“Our paper,” writes G. Christopher Crawford, “is both a cautionary tale for scholars before attempting replications and a roadmap for the domain to guide and encourage replication studies.” That dual warning and call to action permeates the research note that first authors Crawford, of the Rutgers Business School at Rutgers University, and Vitaliy Skorodziyevskiy of the Department of Management & Information Systems at Mississippi State University, with co-authors Casey J. Frid of the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business, Thomas E. Nelson of the University of South Alabama, Zahra Booyavi of the Rutgers Business School, Diana M. Hechavarria of the Muma College of Business at the University of South Florida, Xuanye Li of the Rutgers Business School, Paul D. Reynolds of the Colorado-based Paul Reynolds and Associates, and Ehsan Teymourian of the Rutgers Business School, saw published recently in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. Here, Crawford talks about the origin of the underlying research, the trials in conducting it, and why the uphill effort that resulted in failure is a useful demonstration of how science happens.

Though the published title of our manuscript is “Advancing Entrepreneurship Theory Through Replication: A Case Study on Contemporary Methodological Challenges, Future Best Practices, and an Entreaty for Communality,” the title above was what we submitted with our original proposal to Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice’s special issue on knowledge accumulation in the domain (except we had a star (*) in place of funking’s “n”). The idea was built off of the Crawford et al. (2015) paper in the Journal of Business Venturing investigating PSED II, CAUSEE, KFS, and INC5000 (N~12,000) and the finding that all inputs and all outcomes (when measured on continuous scales) in entrepreneurship were distributed according to a power law. In these distributions, multiple high-performing outliers skew the distribution far to the right, making a traditional Gaussian normal curve look like a child’s slide, where the majority of observations are below the statistical mean.

We know that one outlier has the potential to influence the size and direction of effects, the significance of hypothesized relationships, and significantly alter the results of published works, but what happens when there are dozens of outliers in a sample?

Given that outliers can be found in human, social, intellectual, and financial capital, as well as expectations for future growth, entrepreneurial action, and environmental munificence, we proposed that these outliers were likely to have some influence on some of the domain’s seminal, and influential papers. Thus, we planned to conduct constructive replications of 30 seminal studies that used the same dataset(s) as did Crawford et al. (2015). Changes in the results of these papers could turn the domain on its head, we thought. In order to properly execute constructive replications, though, we first needed to exactly replicate the analyses (i.e., with the same N, same correlations, same coefficients), which would then give us a baseline for conducting additional experiments to test theory and identify boundary conditions. However, for the first few months of our investigation, the co-authors couldn’t correctly replicate any of the studies. For sure, it was a daunting task.

We forged ahead and kept trying. It wasn’t until after we hired eight statistical analysts (paying nearly US$38,000 in wages) and started asking authors of the papers for advice (about studies that were sometimes 20+ years old), data, and scripts that we were able to exactly replicate one study. And even after all that, we were only able to exactly replicate six of the 19 studies we attempted. With such a low success rate, though consistent with other domains, it becomes exceedingly difficult to build cumulative knowledge and research legitimacy. Therefore, instead of funking up the domain, we found that we first had to bring the domain together. Our paper is both a cautionary tale for scholars before attempting replications and a roadmap for the domain to guide and encourage replication studies.

And Miles to Go Before We Sleep

The real world is full of misinformation, exaggerations, bad intentions, and lies. That’s what drew me to science. To be sure, there were mistakes. My middle school textbook discussed the impending ice age, and the man-made hole in the ozone layer. Apparently, the Aqua Net favored by our theater department for turning normal hair into a plastic facsimile was also favored by hominids thousands of years ago. But over time, science comes closer and closer to the truth.

And those involved in the creation of knowledge try. We really do. But we get it wrong sometimes. I remember the first time I encountered this. I was devastated. At 14-years-old a lot of things devastate you. This instance was cold fusion. Now a footnote in history, at the time reasonable people all across the world thought that our energy problems were over. A team at some university or other had created a fusion reaction at room temperature. If this could be replicated then eventually every home in the world could have a tabletop reactor creating virtually unlimited energy, giving off only helium as a byproduct. But it couldn’t be replicated, and so, after several attempted replications, scientists moved on.

The point is, there was a process. It worked because of the free and accurate sharing of information. Years later, as a grad student I was sitting at a table with Benson Honig. We were chatting about data availability and replicating research. He had very strong opinions, opinions that I agreed with. I promised that I personally would provide my data to anyone who asked. (As a result of that promise I haven’t published out of my dissertation because I was robbed and my data disappeared. Such is life.) We agreed that data should be available, analysis should be spelled out, and everything should be made available, upon request, to other scientists who might want to extend the work or even just check it.

It was with that background I had the good fortune to hook up with a talented bunch of researcher/authors working on a large project using the PSED. This thing could be a dissertation or two, and will end up being several papers. The first was recently accepted. I’m thrilled that academe has found our work interesting enough to share. I’m disappointed in what we found.

We attempted first to reproduce a bunch of analysis from published papers, then replicate and extend the research. We assumed that the reproduction was going to be simple, and we’d start having problems when we attempted to replicate and extend. Nope. I was unsuccessful with every reproduction I attempted. I was unable to get to the same N as any of the studies I was examining. This was frustrating and I thought I was going to be kicked out of the club for my incompetence. Fortunately, others had similar problems and our failure became the story.

But our failure was different than the cold fusion failure. We didn’t fail the experiment; we couldn’t even set the experiment up. We couldn’t figure out from the published research what beakers, batteries, and solution we should be using to reproduce the experiment. This is a real problem, and one we describe in great detail in the paper, along with making several suggestions about how to limit this problem in the future.

What we discovered was, at least to us, interesting. That may be why it’s being published. But what we found wasn’t really new. Much has recently been written about problems with replication, first in psychology I believe, then in other fields. The term “replication crisis” was coined in the ‘early 2010’s’ according to everyone’s favorite secret research buddy, Wikipedia. Stories of faked data ending careers and invalidating research are not uncommon. Even completely tongue-in-cheek articles are shepherded through the publication process with journal editors missing the joke. There are problems. A fantastic part of the scientific process is becoming aware of these problems and working to fix them. Our article is an attempt to do part of that work and we hope that it makes a significant contribution.

The post Funking Up the Domain: How Outliers Skew Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice appeared first on Social Science Space.

In this fourth response to Ziyad Marar’s thought piece “On Measuring Social Science Impact” from Organizational Studies, Mike Taylor argues that using multiple metrics and data points has become the default in so many of our daily decisions; the same should be true of our research publication choices. 

If we’re going to invest in a hand-held blender, and all we want to spend is $20, we’re likely to take into account a number of factors. Speed, weight, power to name but three. Add-ons, charging power, even the manufacturer’s reputation likely will come into our buying decision. So why, then, if we are spending much more than $20 on an article – whether through an OA fee to publish, or a subscription to read — would we just take one metric into account? And especially (keeping to our metaphor!) when it was designed to describe a washing machine, and one built many decades ago? 

The research world has become much more sophisticated, especially in the world of open access publishing. Researchers, publishers and other stakeholders go to considerable effort to ensure that their research is widely read, accessible and shareable.  

It is commonly accepted in the research evaluation community that different disciplines exhibit different citation speeds. A computer science paper’s citations are likely to have plateaued within two years of its publication; a paper on theology most likely is still waiting for its first citation.  

Other forms of citation are no different: when we measure impact using Altmetric data, we can clearly see that different fields exhibit different behavior over time. We can measure online conversations linked to research on social media platforms (a phenomenon known to drive traffic to an article); we can monitor the citations that form evidence on Wikipedia (the fourth most visited website in the world) across a variety of languages; and we can track the citations placed by the authors of policy documents as they seek to build the policies that shape our world. 

In each case, the social sciences exhibit a unique profile. Together, with the humanities, the social sciences continue to gather attention on Twitter many years following publication.  

The humanities (the slowest set of disciplines for citations) are the most cited on Wikipedia, whereas the social sciences dominate policy citations. 

Not one single metric can encapsulate the importance of a field, and for those fields that are slower (but broader), this is especially true. The social sciences have a unique impact on society, transforming research into social engagement, informing public dialogue and affecting social policy.  

So, before you spend that $20, take a moment to add a few more ingredients to your list and create a richer mix.  

The post The $20 Blender Dilemma: How Different Data Can Create the Perfect Mix   appeared first on Social Science Space.

The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University is partnering with La Vie des Idées, a leading publishing platform for social science and humanities dialogue and thinking. The partnership publicly launched on June 8 at CASBS.

The June 8 gathering of invited guests included Frédéric Jung, the French consul general in San Francisco, on hand to lend his support to the initiative as well as cut a ceremonial ribbon at the moment inaugural content went live on the La Vie des Idées website and appeared on the center’s main meeting room screen. Joining him to cut the ribbon and deliver remarks were CASBS’s incoming director, Woody Powell, and La Vie des Idées’s co-editor-in-chief, Jules Naudet.

The inaugural content (French and English versions), published on June 8, features in-depth interviews with five CASBS-affiliated scholars – current CASBS fellow Megan Finn, 2020-21 fellow and current research affiliate James Guszcza, CASBS senior research scholar Roberta Katz, 2013-14 CASBS fellow Nilam Ram, and 2020-21 fellow and current research affiliate Allison Stanger. Each possesses deep expertise on aspects of the social consequences of and societal dynamics related to the digital revolution and our Big Tech-driven political economies.

