Social Science Research

Social Science Research
Author: Anol Bhattacherjee
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2012-04-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781475146127

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.

Social Science Methodology

Social Science Methodology
Author: John Gerring
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 523
Release: 2011-12-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1139503774

John Gerring's exceptional textbook has been thoroughly revised in this second edition. It offers a one-volume introduction to social science methodology relevant to the disciplines of anthropology, economics, history, political science, psychology and sociology. This new edition has been extensively developed with the introduction of new material and a thorough treatment of essential elements such as conceptualization, measurement, causality and research design. It is written for students, long-time practitioners and methodologists and covers both qualitative and quantitative methods. It synthesizes the vast and diverse field of methodology in a way that is clear, concise and comprehensive. While offering a handy overview of the subject, the book is also an argument about how we should conceptualize methodological problems. Thinking about methodology through this lens provides a new framework for understanding work in the social sciences.

Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences

Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences
Author: Byron Kaldis
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 1195
Release: 2013-04-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1412986893

The entries in this encyclopedia give readers an opportunity to explore interconnections, clarify commonalities as well as differences or comparative contrasts, discover new fields or ideas of intellectual interest, explore adjacent conceptual zones that may be found to further expand their own disciplinary domains, and also understand better their own academic areas of expertise and the historical provenance of each. -- p. xxxi.

The Political Economy of Corruption

The Political Economy of Corruption
Author: Chandan Kumar Jha
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2023-05-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000873897

Corruption, commonly defined as the misuse of public office for private gains, is multifaceted, multidimensional and ubiquitous. This edited collection, featuring contributions from leading scholars in the field of corruption, goes beyond the standard enforcement framework wherein individuals only compare the expected costs and benefits of a corrupt act. These chapters explore the political-cultural contexts, legal and regulatory process and, above all, moral and psychological factors in attempts to understand and explain corruption. The book explores a broad canvas where gender, technology, culture and institutional structures influence attitudes towards corruption. Design and implementation of anti-corruption strategies benefit from suitable identification of these factors contributing to the prevalence and persistence of corruption. Combining theoretical and empirical studies with evidence from experiments as well as case studies, the book provides crucial state of the art in corruption research in a highly accessible manner. This book serves as a vital reference to students and scholars in economics, politics and development studies. Additionally, policymakers and development practitioners can use the insights from this book in successful design and implementation of anti-corruption policies.

Methodologies and Ethics for Social Sciences Research

Methodologies and Ethics for Social Sciences Research
Author: Demircio?lu, Aytekin
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2024-01-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Ethics, the moral compass guiding our actions, stands at the core of academic integrity. In the field of social sciences research, ethical violations persist as a silent threat, overshadowing the pursuit of knowledge. Uncovering the pervasive challenges, Methodologies and Ethics for Social Sciences Research boldly addresses the often-overlooked ethical breaches within scientific research. From plagiarism to the distortion of data, the book meticulously dissects common ethical pitfalls, emphasizing their significance in maintaining the credibility and trustworthiness of research outcomes. Recognizing the global nature of academic endeavors, the book sheds light on the cultural factors influencing ethical considerations, fostering a collective awareness among scholars. Methodologies and Ethics for Social Sciences Research transcends geographical boundaries, offering a comprehensive exploration of research methodologies in social sciences. It equips researchers, academics, teachers, and students with the tools to navigate the intricate terrain of scientific inquiry while upholding ethical standards. With a focus on the multicultural perspective, the book features contributions from academics worldwide, enriching the narrative with diverse experiences and insights. By incorporating practical examples of ethical violations from different countries, it not only highlights common ethical dilemmas but also provides a foundation for a shared global understanding of research ethics.

The Foundations of Behavioral Economic Analysis

The Foundations of Behavioral Economic Analysis
Author: Sanjit Dhami
Publisher:
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2020
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 019885367X

This is the sixth volume of focused texts developed from leading textbook The Foundations of Behavioral Economics. Authoritative, cutting edge, and accessible, this volume covers bounded rationality.

Handbook of Experimental Economic Methodology

Handbook of Experimental Economic Methodology
Author: Guillaume R. Fréchette
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 491
Release: 2015-01-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0190202165

The Handbook of Experimental Economic Methodology, edited by Guillaume R. Fréchette and Andrew Schotter, aims to confront and debate the issues faced by the growing field of experimental economics. For example, as experimental work attempts to test theory, it raises questions about the proper relationship between theory and experiments. As experimental results are used to inform policy, the utility of these results outside the lab is questioned, and finally, as experimental economics tries to integrate ideas from other disciplines like psychology and neuroscience, the question of their proper place in the discipline of economics becomes less clear. This book contains papers written by some of the most accomplished scholars working at the intersection of experimental, behavioral, and theoretical economics talking about methodology. It is divided into four sections, each of which features a set of papers and a set of comments on those papers. The intention of the volume is to offer a place where ideas about methodology could be discussed and even argued. Some of the papers are contentious---a healthy sign of a dynamic discipline---while others lay out a vision for how the authors think experimental economics should be pursued. This exciting and illuminating collection of papers brings light to a topic at the core of experimental economics. Researchers from a broad range of fields will benefit from the exploration of these important questions.

