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PubMed2006

Towards a unified science of cultural evolution.

We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with the macroevolutionary methods of systematics, paleobiology, and biogeography, whereas mathematical models derived from population genetics have been successfully developed to study cultural microevolution. Much potential exists for experimental simulations and field studies of cultural microevolution, where there are opportunities to borrow further methods and hypotheses from biology. Potential also exists for the cultural equivalent of molecular genetics in "social cognitive neuroscience," although many fundamental issues have yet to be resolved. It is argued that studying culture within a unifying evolutionary framework has the potential to integrate a number of separate disciplines within the social sciences.

Animals↗
PubMed1998

Towards a psycho-social theoretical framework for sexual health promotion.

Numerous interventions have been designed to promote safer sexual behaviour amongst young people. However, relatively few have proved effective, which is, at least partially, due to the lack of development of theoretically based programmes. An understanding of the origins and control of sexual behaviour can be derived from basic social science research. Unless this is applied to the design of behaviour-change programmes they are unlikely to target the most important determinants of young people's sexual behaviour and are, therefore, unlikely to be effective. This paper outlines some of the key theoretical insights which have been drawn upon in the development of a new sex education programme currently being tested in Scottish schools. The theoretical basis is intentionally eclectic, combining social psychological cognitive models with sociological interpretations, since we are not concerned to advance any particular theory but to find which are most useful in promoting sexual health. First, the social influences on sexual behaviour are considered, and then the way in which these translate into individual perceptions and beliefs. Finally, the paper attempts to develop a theoretical understanding of sexual interaction and the social contexts of sexual behaviour.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Teacher interactions in mainstream social studies and science classes.

This investigation was designed to change teacher-student interactions in middle school social studies and science classes. Eighteen of 35 teacher volunteers received a six-session inservice emphasizing teacher effectiveness variables. Results indicated significant differences between experimental and control teachers on a pre-post contrast, as well as on a follow-up (maintenance) contrast. Differential effects on the science and social studies teachers were seen. Similarities and differences related to student type, independent of the intervention, were obtained.

Child↗
PubMed2006

Research in medical education: balancing service and science.

Since the latter part of the 1990's, the English-speaking medical education community has been engaged in a debate concerning the types of research that should have priority. To shed light on this debate and to better understand its implications for the practice of research, 23 semi-structured interviews were conducted with "influential figures" from the community. The results were analyzed using the concept of "field" developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The results reveal that a large majority of these influential figures believe that research in medical education continues to be of insufficient quality despite the progress that has taken place over the past 2 decades. According to this group, studies tend to be both redundant and opportunistic, and researchers tend to have limited understanding of both theory and methodological practice from the social sciences. Three factors were identified by the participants to explain the current problems in research: the working conditions of researchers, budgetary restraints in financing research in medical education, and the conception of research in the medical environment. Two principal means for improving research are presented: intensifying collaboration between PhD's and clinicians, and encouraging the diversification of perspectives brought to bear on research in medical education.

Curriculum↗
PubMed1992

Threats to the world eco-system: a role for the social scientists.

This paper seeks to identify some of the major threats to our fragile eco-system through human actions. We have sought to highlight that since these threats to our composite ecological heritage are global in nature, our responses shall have to be at the global level. We have tried to analyse a role the social scientists can exercise in response to these threats. We have merely shown possible responses within their professional disciplines. Can they play an activist's role? The paper does not prescribe any push-button role while emphasizing role of social scientists in environmental education. Every discipline among the social sciences will need to carve out its own role keeping in view local conditions. The current stocktaking of the situation under the UNCED process may require the international community to review existing institutional structures in the field or create new ones.

Climate↗
PubMed1987

Sociodemographic and premedical school factors related to postgraduate physicians' humanistic performance.

In an extensive survey of postgraduate physicians in two teaching hospitals (N = 141) for their humanistic attitudes, values and behavior, all ratings of physicians' humanistic performance, including physicians' own scores on self-report measures, supervising faculty, nurses and patient ratings, were modestly but significantly correlated with each other. Sex, ethnic or racial background, year of training, marital status, number of children, Alpha-Omega-Alpha membership or number of articles published were unrelated to physicians' humanistic behavior. Several measures of humanism were positively correlated with having taken more courses in the social sciences and humanities, having had more early person-centered work experience and reporting that before medical school others had confided in them or sought their advice more frequently.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1994

The forms and limits of medical ethics.

As medical ethics has evolved over the past several decades, it has come to be regarded as a domain of applied ethics, that is, the application of a rationally based, philosophical theory to moral problems in health care. But an array of difficulties arise in the attempt to apply general moral theories or norms to concrete problems, difficulties that expose the incompleteness and indeterminacy of philosophical moral theory. The doubtful ability of applied ethics to be practically helpful has led to the development of two main competitors. One is the attempt to reprise and rehabilitate the tradition of moral casuistry, which focuses on the analysis of specific cases rather than on the defense and application of theories and norms. The second is the search for moral insight and guidance in narratives or stories. These alternatives suffer from some of the same difficulties that plague applied ethics, however. Another trend in medical ethics rejects the theoretical preoccupation of applied ethics in favour of contextualism--an insistence on situating moral problems in institutional and organizational structures and in social and cultural backgrounds. Social science investigations of medical ethics pay attention to the former, while feminist critiques of medical ethics are concerned with exposing and eradicating cultural biases against women. Contemporary work in medical ethics is diverse, but these manifold approaches hold out the promise of improving our understanding of morality as a truly practical enterprise.