On June 17, La Vie des Idées published a review ( French and English versions) of a book, Going the Distance, by 2017-18 CASBS fellow Ron Harris, as part of the partnership. Harris wrote much of the book during his fellowship year.

Upcoming releases as part of the partnership will explore a variety of topics, including civil rights and the politics of identity, with current CASBS fellow Hakeem Jefferson; the societal consequences of gun violence and police brutality, with current fellow Laurence Ralph; authoritarian threats to democracy and democratic institutions, with current fellows Helen Milner and Daniel Treisman; and a book review on what we can learn from a new history of American capitalism.

La Vie des Idées (which translates to The Life of Ideas), founded and directed by Pierre Rosanvallon, is associated with the Institut du Monde Contemporain, part of the Collège de France, which has a rich tradition dating to 1530. Since its debut in 2008, La Vie des Idées has served as an “intellectual cooperative” providing a forum for essays, interviews, and reviews that cross both international and disciplinary divides while bridging gaps between academic and public discourses. It engages the expertise of a network of global writers and correspondents and has open-access published more than 5,000 original essays by more than 2,600 contributors.

In his remarks, Jung emphasized not only the exchange of ideas as strengthening both partner organizations, but also the importance of open sharing of those ideas with the public, embracing a spirit with a long tradition at CASBS and a much longer one at the Collège de France.

La Vie des Idées has established itself as the preeminent publishing platform of its kind in France and the French-speaking world. “Having a half-million people a month looking at a social science website is quite an achievement,” Jung said. “Combined with the quality of scholars CASBS attracts, this is a great partnership being launched right now.”

To further extend its reach, La Vie des Idées publishes some of its content on its English-language website, Books & Ideas. All content published as part of the partnership with CASBS will be published in both French and English.

The partnership comprises three types of publications. One is reviews of recent books initiated, drafted, completed, or otherwise worked on by CASBS fellows while they were in residence at the center. A second type is essays or “intellectual portraits” of influential scholars throughout CASBS’s 68-year history. This could include collaborative groups of fellows involved in the generation of ideas and the development of new sub-disciplines or generative lines of research; CASBS is known to have played major roles in this capacity. The third type is interviews with current members of the current CASBS class (and other CASBS-affiliated scholars) in a given fellowship year. Interviewees are experts through which critical topics, ideas, and debates will be explored. Here, too, collaborative groups working under the CASBS umbrella may serve as the vehicles for such exploration.

While the launch interviews appear in written form, some future releases — for example, the appearances by Jefferson, Milner, Ralph, and Treisman — will be in video format.

As one of La Vie des Idées’s co-editors-in-chief since 2009 is Jules Naudet, a 2021-22 CASBS fellow as well as sociologist at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris. Upon arriving in residence at CASBS in September 2021, he immediately recognized synergy and collaborative potential, and he played the pivotal role of connective tissue between the French publisher and the center.

“The idea of this partnership stems from common values our organizations share about the advancement of people’s thinking on problems and challenges of societal importance,” Naudet said at the June 8 launch gathering. “Together, CASBS and La Vie des Idées can facilitate greater circulation and exchange of ideas. Our joint ambition, through short, readable, and open-access essays and videos exploring cutting-edge empirical social science and humanities research, is to further expand and enrich public discourse – across national boundaries – and thus widen the perspectives and common understandings of global audiences.”

Once Naudet and his CASBS collaborators, including director Margaret Levi, established the partnership’s contours during fall 2021, they set about curating a roster of talent and candidate topics that would populate the inaugural content. Naudet personally conducted the interviews and composed the introduction (French and English versions) to the first set of publications.

The subject matter explored in the launch content acknowledges not only CASBS’s location within Silicon Valley, but also its position as a wellspring of thought leadership on issues interrogating relations between technology and society. One of its ongoing multi-year research programs is on Humans, Nature, and Machines. The center also co-steers the Ethics, Society, and Technology Hub, a presidential initiative at Stanford University. And it has hosted or produced a multitude of tech and society-related events, each featuring CASBS-based experts, in recent months and years. 1These include “Building Social Science into the Foundation of AI Practice;” “High-tech Modernism,” “The Digital Dilemma in the Time of COVID;” “Today’s Technologies, Tomorrow’s Humans;” “Digital Media, the Public Sphere, and Democratic Governance;” “The Consequences of Technological Developments for Politics and Government;” “The Effects of Technology on Human Interactions;” “AI, Automation, and Society;” and “Women in Tech: Where Have We Seen Progress? Where are We Stuck?” View them all on the CASBS YouTube channel.

I look forward to seeing all the new contributions, and myself being one of the partnership’s many readers,” he said. “Long live the partnership between CASBS and The Life of Ideas.”

The post CASBS Partners with French Online Platform La Vie des Idées appeared first on Social Science Space.

Engineer and applied physicist Arati Prabhakar – who previously headed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and National Institute of Standards and Technology — has been nominated to head the Office of Science and Technology Policy and as such be the chief science adviser to the U.S. president.

If her nomination by President Joe Biden is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she will become the first woman, immigrant, and person of color confirmed to head the Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP. The office is currently overseen by sociologist Alondra Nelson, serving on an acting basis since Eric Lander stepped down in February amid allegations of bullying.

“Dr. Prabhakar is a brilliant and highly-respected engineer and applied physicist and will lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy to leverage science, technology, and innovation to expand our possibilities, solve our toughest challenges, and make the impossible possible,”  Biden was quoted in a release from the White House. “I share Dr. Prabhakar’s belief that America has the most powerful innovation machine the world has ever seen. As the Senate considers her nomination, I am grateful that Dr. Alondra Nelson will continue to lead OSTP and Dr. Francis Collins will continue to serve as my acting Science Advisor.”

While Prabhakar comes from the STEM world, her experiences include a 2017-18 fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Her aim there was to take “a fresh look at long-standing issues — how our society creates technology and how we make wise choices about its use — for this era of global, fast-paced advances.”

In addition to being the president’s chief advisor for science and technology, Prabhakar would be co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a member of the presidential cabinet.

Prabhakar has been confirmed by the Senate before – unanimously – to lead the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Starting at age 34, she led the institute from 1993 to 1997. She served as director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, from 2012 to 2017. Under her leadership, the White House noted, DARPA kick-started the development of a rapid-response mRNA vaccine platform that made possible the quick development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Between leading NIST and then DARPA, Prabhakar spent 15 years in Silicon Valley, helping bring R&D to deployment as a company executive and as a venture capitalist. In 2019, she founded Actuate, a non-profit organization bringing new actors to the table to develop solutions to the challenges of climate, health, trustworthy data and information technology, and opening access to opportunity for every person.

Prabhakar’s family immigrated from India to the United States when she was 3. She earned a degree in electrical engineering degree from Texas Tech University and was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in applied physics from the California Institute of Technology, where she also earned an M.S. in electrical engineering. She is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

The post Engineer and CASBS Almnus Arati Prabhakar Tabbed to Head U.S. Science Policy Office appeared first on Social Science Space.

The insidious negative effects of racist stereotypes on African Americans’ academic performance was described in The Atlantic in 1999 by former National Science Board member and social psychologist Claude Steele in “Thin Ice: Stereotype Threat and Black College Students.” The research that Steele referred to throughout the article was conducted during the 1990s and published in several well-respected peer-reviewed outlets. It made a splash and spawned an entire branch of research on the various ways that negative stereotypes deleteriously impact their targets.

As an assistant professor of psychology at that time, Steele’s work resonated strongly with me on both personal and professional levels. While delighted to be a member of what was then a top nationally ranked psychology department, I was acutely aware of my status as the only African American member among the 60-plus faculty in the department. I routinely encountered other faculty and graduate students who openly questioned my professional credentials and legitimacy, and even wondered aloud about whether I had what it took to be successful. It was not just that I was a young woman or that I was an African American. It was what I represented in toto, including the confidence and grit I needed just to be present, that most seemed to vex my detractors. So, in addition to managing the expected pressures of being an assistant professor within a research-intensive setting, I also worked hard to counter the stereotype-based expectations of inferiority that a considerable number of people held about me.

Optimism despite failure

My own research over the years has explored the performance pressures and cognitive consequences of having solo status in a task-performing group; the effect of being a member of a group that is collectively new to an organization; as well as the various ways that group composition can facilitate or hinder group performance, among other things. What I most enjoy about that work is the extent to which it is possible to identify certain observations about human behavior and then use those insights to cultivate a plan or a strategy for better interpersonal interaction and more harmonious group processes.

A common thread of my work and that of the nearly $10 million research investment within NSF’s Science of Broadening Participation program, is a focus on understanding the conditions necessary for inclusion and strategies for expanding opportunity. In 2008, NSF’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate convened its first workshop to synthesize decades’ worth of existing research addressing ways to effectively broaden participation in STEM educational attainment and workforce development. Eight years later, in 2016, that activity was followed by an NSF-supported symposium that went beyond merely identifying and assembling findings, to establish an ambitious research agenda for scientists across the country to explore strategies to bring more minority students into STEM fields.

Now more than ever, that research is clearly critical. It has shed light on enduring mysteries about how people from widely different backgrounds can work together effectively to achieve common goals. As a result, we know that having a shared group identity helps people get along – whether in work groups, neighborhoods or entire nations. And, we know that emphasizing the things people have in common, rather than their differences, goes a long way to engendering the necessary esprit de corps for civic engagement, community building and cooperative social interactions.

