Social Science And Policy Challenges

Producing scientific knowledge that can inform solutions and guide policy-making is one of the most important functions of social science. Nonetheless, if social science is to become more relevant and influential so as to impact on the drawing and execution of policy, certain measures need to be taken to narrow its distance from the policy sphere. This decision is less obvious than it seems. Both research and experience have proved that policy-making is a complex, often sub-rational, interactive process that involves a wide range of actors such as decision makers, bureaucrats, researchers, organized interests, citizen and civil society representatives and research brokers. In addition, social science often needs to defend both its relevance to policy and its own scientific status. Moving away from instrumental visions of the link between social research and policy, this collective volume aims to highlight the more constructed nature of the use of social knowledge.

Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences. This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press. Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1972 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.

It seems like most of what we read about the academic social sciences in the mainstream media is negative. The field is facing mounting criticism, as canonical studies fail to replicate, questionable research practices abound, and researcher social and political biases come under fire. In response to these criticisms, Matt Grossmann, in How Social Science Got Better, provides a robust defense of the current state of the social sciences. Applying insights from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science and providing new data on research trends and scholarly views, he argues that, far from crisis, social science is undergoing an unparalleled renaissance of ever-broader understanding and application. According to Grossmann, social science research today has never been more relevant, rigorous, or self-reflective because scholars have a much better idea of their blind spots and biases. He highlights how scholars now closely analyze the impact of racial, gender, geographic, methodological, political, and ideological differences on research questions; how the incentives of academia influence our research practices; and how universal human desires to avoid uncomfortable truths and easily solve problems affect our conclusions. Though misaligned incentive structures of course remain, a messy, collective deliberation across the research community has shifted us into an unprecedented age of theoretical diversity, open and connected data, and public scholarship. Grossmann's wide-ranging account of current trends will necessarily force the academy's many critics to rethink their lazy critiques and instead acknowledge the path-breaking advances occurring in the social sciences today.

This book gathers an expert group of social scientists to showcase emerging forms of analysis and evaluation for public policy analysis. Each chapter highlights a different method or approach, putting it in context and highlighting its key features before illustrating its application and potential value to policy makers. Aimed at upper-level undergraduates in public policy and social work, it also has much to offer policy makers and practitioners themselves.

This collection of original essays focuses on the relationship of social scientists to the state and public policy in the industrialized democracies. The comparative approach of this book provides the basis for broader generalization about the linkages between social science and social scientist and the modern state and political power. Social Scientists, Policy, and the State brings fresh analysis to specific issues that are important to a more general understanding of these linkages. Part I examines the ways in which social scientists participate in the policy-making process. Part II looks at the uses made of ideas generated by social scientific research and at variations within and relations between the critical and expert roles of the social scientist. Part III discusses the factors that have contributed to change in the relationship of social scientists to power and to the state. This section also includes a detailed discussion about the cultural and structural conditions that facilitate or block the political influence of social scientists. This book should have equal appeal to teachers and researchers in the fields of comparative politics, policy making, and the sociology of knowledge.

The impact agenda is set to shape the way in which social scientists prioritise the work they choose to pursue, the research methods they use and how they publish their findings over the coming decade, but how much is currently known about how social science research has made a mark on society? Based on a three year research project studying the impact of 360 UK-based academics on business, government and civil society sectors, this groundbreaking new book undertakes the most thorough analysis yet of how academic research in the social sciences achieves public policy impacts, contributes to economic prosperity, and informs public understanding of policy issues as well as economic and social changes. The Impact of the Social Sciences addresses and engages with key issues, including: identifying ways to conceptualise and model impact in the social sciences developing more sophisticated ways to measure academic and external impacts of social science research explaining how impacts from individual academics, research units and universities can be improved. This book is essential reading for researchers, academics and anyone involved in discussions about how to improve the value and impact of funded research.

In this book, the evolution of building a modern and creative society in China is explored in juxtaposition with the development of school education in China. The authors examine how music education may help initiate a policy dialogue on creativity in Chinas school music education and the challenges between contemporary cultural and social values and communist ideologies, and between collectivism and individualism. Next, the authors propose a framework for effective policy practice and detail evidence-based strategies for competent social service policy practice. The framework is drawn from research, professional experience, the experience of colleagues, and the experience of social work students. A study is presented on junior secondary school students preferred musical styles and how different social factors have fashioned their musical preferences in contemporary Hong Kong culture. This study showed that music listening functioned as an aesthetic and leisure activity, but more importantly as a means of socialization. An important chapter is included that defines powerful network actors in public policy, demonstrates the effects of their actions, and explains reasons behind different types of networking. The authors review the five stages of policy cycle: formation, formulation, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation, placing greater emphasis on implementation. In closing, the concept of social change is examined from various angles, using differing definitions as given by many sociologists. The authors maintain that society, in conjunctio with social change, is dynamic and in a constant state of transformation.

How the NSF became an important yet controversial patron for the social sciences, influencing debates over their scientific status and social relevance. In the early Cold War years, the U.S. government established the National Science Foundation (NSF), a civilian agency that soon became widely known for its dedication to supporting first-rate science. The agency's 1950 enabling legislation made no mention of the social sciences, although it included a vague reference to "other sciences." Nevertheless, as Mark Solovey shows in this book, the NSF also soon became a major--albeit controversial--source of public funding for them.