Micro-Macro Links and Microfoundations in Sociology RPD

Micro-Macro Links and Microfoundations in Sociology RPD
Author: Vincent Buskens
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2014-07-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317977246

Micro-Macro Links and Microfoundations in Sociology focuses on two main issues in sociology. Firstly, how macro-conditions can explain macro-outcomes mediated by actor behaviour at the micro-level (micro-macro links). Secondly, how alternative micro-models affect macro-outcomes (microfoundations). The contributions reflect key features of micro-macro modelling in sociology as well as recent progress in this field. The chapters address core features of explanations of social phenomena using micro-macro models, the problem of cooperation, heterogeneity of actors, structural balance, opinion formation, segregation, and problems of micro-macro models that are based on rational choice assumptions. Moreover, the contributions show how different research methods can be applied fruitfully, such as laboratory experiments, equilibrium analysis, and agent-based modelling. As a result, the book can be a guide for graduate students who want to develop their skills in building micro-macro models. In addition, the book provides specialists of the different substantive research areas with up-to-date new developments in their research area. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Mathematical Sociology.

Social and Economic Factors in Decision Making under Uncertainty

Social and Economic Factors in Decision Making under Uncertainty
Author: Kinga Posadzy
Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
Total Pages: 16
Release: 2017-11-16
Genre:
ISBN: 9176854213

The objective of this thesis is to improve the understanding of human behavior that goes beyond monetary rewards. In particular, it investigates social influences in individual’s decision making in situations that involve coordination, competition, and deciding for others. Further, it compares how monetary and social outcomes are perceived. The common theme of all studies is uncertainty. The first four essays study individual decisions that have uncertain consequences, be it due to the actions of others or chance. The last essay, in turn, uses the advances in research on decision making under uncertainty to predict behavior in riskless choices. The first essay, Fairness Versus Efficiency: How Procedural Fairness Concerns Affect Coordination, investigates whether preferences for fair rules undermine the efficiency of coordination mechanisms that put some individuals at a disadvantage. The results from a laboratory experiment show that the existence of coordination mechanisms, such as action recommendations, increases efficiency, even if one party is strongly disadvantaged by the mechanism. Further, it is demonstrated that while individuals’ behavior does not depend on the fairness of the coordination mechanism, their beliefs about people’s behavior do. The second essay, Dishonesty and Competition. Evidence from a stiff competition environment, explores whether and how the possibility to behave dishonestly affects the willingness to compete and who the winner is in a competition between similarly skilled individuals. We do not find differences in competition entry between competitions in which dishonesty is possible and in which it is not. However, we find that due to the heterogeneity in propensity to behave dishonestly, around 20% of winners are not the best-performing individuals. This implies that the efficient allocation of resources cannot be ensured in a stiff competition in which behavior is unmonitored. The third essay, Tracing Risky Decision Making for Oneself and Others: The Role of Intuition and Deliberation, explores how individuals make choices under risk for themselves and on behalf of other people. The findings demonstrate that while there are no differences in preferences for taking risks when deciding for oneself and for others, individuals have greater decision error when choosing for other individuals. The differences in the decision error can be partly attributed to the differences in information processing; individuals employ more deliberative cognitive processing when deciding for themselves than when deciding for others. Conducting more information processing when deciding for others is related to the reduction in decision error. The fourth essay, The Effect of Decision Fatigue on Surgeons’ Clinical Decision Making, investigates how mental depletion, caused by a long session of decision making, affects surgeon’s decision to operate. Exploiting a natural experiment, we find that surgeons are less likely to schedule an operation for patients who have appointment late during the work shift than for patients who have appointment at the beginning of the work shift. Understanding how the quality of medical decisions depends on when the patient is seen is important for achieving both efficiency and fairness in health care, where long shifts are popular. The fifth essay, Preferences for Outcome Editing in Monetary and Social Contexts, compares whether individuals use the same rules for mental representation of monetary outcomes (e.g., purchases, expenses) as for social outcomes (e.g., having nice time with friends). Outcome editing is an operation in mental accounting that determines whether individuals prefer to first combine multiple outcomes before their evaluation (integration) or evaluate each outcome separately (segregation). I find that the majority of individuals express different preferences for outcome editing in the monetary context than in the social context. Further, while the results on the editing of monetary outcomes are consistent with theoretical predictions, no existing model can explain the editing of social outcomes.

An Experimental Economic Analysis of Banker Behavior

An Experimental Economic Analysis of Banker Behavior
Author: Martin Hülsen
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2018-07-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3658228083

Martin Hülsen explores individual behavioral trustworthiness of and within the banking industry in Germany based on an economic experiment combined with psychological instruments. He finds that bankers have a reputation for being untrustworthy. However, his evidence also shows that the true story of banker trustworthiness is more complex: In particular, he explores differences between employees of commercial banks on the one hand and employees of savings and cooperative banks on the other.