I do not normally consider myself to be an optimist. But I realize that in writing this, at a very fundamental level, I am. Despite our generation’s collective failure to leverage what we know about people’s hearts and minds to become a better, kinder and more just society, I continue to believe in the value of science to advance our understanding of what works (and what doesn’t work) in our efforts to increase the diversity and quantity of participants in the U.S. science enterprise.

This idea has taken hold of me and motivates much of my work within the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Institutions that do without

Most forecasts of the future STEM enterprise in the U.S. paint a sobering picture. Increasingly fewer students enter STEM fields each year, with declining numbers among the white, middle-class students who have traditionally filled the majority of STEM roles. This impending future, coupled with increasing challenges for immigrant participation in the U.S. STEM enterprise, underscores the importance of welcoming STEM participants from groups that have not historically participated in large numbers. According to the 2019 Women, Minorities and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering Report from NSF’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, although African Americans and Hispanics together make up roughly a quarter of the U.S. population, their presence in STEM fields compared to their white counterparts remains far less.

To be clear, however, it is not only individuals from minority groups that are underrepresented in many of our nation’s labs and classrooms. There are also many minority-serving institutions of higher education that have never been recipients of NSF funding. And yet, those institutions continue to disproportionately educate, train and graduate ethnic minority students; the very students who can help us to strengthen America’s future in STEM.

According to the most recent report on NSF’s merit review process, more than 70 percent of NSF funding in fiscal year 2018 went to about 100 universities. While that elite group includes several research-intensive Hispanic-serving institutions, it does not include any historically Black colleges or universities or any tribal colleges or universities. Institutions that do not typically receive financial support for research often lack the resources needed to establish labs, recruit strong faculty and support graduate students. Among those colleges and universities, it is minority-serving institutions that are heavily represented. This is akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy in that those which have obtained very little or no federal support lack the resources necessary to effectively compete for federal support.

Build and Broaden

As the deputy assistant director of NSF’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate, my colleagues and I looked inward as we considered the small number of financial awards that our organization makes each year to minority-serving institutions. As a result, we launched Build and Broaden, a funding opportunity inviting proposals aimed at fostering partnerships and kick-starting research collaborations in the social, behavioral and economic sciences among minority-serving institutions while enhancing the research infrastructure and capacity of those institutions.

Our minority-serving institutions continue the mission of supporting and training many of our nation’s future scientists and engineers. But with additional resources and funding, they can do so much more.

I encourage the faculty and staff at our nation’s many historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribal colleges and universities and others that serve minority students, to engage with NSF’s Build and Broaden program and learn how you can submit a proposal.

And above all else, I hope that you will use your confidence and grit to overcome stereotypes and pursue the scientific work that calls you.

The post Why Social Science? Because It Can Help Fight Stereotypes in the World of Science appeared first on Social Science Space.

Psychologist Kellina Craig-Henderson, who has been serving as the acting head of the National Science Foundation’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, has been appointed as the permanent boss.

Craig-Henderson has been serving as the acting head since January, when Arthur ‘Skip’ Lupia’s appointment expired. She had served as deputy assistant director of the directorate during Lupia’s tenure, one of several high-profile jobs she has had at the National Science Foundation (NSF) over the last 16 years.

As its name suggests, the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate (SBE) supports fundamental research in behavioral, cognitive, social and economic science. By budget, it is the smallest of the seven research directorates at the foundation, but the quarter billion dollars it allocates in grants annually is the primary source of funding for academic social science basic research in the United States.

Before coming to the foundation, Craig-Henderson served on the faculty in the Department of Psychology and in the Afro-American Studies and Research Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She also served in the Psychology Department at California State University, Long Beach. In addition to her positions atop the SBE directorate, she has served as deputy division director of the directorate’s Social and Economic Sciences Division and director of the foundation’s Tokyo Regional Office.

Her own research program focuses on studies of groups, cross-cultural, gender and race issues, as well as aggression and expatriation processes. Her published work includes two books, Black Men in Interracial Relationships: What’s Love Got to Do with It? and Black Women in Interracial Relationships: In Search of Love and Solace.

A release from NSF reports that “Craig-Henderson is passionate about broadening the participation of underrepresented groups and has been involved in several national and international activities that share this focus.”  She has promoted the establishment of new social science funding mechanisms, such as Build and Broaden, that support evidence-based research on the science of broadening participation.

Craig-Henderson received her bachelor’s from Wesleyan University and her master’s in social science from the University of Chicago. She earned a master’s and a doctorate in psychology from Tulane University.

The post Craig-Henderson Made Permanent Head of NSF’s Social and Behavioral Science Directorate appeared first on Social Science Space.

The ultimate aim of research funders is for their research to benefit society. Hence, they require applicants to reflect on issues such as ethics, gender, open science, public engagement and science education. The European Commission uses the term ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’ (RRI) to refer to practices that address these issues. As such, RRI stands in for one of many processes aligning research and innovation to societal values, needs and expectations. Yet, many researchers struggle to understand what RRI entails and how they can incorporate it into their work. Our Societal Readiness Thinking Tool supports funders and researchers to include reflections on aspects of open and responsible R&I practices in their calls and applications, respectively.

Consider Kate, a computer scientist specializing in algorithms for biometric tools. She found a call for a project on border management in Horizon Europe. The European Commission intends for the research to ‘contribute to the implementation of the European Border Surveillance System and the development of tools and methods for Integrated Border Management.’ This sparks Kate’s interest, as she worked on such tools in a Horizon 2020 project. The final Technology Readiness Level the commission expects is 5-7: ‘Technical Demonstration.’ Kate understands the final product might be only one or two steps away from implementation. This is an exciting opportunity to have a real impact! There is just one question Kate asks herself:

‘Throughout our Horizon 2020 project we paid so much attention to Responsible Research and Innovation to ensure societal acceptance of the technology that we were developing. Biometrics is quite a sensitive issue …but now this call doesn’t mention anything about ethics?!… Yet, its result should be a prototype for a border management tool. Should we just focus on the technical aspects?’ 

Recognizing the challenge of systematically thinking about societal readiness, we aimed to create an accessible framework for researchers to support musings like Kate’s. Our Societal Readiness Thinking Tool seeks to be a bridging resource between funders and the researchers who do not necessarily have prior experience or exposure to concerns like those under the banner of Responsible Research and Innovation.

Although the tool was developed with researchers in mind, we anticipate it will help funders integrate societal and technical issues in their funding calls. At the end of the day, it may be the call text itself that really gets researchers thinking more about developing their research in ways that respond to societal concerns. This is where funders can do more. The recent batch of Horizon Europe calls have dismally few references to societal and ethical concerns in the texts. Most simply ask for technological fixes to pre-supposed problems without any reflection on whether and how societal issues might be important to include. This represents not least a degree of moral hazard, but also a waste of the resources that went into developing RRI frameworks.

Why should funders care about integrating societal concerns in their calls? As Roger Strand argues in more detail, there are at least three arguments. First, it gives society a voice to (re)shape the trajectory of science, increasing the likelihood that we arrive at desired destinations. Second, it involves society in the actual research process, which contributes to trust in science and increase the adoption of its achievements. Third, it stimulates collaboration within science and between science and society, which is crucial for the grand challenges, or missions, society faces.

To include societal considerations in research, the tool addresses five Responsible Research and Innovation keys: ethics, gender, open access, public engagement, and science education. The tool also integrates four process-focused responsible innovation dimensions: anticipating (potential impacts), including (diverse perspectives), reflecting (on motivations and assumptions), and responding (based on new information from these three activities).

In a curated experience, the tool translates these policy and scientific concepts into relatable questions users can answer to reflect on projects. No matter what phase the research they think about is in. No matter how much they know about responsible research and innovation required. No matter whether they are a funder, a researcher, or a consultant. Examples of such questions include: ‘Which actions will be taken to ensure diverse perspectives on the potential ethical issues arising in your project?’ and ‘Who might be excluded from the benefits of the project, and how will you address this?’ Ideally, users meet with colleagues, stakeholders, and potential end-users to think through answers together. Answering such questions not only helps researchers carry out more usable research, but also helps funders demonstrate they are pushing the boundaries of what it means to support excellent science with and for society.

As the European Commission states on its tenders page for Horizon Europe:

‘Such framework should be accompanied by a solid scientific model that connects future technologies with their future use. This should allow to identify how future civil security technology, research, innovation and industrial trends impact, influence and shape future threats and security capabilities, taking into account contextual aspects. These may include ethical, legal, societal, economic, geopolitical, environmental or industrial aspects […]’

If funders include a link to the Societal Readiness Level Thinking Tool, or any other previous Commission investments like it, then Kate would have a much easier time starting to think through these issues, connect with people with complementary skills to augment project proposals accordingly, and generate excellent research that advances TRLs while balancing social and ethical concerns.

The post We Developed a Tool to Make Responsible Research and Innovation Easier appeared first on Social Science Space.

On June 13 the national science academies of the United States, the all-European academy and those of four separate European countries released, with the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the following statement. The short statement offers 10 specific steps on rebuilding “a modern and globally integrated science and research system” in Ukraine now, even as the Russian invasion continues unabated.

