and the social effects produced by practices. The distinctive trait of this book is the presentation of the classic studies that gave rise to the practice-based approach, and through their analysis the illustration of their problems and methods is presented. Masters students, doctoral students and scholars will find plenty of invaluable information in this methodological book. In relation to a lively and wide-ranging debate conducted at the international level, but not yet systematized in its methodological assumptions, the book will also be of interest to those practitioners curious about a view of work as a practical activity which develops within an ecology of social, economic and material relationships.