This is not the first public support the science academies offered Ukraine. On March 2, the academies of the Group of 7 nations released a statement urging Russia to end its “unprovoked” attack immediately.

We, the leadership of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, the ALLEA European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, and the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, met in Warsaw, Poland on June 2, 2022. The aim of the meeting was to discuss and agree on steps to build a strong science, innovation, research, and training system in Ukraine. Our discussions recognized the challenges in making progress given the still ongoing invasion by Russian forces, but also were driven by an understanding that rebuilding science and research in Ukraine, are critical to ensure its long-term prosperity and sovereignty. As such, we strongly encourage that while global leaders develop programs and make funding commitments for Ukraine, there should be a focus on rebuilding a modern and globally integrated science and research system. The 10 actions articulated below are practical steps that can be taken by scientific communities of our countries, and also those around the world. While some of the actions can be achieved in the near term, others will depend on the evolving military and security situation in Ukraine. The list is subject to expansion and readjustment, and takes into consideration past experiences in dealing with war-affected countries.

1. Maintain institutional affiliations in Ukraine for Ukrainian researchers receiving temporary appointments abroad, in order to encourage repatriation once hostilities cease and the overall situation improves.
    
2. Develop specific funding programs directed to early-career researchers from Ukraine and their teams, including such using remote working agreements.
    
3. Establish funding programs for joint research by international teams with researchers working in Ukraine and provide for joint appointments.
    
4. Provide access to specialized research facilities abroad, especially those that duplicate Ukrainian facilities damaged or destroyed during the hostilities.
    
5. Provide remote, free access to scholarly journals to Ukrainian research institutions.
    
6. Grant waivers for Article Processing Charges (APC), membership dues in scientific organizations, and conference participation fees for researchers and research organizations in Ukraine.
    
7. Establish brain circulation measures for Ukrainian researchers for networking and mutual learning with colleagues and organizations in the international scientific community.
    
8. Donate much needed and still useable laboratory and research equipment to Ukrainian institutions to replace capabilities destroyed during the war.
    
9. Plan for post-war science recovery of Ukraine with the future needs of the nation in mind, including the modernization of Ukraine’s research, early-stage innovation and education.
    
10. Establish a coordination council to maximize impacts, minimize redundancy, and make meaningful use of synergies, accounting for issues related to junior and senior-level researchers.

Antonio Loprieno
All European Academies

Gerald Haug
German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina

Marcia McNutt
National Academy of Sciences (USA)

Anatoliy Zagorodny
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Jerzy Duszyński
Polish Academy of Sciences

Marie Louise Nosch
Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters

Robin Grimes
The Royal Society

The post Open Letter: Action Steps for Rebuilding Ukraine’s Science, Research, and Innovation appeared first on Social Science Space.

Ruth Sims, an organizational development and communications professional, discusses the importance of fellowship. She is the co-author, with Frankie J. Weinberg, of “More than Follow the Leader: Expectations, Behaviors, Stability, and Change in a Co-Created Leadership Process.” published in Group & Organization Management.

No kid says, “I want to be a follower when I grow up.” The thought of following elicits strong reactions: disbelief, confusion, even embarrassment when someone confesses “I think I follow well…” Ambivalence about followership and the corresponding academic and practitioner emphasis on the importance of leadership prompted us to challenge assumptions about leading and following in the leadership process. Our research demonstrates followership as the often-missing piece in the leadership puzzle. Two stories highlight this perspective and our motivations for conducting this research. 

When Ruth’s children were young, they attended weekly circus classes where they learned technical skills such as juggling, tumbling, riding a unicycle. They also learned to work together, to combine ideas, to give and receive instruction. Participants learned to become aware of what was happening around them, to see risks for themselves and for others, and to speak up. Everyone had opportunities to perform, everyone was in the audience. Performers and audience members were active and mutual participants. This is much like how leading and following occur in workplace organizations. Everyone – regardless of role or position – can, and should, engage in both. Observations such as these inside and outside the workplace prompted Ruth to consider the crucial role that followership plays in organizational and leadership processes. These observations have had such an impact on her approach to organizational science that they stimulated her to research followership for her PhD.

Frankie has dedicated much of his work in leadership to workplace mentoring relationships. A curious thing about mentorship literature, distinct from most leadership research, is that it tends to be overwhelmingly mentee-centric. Mentoring research focuses largely on outcomes such as mentees’ personal learning, satisfaction with mentoring, receipt of instrumental support, and career outcomes. This suggests an unusually follower-centric subset of leadership research. In his more recent research, Frankie has extended a co-constructionist approach to mentoring whereby the mentor (leader) and mentee (follower) work together to construct mentorship. When he partnered with Ruth for this project, he was attracted to the way in which it fits with and expands upon these constructionist foundations while serving as a launching point from which to more straightforwardly explore ways to generalize following and followership. 

Organizations need good followers and good leaders. Taking followership seriously challenges how we often think about workplace relationships and roles – perhaps why reactions to it are so strong. Our conceptual paper addresses some gaps in our knowledge about how leading and following expectations and behaviors interact on the foundation that followership and leadership must be researched as they are enacted – in tandem. To move toward a more complete understanding of leadership, we suggest how expectations of one’s self and of others influence leading and following behaviors and the leadership process. We outline a system through which the leadership process is understood as co-created and unfolding over time; our model accounts for both stability and change in partners’ expectations and behaviors. We welcome the opportunity to discuss this new approach to leadership process with Sage Ink’s readership. 

The post Followership is (FINALLY) Equally Important appeared first on Social Science Space.

Today we look at how engineering education can guide students to developing an entrepreneurial mindset most effectively, as discussed in “First-Year Engineering Students’ Conceptualization of Entrepreneurial Mindset,” accepted in Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy. Lead author Darby Riley, a graduate student of engineering education at Rowan University, along with Hayley Shuster, an undergraduate electrical and computer engineering student at Rowan University, Courtney LeMasney, an undergraduate chemical engineering student at Rowan University, Carla Silvestri, an associate systems engineer at L3Harris Technologies, and Kaitlin Mallouk, an assistant professor of experiential engineering education at Rowan University, reflect on how typical college experiences can help develop an entrepreneurial mindset in engineering students.

In the digital age, information is published at faster rates, with greater accuracy, and (in many places) free of charge. With references so readily available and easy to navigate, students and professionals alike do not often need to rely upon their memories to understand problems and design solutions. Students especially often wonder about “the point” of attending classes, as they can just as easily find the same information on the internet without leaving their dorms. It may at first seem like a weakness, but this wealth of information at our students’ fingertips gives instructors the opportunity to focus on other areas of education, such as skill-building and mindset cultivation. This research focuses on the ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ (EM) as applied to engineering education, specifically how students conceptualize entrepreneurial skill sets, and what actions by instructors might guide them in developing EM most effectively.

EM describes a set of behaviors used by successful entrepreneurs. Though precise definitions vary, some of the fundamental skills include identifying opportunities for innovation, creative problem-solving, value cultivation and monetization, and strong communication with customers. It is easy to see how these skills might map to those utilized by a professional engineer: identifying problems in the field, thinking “outside the box,”, optimization strategies, and working with a potential user base to develop effective solutions are all citical aspects of professional engineering. It is also important to note that these behaviors don’t require any specific knowledge base, but are rather developed through practice. As such, finding ways to instill EM in students can be difficult; there is no process of memorization, or any way to write EM into an exam. Without accepted definitions, studying EM is also a significant challenge.

We used students’ written responses to reflection questions to explore their conceptualization of EM based upon the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network’s (KEEN) 3Cs framing, which distills EM into three core tenets: curiosity (asking questions, looking for opportunities), connections (drawing information from many sources, networking with other professionals), and creating value (optimizing solutions, designing for a user base). First-year engineering students were asked to write about an experience they had had at college, and connect it to one of the 3Cs of EM. They responded to this prompt twice: once at the beginning of their first semester, and once at the end.

From our analysis, it is clear that students understand the worth of EM prior to intervention, and that typical college experiences (i.e. those not necessarily designed to influence EM) have the ability to influence large changes in this mindset over a short period. It would seem that students don’t require any convincing to be interested in cultivating these “soft skills”, and merely need to be presented with the opportunity to do so. This was something of a pleasant surprise, as student motivation is a major hurdle in education of any kind. We’re interested in pursuing this research more deeply, particularly through other EM frameworks, as well as with college seniors who have benefitted from four years of EM-building activities.

The post Engineering an Entrepreneurial Mindset appeared first on Social Science Space.

Two months ago, I returned to the United Kingdom after an absence of five years. I spent this time in East Asia, in academic systems that are profoundly different from higher education in the UK. While away, I kept in touch with colleagues in the UK, and I followed the news about developments at British universities. I also had the opportunity to work with a great group of colleagues on a new book on academic capitalism, due to be published later this year. All this has allowed me to keep track of the most recent permutations of academic capitalism, both internationally and in the UK. Still, none of this can quite make up for immediate experiences of academic labor under conditions of progressive commercialization of academic life. My return has therefore given me the opportunity to experience first-hand what has changed, and to think about some of the consequences of these changes.

For more than a decade now, I have been writing about academic capitalism on these pages. I began with a blog post on what I termed then the ‘lecturer experience.’ With this term, I sought to characterize the marginalization of academics in academic organizations and the precarization of academic labor, against the backdrop of the conversion of scholarship into a commercial service. At the time, almost exactly 11 years ago, I wrote:

“Of all the PhD graduates in my commencement year and the adjacent years, only a bare handful managed to find lectureships and establish themselves through research and publications. This applies to both my department and acquaintances from other sociology departments around the country. The overwhelming majority have since drifted out of academia or barely subsist on the patchwork of unstable jobs outlined above. This lack of achievement cannot easily be explained by a shortage of scholarly talent – I have in mind prize winners, recipients of a variety of very competitive scholarships, and graduates who passed their vivas at leading universities with no corrections. The explanation rather is to be found among universities and sociology departments who recruit too many talented individuals to pursue doctorates without subsequently offering them opportunities to make meaningful contributions to the discipline. The ‘cuts’ are going to make this pattern worse, but they are unlikely to change it. What remains are questions: How much scholarly potential has, speculatively, been lost by driving talented graduates to the margins of academia, or beyond? How can this loss of potential be compensated for?”

Has this changed? It has, in that the pattern of precarization, endless pressure to perform, scarce rewards, and little regard for scholarship on its own terms has still more deeply entrenched in academic life. Returning to the UK, one of my most striking experiences has been the discovery that so many great scholars I used to know here have left academia. I am not thinking about academics who had to leave as short-term contracts expired and new employment was not in sight. I am thinking about colleagues on permanent contracts who had become so disillusioned with academia that they chose to retire or find work elsewhere. A great loss for academia – highly accomplished scholars who would have been in a position to contribute much to our understanding of the social world have faded from the scene.

The reasons I have been given for this are always similar: unsustainable workloads, threats of being made redundant in spite of sustained academic achievement, and the meaninglessness of academic work that now seems to be entirely about the pursuit of ‘metrics,’ rather than intellectual debate.

Is it really that bad? Subjectively, not necessarily. Your mileage might vary. It probably depends on where you work. Structurally, probably. I do think that there is a pattern there.

At the same time that colleagues are heading for the exit, I am struck by how deeply entrenched the imaginary of academic capitalism has become in academia. The language by which you work is one indicator. There used to be much debate about ‘managerialism’ and the rise of ‘audit culture’ at British universities. By now, the language with which this managerialism is packaged seems to have become unquestioned common sense, from ‘line managers’ that used to be ‘heads of department,’ to the ‘student experience’ that seeks to sell students a commodified entertainment package for what used to be called ‘reading for a degree.’ The fact that academics used to play a central role in the governance of their universities, e.g. via their senates, also seems to be fading from memory, while top-down authoritarian structures have become the norm.

While those who can and think they must are heading for the exit, a new common sense may elide the potential for progressive transformation at universities. All this is not without conflict – the long-lasting wave of strikes about working conditions and pay speaks to that. But where is the way out from all this, without a clear progressive ideal of what universities can also be. To be sure, such an ideal has been articulated, over and over again, for many years, in the many critiques of academic capitalism in the UK and elsewhere. The problem is that none of these critiques have taken root, while commercial common sense has.

Where to from here? My – as almost always on these pages – pessimistic intuition suggests that universities will embrace the vocational, commercial side of higher education even more enthusiastically, faced with the consequences of Brexit, an escalating economic crisis, and the philistine demand, again long entrenched in higher education policy, to demonstrate ‘impact’ and good use of taxpayers money. For academics, this will mean more demands to focus on applied research, alongside more redundancies for those in disciplines, in the humanities and social sciences, not amenable to these demands.

The writing is on the wall, with mass redundancies in non-vocational disciplines a prominent feature of academic life this year (1, 2). The end result of all this might be a much-diminished academic landscape. New visions for academia are needed, alongside new strategies to contest entrenched ways of imagining scholarship and academic labor.

The post Commercializing UK Academia: What’s the Next Step? appeared first on Social Science Space.

In this post, co-authors Fabian Reck and Alexander Fliaster, both at the University of Bamberg, reflect on their research paper, “Far-Reaching or Closely-Knit, Innovative or Complementary? – Network Configurations and Firm-Level Innovation in the German Energy Sector,” published in Strategic Organization.

Digital, smart, green – companies in traditional industrial sectors are currently confronted with a range of innovative challenges. Typically, those innovative challenges require a variety of skills that no individual firm can possess on its own. Consequently, a systematic acquisition of knowledge, ideas and expertise from outside sources becomes a strategic imperative. To succeed in the innovation game, firms need to set up and orchestrate a vibrant network of valuable partners.

Management scholars have long recognized the importance of this issue, but provided rather inconsistent advice on how firms should configure their networks to foster innovation. In our recent paper published in Strategic Organization, we diagnose that previous research largely focused on isolated, effects of singular factors such as network size or partners’ diversity. Less is known, however, about how those key network characteristics operate together. We advocate that to understand the impact of networks on innovation, it is the combination of network characteristics rather than their individual effects that matters. Accordingly, the aim of our research is to identify “optimal” network configurations, i.e., combinatory patterns of key network attributes that consistently contribute to high innovation performance of the firm.

Based on survey data of CEOs and innovation executives from the 300 largest utilities in Germany and drawing on network analytics, we computed five key attributes (size, diversity, strength, innovativeness, complementarity) of each firm’s network, alongside two internal characteristics of the firm (intellectual capital, firm size). Deploying fuzzy-set qualitative analysis (fsQCA) on the data, we identified four distinct types of high-performing networks:

(1) “Share & Care”: This type of network combines high levels of complementarity and strong ties between the firm and its partners. One example from our research is a smaller utility that maintains trusted cooperative relations with project developers for renewables and specialists for building automation. This network was heavily involved, for instance, in the development of a nearly 100 percent self-sufficient renewable energy system for a large childcare facility – a highly innovative smart energy project that was awarded on the national level.

(2) “Elite Circle”: This network configuration is characterized by strong ties and high levels of partners’ innovativeness. An example from our dataset is a rather small firm that has been top-ranked by a major business magazine in its list of “Germany’s Most Innovative Energy Providers.” Its network consists of a small set of high-quality partners, including start-ups, research institutes, and multinationals. With its long-term partners, the firm engages in cutting-edge innovation projects in the energy business, such as blockchain-based applications.

(3) “Antennae”: The third type of network comprises a large number of ties to partners with strong innovation skills. Our exemplary case for this type of network is one of the largest German utilities with leading expertise in a broad range of technology fields, including e-mobility and smart home applications. To cultivate a network of many capable partners, the firm engages in a range of strategic initiatives to attract and scout new partnering opportunities. For instance, the company maintains ‘internet of things’ platforms for energy-related services, and recently issued an innovation contest to attract high-tech start-ups and grasp novel ideas and solutions that “rattle around worldwide” (as described by the CEO).

(4) “Portfolio”: The final type of network that has been identified in our study is characterized by a large number of partners and high level of partner complementarity. A case in point is a larger utility that engages in a deliberate search for the right partners in each of its innovative efforts. For instance, the utility cooperates with local mining companies in a project on geothermal heating, it participates in an innovation platform with leading software companies, and it engages in the development of illumination technologies together with an innovative medium-sized electronic company.

Taken one by one, the four configurations can serve as blueprints for business organizations on how to set up a high-performing strategic network. What’s more, our study reveals that each of the four network types benefits different kinds of firms: The “elite circle” and “antennae” networks (both characterized by partner innovativeness) work well for firms with a strong base of own intellectual capital. On the contrary, the “share & care” and “portfolio” networks (both characterized by partner complementarity) are advantageous for firms with rather weak internal expertise. In turn, large firms benefit more from engaging in “antennae” and “portfolio” networks (i.e., large-sized networks) whereas small firms should rather rely on “share & care” and “elite circle” networks (i.e., networks with strong ties).

In sum, we hope that the results of our study advance research on strategic interorganizational networks and also provide useful leads for strategists in business organizations who strive to increase innovation performance.

The post Four Types of Strategic Networks and How They Benefit the Innovation Performance of Energy Firms appeared first on Social Science Space.

Mexican archeologist and anthropologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma last month received the 2022 Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences. The prize jury cited Moctezuma’s “extraordinary intellectual rigor in reconstructing the civilizations of Mexico and Mesoamerica” while ensuring “that this heritage is integrated objectively and free of myth. … Due to his scientific intelligence, capacity for dissemination and social commitment, Eduardo Matos Moctezuma and his work serve as an inspiration for the coming generations of social scientists and citizen society in general.”

Matos Moctezuma has carried out fieldwork in archaeological sites such as Comalcalco, Tepeapulco, Bonampak, Teotihuacan, Cholula, Tula, Tlatelolco and Tenochtitlan, among others. Specifically noting his direction of work at Tula in the 1970s, Teotihuacan (where he excavated the Pyramid of the Sun and founded the Museum of Teotihuacan Culture and the Center for Teotihuacan Studies ) and Tenochtitlan (where he the Templo Mayor and coordinated investigation of the site since), the Asturias jury called his work “an exemplary milestone in the scientific development of archaeology and a fruitful dialogue with the past, between different cultures and between social and human sciences.”

“This award fills me with pride and the names of my teachers –who trained me in the field of anthropology and, in particular, archaeology– come to mind,” Matos Moctezuma said, in Spanish, after receiving the award. “Digging into the past to bring it into the present has been the task that I have unceasingly carried out throughout my life. Today I observe, with great satisfaction, the fruits of that task, which have allowed me to learn about our own history and how it was linked to the history of other countries such as Spain.”

Every year, Spain’s non-profit and private Fundación Princesa de Asturias (Princess of Asturias Foundation) recognizes a suite of individuals, bodies, and organizations from around the globe who have made significant achievements in the sciences, humanities, and in public affairs. The foundation has made an award in social science since the first honors were made in 1981.

A native of Mexico City, Matos Moctezuma, 81, graduated in archaeology from the National School of Anthropology and History and obtained his master’s degree in anthropological sciences, specializing in archaeology, from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he also earned his doctorate. He held a chair at the National School of Anthropology and History for more than 30 years. Matos Moctezuma was director of the Center of Research and Graduate Studies in Social Anthropology from 1982 to 1986; director of the National Museum of Anthropology from 1986 to 1987; and director of the Templo Mayor Museum from 1987 to 2000.

He has written a number of influential books, including 1975’s Muerte a filo de obsidiana (now in its 12^th edition), The Aztecs (English translation, 1989), La metrópoli de los dioses (1990), Teotihuacán (1994), Life and Death in the Templo Mayor (English translation, 1995), Las piedras negadas (1998), La muerte entre los mexicas (2010), Grandes hallazgos de la arqueología. De la muerte a la inmortalidad (2013) and, last year, Tlatelolco. La última ciudad, la primera resistencia.

The Princess of Asturias Award is the latest honor for Matos Moctezuma, who received Mexico’s Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes in 2007.  He has honorary doctorates from the University of Colorado and UNAM, is a Chevalier of France’s National Order of Merit and Order of Academic Palms, and Officier of its Order of Arts and Letters. He received the Henry B. Nicholson Medal from Harvard University in 2002, the Andrés Bello Order of Venezuela and the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology Medal from the Universidad Veracruzana. In 2017, Harvard created a chair in his name.

The king and queen of Spain, as well as the heir to the throne, Leonor, Princess of Asturias, will preside over the presentation of the Princess of Asturias Awards in October. Each recipient receives a Joan Miró sculpture, a diploma, an insignia, and a cash prize of €50,000.

The post Groundbreaking Archeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma Wins Asturias Social Science Prize appeared first on Social Science Space.

In this third response to Ziyad Marar’s thought piece “On Measuring Social Science Impact” from Organization Studies, professor Laura Rovelli, one of the advisory board members for the Declaration on Research Assessment, or DORA, discusses some of the components of impact beyond citation count and how we can harness those components.

The relevance or lifespan of social and behavioral science encompasses, from an instrumental approach, at least two aspects.

The first reflects their contribution to the design and enforcement of diverse public policies that align development with equity, diversity, inclusion, and sustainability. These are broadly expressed in some of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.

The second aspect, and one inherent to these disciplines, relates to the production of critical knowledge and its inputs to reflexivity in science. This can be seen, for example, through the identification of scientific commons, the relationship between new heritages and new technologies, alongside analytical and methodological perspectives, theories, and concepts. This type of knowledge is oriented towards conviviality and the different collective forms of living together. It involves key dimensions of social interaction and organization, ways of dealing with social demands and conflicts, and it nourishes public debate in democratic societies.

One example is the role of historians opening the hidden archives and processing the memories of 20th century dictatorships in many Latin American and Caribbean countries. A more recent example is the actions of social scientists, feminists and diversity movements to implement same-sex marriage and voluntary, legal abortion; these resulted in little recognition and reward in academic and scientific research assessment ecosystems, but had a wide and transformative impact on the landscape for our societies.

International diagnoses, in the form of declarations of principles, statements, recommendations, and studies, have warned about reliance on journal impact factors or citation-based indicators as a proxy measure to assess the quality of individual trajectories and performance in academia and research articles’ contributions in all disciplines (DORA, 2013; Hicks, et. al., 2015). Particularly in social and behavioral sciences, the extended misuse of these measures limits the local autonomy and discourages research from interacting with society (Ráfols, 2019). It also restricts different forms of knowledge creation and communications, which can include peer-reviewed journals but more extensively affects reports, lectures and books (UNESCO, 2021).

In this scenario, the Latin American Forum for Research Assessment (FOLEC, in Spanish) from the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) encourages knowledge circulation indicators and methodologies that assess and value different scales, varied registers, linguistic diversity and different audiences, based on the profile of the researcher or institution under evaluation (CLACSO, 2021). Therefore, it promotes bibliodiversity and advocates multilingualism, and favors development of socially relevant research that helps sustain cultural diversity (CLACSO, 2022). It also complements the notion of impact in research assessment with the notion of collaboration and participation in research processes. This can be seen in relevance and social interaction indicators, social intervention and creation for social purposes indicators, and other measures drawn from the tradition of the social and behavioral sciences.

To better incentivize impact that goes beyond citation count, funding agencies and academic institutions should advance regional collaboration for adequate federated infrastructures, scientific information systems and interoperable databases, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. The scientific information and data contained in the region’s institutional repositories, and evaluated by peers, could contribute to the design of new indicators more in line with the diversity of existing knowledge in social and behavioral sciences and its rootedness in societies. At the same time it can strengthen the components of open and reproducible research, open research assessment, open access and open data, as part of a global and new social pact for science, all pivoting on research assessment systems reform.

The post Enhancing the Role of Local Input for Measuring Value appeared first on Social Science Space.

In this post, author Katharina Gilli of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano answers questions regarding the paper, “Leadership Competencies for Digital Transformation – An exploratory content analysis of job advertisements,” that Gilli, Michael Nippa and Michael Knappstein published in the German Journal of Human Resource Management.

What motivated you to pursue this research?

Rapid and profound developments in digital technology have led to an era of high uncertainty and disruption which present many companies with major challenges in the necessary digital transformation. According to our own experiences and interviews with industry experts many digital transformation processes have failed due to the lack of leadership skills rather than the primary lack of knowledge about digital technologies. Surprisingly, only a few previous studies have empirically investigated which leadership skills companies expect from managers who are to successfully shape the digital transformation process.

This raised our interest and led us to the exploration of competencies needed to manage digital transformation. We analyzed 239 job advertisements targeting digital transformation experts and examined the skills and traits explicitly called for.

Were there any surprising findings?

Our results reveal that technical skills and in-depth expertise in information technologies play only a secondary role in job requirement profiles. Instead, digital transformation experts should primarily possess collaboration, strategic thinking, leadership, customer orientation, and communication skills.

Even though the term digital transformation is deeply interwoven with technology and data, our results provide evidence that general managerial and leadership skills are at least equally relevant to skills related to digital technologies.

In what ways is your research innovative, and how do you think it will impact the field?

Our study offers an important contribution for a better comprehension of leadership competencies that have an impact on the success of digital transformation processes. We supplement existing studies that propose such skills based on conceptualizations with the perspective and needs of practitioners. The systematic overview of skills and traits can be used to check and complement job descriptions and advertisements currently used.

The strong emphasis on communication skills, cross-functional collaboration in teams, strategic thinking, and customer orientation bears a strong resemblance to other strategic change processes. It seems to reflect the fact that digitalization and an advanced comprehension of digital transformation concepts concerns a process of change that has been ongoing for decades, even if it has recently become more dynamic and extensive.

Digital leaders are expected to orchestrate a team of technology experts, business experts, entrepreneurs, and HRM experts. In this regard, our research is in line with other authors claiming that people, not technology, drive digital transformation and that organizations require leaders and not necessarily technological specialists for managing the complex changes that comprise an organization’s digital transformation.

The post Digital Transformation Needs Organizational Talent and Leadership Skills to Be Successful appeared first on Social Science Space.

‘Scholars from the periphery’ often pay a price — unintentional but no less real — for their geography. In this post, Amon Barros and Rafael Alcadipani, both professors at Fundação Getulio Vargas’s Sao Paulo School of Business Administration (FGV EAESP), reflect on their paper, “Decolonizing Journals in Management and Organizations? Epistemological Colonial Encounters and the Double Translation,” published in Management Learning.

The idea for publishing “Decolonizing Journals in Management and Organizations? Epistemological Colonial Encounters and the Double Translation” in Management Learning emerged almost naturally from our everyday interactions with “international” academia. Our school is heavily focused on increasing its global reach. Although we recognize our privileges for having this opportunity, we also live with the challenges emerging from entering new frontiers and becoming “native.” We always highlight among ourselves and our students that when you are aiming for an international audience, you need to be prepared for at least three challenges. First, the language barriers; second, the translation of ideas that goes beyond writing and communicating in English and includes learning new aesthetics for writing a manuscript. Finally, the difficulties emerging from being read as an “other” someone coming from a different place sometimes borders xenophobia.

We also realized that networking and politics impact which papers are accepted or rejected. Being from Brazil puts people in a disadvantageous position to build up successful networks that can help foster publications in top international journals.

We believe that our piece successfully developed these ideas and brought up the need for journal communities, including editors and reviewers, to think of new and more inclusive ways of bringing diverse research and scholars and broaden the scope of their conversations. For instance, they could assign associate editors that can evaluate an idea in its original language before asking for full papers in English or even having an entire process conducted in a different language. Although our proposals might sound fancy to some, social sciences are heavily dependent on communicating ideas through written words, sometimes unable to rely on numbers or formulas.

Additionally, it is essential to stress the material costs of being an international scholar. Most academics coming from outside rich countries cannot afford to even dream of participating in these areas. However, in Brazil, the pressure is increasing for forced internationalization, which sometimes leads researchers, especially young scholars, into a dead-end. Also, the community must recognize that some of the difficulties international scholars face do not come from lack of talent, or inability to communicate in English, but often not-so-subtle gatekeeping coming from prejudice. If we do not talk about it openly, we will not challenge those terrible practices and create mechanisms and incentives for greater inclusivity.

Our piece is innovative because we take the point of view of scholars from the periphery who tries to publish in “international” journals and participate in an academic setting that is different and sometimes distant from the Brazilian reality. We share and expose the difficulties of this process. By doing that, we indicate the colonial logics which per passes many academic journals and international arenas and propose feasibly actions that can be taken to try to make journal publications less unequal.

The post The Invisible Challenges ‘Foreign’ Authors Must Face appeared first on Social Science Space.

Americans know the cycle following unimaginable acts of gun violence well: first horror, then hope, followed by helplessness. Tragedies like the Uvalde and Buffalo mass shootings capture national attention, forcing us to face the prevalence of gun violence in the United States and breeding hope that the horrific shock might spur the country to do whatever it takes to prevent even more mass shootings–a tall order in a country where over 200 mass shootings have already occurred in the first five months of 2022. Then, nothing happens. Hopelessness sets in as we recognize that the political system is unwilling to respond to demands for change—such as background check reform—supported by the vast majority of Americans. 

This hopelessness does not just reflect the unresponsiveness of the American political system. It also reflects a more basic problem: we know far less than we should about how to prevent gun violence in the US. In a remarkable meta-study on the impacts of gun policy conducted by the Rand Corporation in 2018, researchers found that much-debated gun policies often lack strong scientific evidence of their effectiveness–a lack of knowledge often attributed to the so-called “funding freeze” on federally-funded gun research ushered in by the 1996 Dickey Amendment. The amendment stipulated that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” As its namesake, US Representative Jay Dickey, and gun safety advocate Mark Rosenburg later recognized: “As a consequence, U.S. scientists cannot answer the most basic question: What works to prevent firearm injuries?” 

We—two sociologists—had a hunch that this narrative wasn’t wrong, but that it was almost certainly incomplete. After all, while the Dickey Amendment had certainly chilled public health research on gun policy, gun harm can be many things: a crime problem, a public health crisis, an issue of political culture, and a social justice cause—and how gun harm is defined as a social problem will shape how we research it. So, we undertook a study to analyze project abstracts from 1996 to 2016 on gun violence research funded by three major agencies not impacted by the CDC funding freeze: the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, and the National Institute of Justice.

We found a clear pattern: in the federal agencies we studied, criminal justice approaches dominated funded research on gun violence. They treated gun harm as arising from intentional criminal acts, and they emphasized interventions that center criminal justice institutions such as criminalization, policing, and incarceration. As we combed through our dataset, we realized that this emphasis on crime reflected a broader phenomenon known as ‘governing through crime’: pressing social problems are understood primarily as problems of crime, which in turn justifies punitive or risk-management solutions. Punitive responses to homelessness, immigration, poverty and other social problems are all examples of this phenomenon, but in our research, we found that we could extend this insight to gun research, too. We use the term ‘knowing through crime’ to recognize how criminal justice discourses and institutions have come to shape what we know about causes and solutions to gun harm.

In our database, even alternative approaches to understanding gun violence, such public health research, often integrated a criminal justice perspective, emphasizing criminal behaviors, criminal justice policies, or forensic work alongside other factors. While framing gun violence as a problem of crime may help make some research more “fundable” against the backdrop of the Dickey Amendment, it also impacts on how we understand and address gun violence. Not only does it distract from other effective solutions but it creates troubling consequences that deepen inequality. People of color and disadvantaged communities disproportionately bear the brunt of punitive policies, from police killings to mass incarceration. Gun crime policy is no exception.

There were, however, alternatives to ‘knowing through crime.’ While the criminal justice approach to gun violence research dominated federally funded projects, it also provided a framework against which more critical research was positioned. Some studies took a social justice frame to understanding gun violence and emphasized the role of racial, class and gender inequalities and the transformative possibilities of community empowerment among marginalized groups. Another set of projects emphasized the political and cultural factors that shape attitudes and policies towards guns in the US. Both offered powerful alternatives for understanding gun harm–and for moving beyond criminal justice approaches. 

While academia might purport itself to be a “marketplace of ideas,” our study suggests that both formal (e.g., the Dickey Amendment) and informal (e.g., the culture of crime) factors have combined to shape which ideas transform into sound scientific evidence—leading us back to criminal justice approaches that often fail to address the underlying causes of gun violence while also aggravating inequality. This doesn’t mean that we know nothing about which gun policies might work better than the ones we have now in addressing gun violence. We can and should pursue policies backed with scientific evidence. But we must also acknowledge that scientific evidence is shaped by the broader political and cultural contexts in which gun policy is debated. 

When gun violence urgently erupts into the public consciousness, as it did over the past few weeks, the public often looks to researchers to understand how gun violence happens and what can be done to lessen its toll. Researchers have an obligation to provide scientifically sound evidence about gun policies, but if we hope to move the debate forward, we have to do more: we must think critically and creatively about gun policy and resist the familiar narratives that not only seep into our public consciousness but also slip into our research agendas. This, ironically, was one of the initial promises of public health approaches to guns: to develop evidence-based policies that could generate consensus without galvanizing political divides. That promise, of course, did not materialize: public health scholarship in the 1990s generated a backlash that culminated in the Dickey Amendment. Today, opening up debate about the Dickey Amendment would be a crucial step but not enough: researchers must be unhampered—including by dominant narratives—if they hope to not just inform but also elevate our political debates about gun harm.

The post ‘Knowing Through Crime’: How We Define Gun Harm Shapes How We Research It appeared first on Social Science Space.

In 1953, Sociological Review published a paper by two distinguished sociologists, Edward Shils and Michael Young, reviewing the ritual aspects of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. They argued that these enacted and celebrated the fundamental moral values that restrained egotism and held societies together: ‘generosity, charity, loyalty, justice in the distribution of opportunities and rewards, reasonable respect for authority, the dignity of the individual and his right to freedom.’ These values were so deeply embedded as to seem to be beyond dispute, part of the sacred rather than the profane. Quoting Emile Durkheim, they point to the importance of the periodic reaffirmation of this moral order. Constitutional monarchy is an institutional device for articulating values beyond the transient concerns of everyday politics.

Shils and Young examined the details of the Coronation Service and the associated communal celebrations. They noted, in particular, the orgiastic elements of popular response, as a reaction to the years of privation and drabness during World War II and the post-war economic crises. In this respect, there are many analogies with post-pandemic sentiment and the Platinum Jubilee. Despite the censorious pronouncements from some biomedical and public health figures, the British people seem to have been determined to enjoy to the full a four-day public holiday. Some of the detail, however, deserves a closer scrutiny for the way in which the celebrations also pushed back against the sub-Ayn Rand selfishness and narcissism that has marked UK politics in recent years. The monarch cannot directly criticise the government of the day. Ceremonials of this kind are, however, meticulously planned and offer opportunities to create signifiers of fundamental values.

We might actually begin a week ago with the State Opening of Parliament. This is the occasion when the sovereign travels to Parliament to initiate a new legislative session. The monarch is required to read without emotion a speech written by the government which sets out its planned programme of new laws. Traditionally, this was little more than a list of titles but, in recent years, has been drafted in more polemical ways. In 2022, the Queen excused herself from attending and the speech was read by the Prince of Wales. On the following day, she allowed herself to be filmed at a horse show, clearly having a very jolly time – she has a great, and well-informed, passion for horses and horse racing.

She chose not to attend the military parade of Trooping the Colour on June 2nd but appeared afterwards on the balcony of Buckingham Palace next to her great-grandchildren. The theme of family was much stressed throughout. On June 4th, Prince George and Princess Charlotte had their first walkabout with their parents in Cardiff – George might expect to inherit the title of Prince of Wales when his father becomes king. They were also highly visible at the concert of popular entertainment that evening. The black sheep – the Sussexes – were only seen at the Service of Thanksgiving in St Pauls Cathedral on June 3rd. Celebrity was notably absent – it was reported that a Kardashian had flown in, asked for a ticket to the concert and been refused!

Of particular interest might be the treatment of the Prime Minister. He was roundly booed on arrival and departure by the crowd outside St Pauls Cathedral, as noted by the live commentator and international news organizations. The BBC, in its role as state broadcaster, chose, however, to use a different soundtrack for subsequent clips in its main news bulletins and to claim that cheers could also be heard. A number of columnists pointed out that this was not likely to be the result of political opponents camping out overnight to get the best view of the royal family. Johnson was also assigned a Bible reading from Phillipians 4:8 about the importance of honour and integrity in life, qualities that many observers have suggested that he does not possess in abundance. We could also remark on the fact that he, and his third wife, were seated immediately behind the Cambridge family at the concert as a very clear visual contrast.

While the Queen was absent from both the Thanksgiving Service and the Saturday evening concert, she made a conspicuous contribution to the latter in a pre-recorded sketch with the cartoon figure of Paddington Bear. As many, including his creator, have noted, Paddington is an undocumented migrant from Peru. While the stories are cosy and comic, they are also about the decency of the British family who welcome him, contrasted with a hostile neighbour, and about the ways in which the bear tries to navigate a different culture. The sketch begins with Paddington thanking the Queen for having him to tea – lines later clipped out by the BBC, which he then proceeds to disrupt while she smiles benignly, and culminates in them bonding over marmalade sandwiches and tapping out the introduction to Queen’s ‘We will rock you’ as the opening of the concert. The contrast with a government actively seeking to make migrants unwelcome is very apparent. It continued throughout the concert, which notably represented the diversity of UK society. Diana Ross as the closing act may not be the most militant symbol of Black participation but its significance should not be overlooked.

Shils and Young’s analysis of the Coronation has not gone uncontested and there have been dissident voices around the Jubilee, from a handful of republicans and from reparations activists. Nevertheless, the Platinum Jubilee celebrations are an occasion to recall their criticism of the intellectual snobbery of some elements of the intelligentsia. Michael Young, in particular, was deep in his study of the traditional working class communities of East London and the paper has a number of vivid anecdotes of what the Coronation meant there.

“To the doctrinaire, to the ideological intellectual,’ the ordinary sociable man is a poor thing – narrow, unprincipled, unmoral. The ordinary man, is, of course, by no means as poor a thing as his educated detractors pretend.”

While the language may have dated – we might now prefer to think of the ‘ordinary person’ – the argument has not. The moral order matters and we would all be poorer without its periodic reaffirmation. As Shils and Young concluded, the very powerlessness of the Crown created an important constitutional check on the sectarian ambitions of politicians. In a very literal sense, the Crown could speak truth to power on behalf of the nation.

The post The Meaning of the Platinum Jubilee appeared first on Social Science Space.

They end with a list of cited work, sometimes alphabetical, sometimes numbered. First names are not always included. Authors in the middle of long lists are reduced to “et al.” “They” are the articles, books, reports and other documents we read as researchers. Those lists at the end are important, and they matter. Citations matter. They have politics, create reputations, and make or break scientific careers. A recent Nature article authored by Diana Kwon outlines recent moves to improve “citational justice” for women and minoritized ethnic groups.

Citing, annotating, referencing – these practices are central to all forms of academic work. They are how we join the ongoing conversation of scholars, scientists and researchers, and how we contribute to the accumulation and revision of knowledge. The details of how to cite may vary between countries, disciplines and publishers, but it is a core skill that we all learn in our early days and weeks at university.

As we move from being students to researchers and become more engaged in publishing, citations show with whom we want to connect and in which debates we want to contribute. Citing the work of others demonstrates that we’ve read the literature in our field and acknowledges the intellectual contributions of those who have gone before us. Furthermore, it protects us from committing plagiarism, the great academic sin of taking others’ work as our own.

It is important to pay attention to whom we cite, especially, as there is increasing evidence that women, people of color, and other minoritized groups are systematically under cited (see, for example, Caplar, Tacchella and Birner, 2017; Chakravartty, Kuo, Grubbs and McIlwain, 2018; Fulvio, Akinnola and Postle, 2021). However, citations often hide as much as they identify. For women and people of color, one might have to make assumptions based on first and last names. Evidence about other aspects of identity, including sex and gender diversity, are absent unless authors make it explicit in their work.

We recently produced a guide for the Female Empowerment Maastricht University network (FEM), innocuously called UM Citation Guide, A Guide by FEM. Its aims are however more pointed. We wanted to do something to improve citational justice, to improve the visibility of the contributions to knowledge by all minoritized groups, and to invite colleagues to reflect on their own citational practices.

What can you do to improve the visibility of their contributions to knowledge? In our guide, we provide examples of good practice for different groups. For example, authors are reminded to check whom they quote directly and whom they paraphrase, as the former gives more authority. Students have an important role to play, in reminding their fellow students and their teachers to reflect on gender and other biases in reading lists. Editors and reviewers are reminded to look at some of the guidelines produced by professional associations. For example, the journals of the Biomedical Engineering Society recommend that authors include citation diversity statements.

As an author, you can also consider your own self-citation practices as you tread the fine line between helping readers understand the development of your ideas and coming across as self-promoting and arrogant. Reporting on a study of self-citation, Dalmeet Singh Chawla suggests that men are 56 percent more likely than women to cite themselves.

Citational politics are not simple though, as a series of posts on this blog have discussed. For instance, Nicole Holzhauser has shown how social capital (including gender) shaped the 20^th century canon in sociology. Eamon Duede points to how behavioral biases shape citational practices. And Shannon Mason and Margaret Merga provide a healthy reminder that less “prestigious” journals can provide more diverse research. They show us that improving citational justice means looking beyond impact factors for interesting work. Thus, paying attention to citation practices should also be part of the calls for open science.

When writing the citation guide, we were inspired by the “aspirational metrics” of Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein, included as an appendix in their book Data Feminism, put simply this entails a commitment to a different way of citing work, even if this may be very difficult. For instance, they wanted to hold themselves accountable to their own commitments to intersectional feminism, equity and transparency. They are admirably honest, and despite their best efforts, failed to meet their aspirations of including 75 percent of their references and examples to the work of women, non-binary people, and people of color. In so doing they acknowledge their own position of privilege in elite US institutions, and the effects that their training and position have had on their knowledge.

As long as citations remain a marker of esteem, reputation and credibility, we need to ensure that the work of women and others is properly acknowledged. In itself, acknowledgment is not enough to improve the structural inequalities that hamper the careers of women and other minoritised groups. We cannot cite our way to equality. We still need to promote non-discriminatory hiring practices, equal opportunities for work and promotion, affordable childcare, inclusive work spaces, amongst many other things.

We, the authors of this blog post and of the guide, come from different academic backgrounds, each with our own citational habits. Some of our discussions started with sharing our own citational norms and practices. We were sometimes surprised to learn that there are other ways of acknowledging the contributions of those who have inspired us and with whom we want to be in conversation. Our guide is not the last word, but we hope it will stimulate students, teachers, researchers, editors and reviewers to reflect on their own habits and to contribute to citational justice for all.

The post We Cannot Cite Our Way to Equality, But Citational Justice Is Vital appeared first on Social Science Space.

In this post, Jessica Villiger examines the process of coding and how it can be used in meta-analytical research projects. The reflection draws from the article, Making the Invisible Visible: Guidelines for the Coding Process in Meta-analyses, by Villiger, Simone A. Schweiger and Artur Baldauf, all of the University of Bern, published in Organizational Research Methods.

Meta-analyses are seen as the lighthouses that help entire research communities in shedding light on a plethora of future academic research avenues. However, despite their pertinence for academia, we experienced that there was little methodological guidance on one of ‘the’ key and most time-intensive steps in meta-analytic research projects – Coding.

With our article, “Making the Invisible Visible: Guidelines for the Coding Process in Meta-analyses,” published in the special issue of Organizational Research Methods, we address this research gap by developing guidelines for the process of coding. Our article empowers novice as well as experienced meta-analysts with practical advice on ‘how’ to plan, conduct and report their coding process.

We believe that the existing void in methodological literature is also partially responsible for the common misconception that coding is a purely technical task (i.e., the extraction of numeric data from studies to run meta-analytic calculations). Although we know and learned that coding encompasses much more. In fact, coding is the process of translating independent studies into a common language. Hence, researchers performing the coding task aim to make sense of the variables represented in these studies by examining and extracting their labels, definitions and measurements. This, in turn, allows a meaningful comparison and syntheses of empirical findings.

Intrigued by the question of how authors report their own coding process, we analyzed 124 meta-analyses published in top-tier journals. Our analysis revealed that only a small number of authors transparently described their coding process. This is problematic because it limits readers to fully comprehend the authors’ decision-making process, for instance, on which basis the authors developed their coding categories, and consequently to assess a meta-analysis’ quality. As such, the coding process remains the invisible architecture behind meta-analyses.

Backed with these insights we contacted the authors of the 124 meta-analyses to find out whether coding has been an issue addressed by editors and journal reviewers during their review process of these top-tier journals. Our survey findings indicated that authors have been indeed requested to describe their coding, but mostly only on a superficial level by reporting the number of coders involved and their intercoder reliability value (i.e., the extent to which coders agreed on their coding). Hence, their decision-making process on how to build coding categories or the depth of data-extraction was seldom assessed.

Moreover, the majority of authors participating in our survey stated that they were not aware of any guidelines for coding and thus, would be very grateful if such a coding manual were to exist. This information supported us in pursuing our research idea of thoroughly developing guidelines for the coding process.

Besides the content-analysis and survey, our article also offers a state-of-the-art assessment of prior advice given on the topic of coding. We added to this extant knowledge our four-step guidelines, enriched with practical examples from our own meta-analytic experiences. When referring to our guidelines, authors of meta-analyses and their readers should be able to get answers to certain questions: What do meaningful coding practices entail? What are main pitfalls? Or to what extent should the coding process be reported?

Finally, our research also aims to aid editors and reviewers on how to support authors in improving the quality of their coding and its subsequent reporting. For that reason, our article seeks to contribute to the ongoing paradigm shift of more transparent reporting of coding practices. We believe making the invisible architecture of meta-analyses visible is important because it helps researchers to better use insights from prior meta-analyses in their own work, which consequently enables them to contribute more pertinently to the advancement of science overall.

Are you curious to find out more? Then check out now “Making the Invisible Visible: Guidelines for the Coding Process in Meta-analyses.”

The post Making the Invisible Visible appeared first on Social Science Space.