Ethics, Medical↗
PubMed1996

Obstacles to conducting program evaluations: implications for public health evaluators.

This article presents a number of obstacles to conducting program evaluations which include: the "word" evaluation itself, the politics of evaluation, inadequate resources, the tendency of organizations to resist change, and a lack of understanding of the context of program evaluations. Underpinning these obstacles is the longstanding definitional dilemma between program evaluation and social science research. Although the article's implications are directed toward public health evaluators, they are generalizable to other evaluators in other disciplines. These obstacles highlight the fact that a major role of any evaluator is to confront and negotiate successfully around them.

Health Services Research↗
PubMed1985

[When demography considers women's work].

"The purpose of this paper is to outline the various approaches to women's work adopted in social sciences, and to suggest that the one developed in demography for studying the interrelationship between work and fertility represents an important methodological contribution." The geographic focus is worldwide. In particular, the author notes the value of the longitudinal approach used in demography. (SUMMARY IN ENG AND SPA)

Demography↗
PubMed1986

An integrated sociocultural curriculum for community medicine in Bali, Indonesia.

Since 1983, social scientists have collaborated with teaching staff at the Faculty of Medicine, Udayana University, Bali, Indonesia, to develop an integrated sociocultural curriculum for undergraduate students in community health. The Udayana curriculum is discussed in the context of an international commitment over the last two decades to appropriate education for primary health care and community health in developing countries. The authors describe their work as consultants with Udayana staff. Participants formulated a five-stage project of curriculum development and community health research that could be continued as part of an ongoing community medicine teaching program. Recommendations for integrating social science perspectives within medical domains are outlined, based on the project experience. The paper also discusses the undertaking as a 'development project' suggesting that many of the issues and problems that arose are common to bureaucratic institutions in Third World countries when development projects are initiated.

Community Medicine↗
PubMed2003

Task demands, task interest, and task performance: implications for human subjects research and practicing what we preach.

Through the continuous investigation of humans in organizations, we have learned much about motivation, attitudes, and performance. For example, Yukl and others have helped increase our understanding of influence tactics and the effect they have on the performance of subordinates, supervisors, and peers. Some tactics (and combinations of tactics) lead to resistance, some lead to compliance, and some lead to commitment. In this study, we raise the question of whether or not we incorporate our knowledge of these research findings into the design, implementation, and interpretation of our own research studies that require the participation of human subjects. In a survey of 134 subjects from a previous social science study, we found that performance varied across the sample, consistent with the concepts of resistance, compliance, and commitment. In addition, the variance in performance could be explained, in part, by task interest and perceived task demands. Implications are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

A world from brave to new: Talcott Parsons and the war effort at Harvard University.

This article argues that for Parsons and some of his colleagues at Harvard, the Second World War and the post-war period provided a context in which their work contributed to the transformation from totalitarianism to democracy in Central Europe (especially Germany) and Japan. The various agendas of Parsons' work are shown, supplemented by that of three of his colleagues with whom he collaborated (Gordon W. Allport, Carl J. Friedrich, Clyde Kluckhohn). The immediate effect of this work, for Parsons, however, meant frustration rather than fame, and his eventual reputation, I maintain, came unexpectedly with the third of his three attempts in the immediate post-war period to sum up what he believed were crucial insights that the Second World War had yielded concerning the ways in which sociology could contribute to the analytical understanding of democracy. The significance of this work is that it was both political and scientific. Because of the world situation of the 1940s, when the Holocaust in Germany was the nadir of civilization, Parsons believed that social science could contribute to the cause of making the world safe for future democracy. In the 1940s, this future depended on brave citizens, or such might have been Parsons' worldview. Targets envisaged for the 1950s, then, were community and citizenship in the newly democratic societies such as (West) Germany, the land that defeated Nazism.

Democracy↗
PubMed1992

An epidemic in the field? Rapid assessment procedures and health research.

This paper reviews the development of various methods designed to generate relevant social information, pertaining to health and disease control, quickly and accurately. In so doing, we examine the use of KAP surveys and the subsequent development of community diagnosis, rapid appraisal methods, rapid epidemiological assessment, and rapid assessment procedures (RAP) for anthropological studies. Our focus is on the development of anthropological RAPs, in response to the lack of professionally trained social scientists to work with disease control programmes and ministries of health, and in light of the demonstrable need for social science input in the development of health policies and programmes. These developments are assessed in terms of scope and method. Issues relating to the representativeness, reliability and validity of RAP studies are discussed, and mechanisms by which to maximise the yield of valid data are presented.

Communicable Disease Control↗
PubMed2000

Concurrent validity and test-retest reliability of the information processing styles.

To investigate concurrent validity and test-retest reliability of the Information Processing Styles, 62 students majoring in social sciences evaluated the accuracy of the checklist in describing their dominant types. Each student had a friend who read the descriptions of the dominant type(s) of the student and rated their perceived accuracy of that categorization. Analyses indicated the inventory is reliable and valid.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Change the curriculum--or transform the conditions of practice?

This paper explores the notion that contemporary teaching practices reinforce and maintain the legitimacy of traditional relations of power between teachers and students of nursing. Nurse teachers and clinicians have socially constructed and legitimated power over students which acts to constrain the development of critical consciousness. Student-centred learning packages and strategies such as problem-solving, questioning and dialogue may give the impression of student empowerment while leaving the authoritarian nature of teacher-student relationships intact. Furthermore nursing education is premised on the belief that 'real' learning takes place in the classroom (where teaching occurs) and is consolidated by practice (where nursing occurs). This situation creates a major dilemma for all teachers since the contradictions between classroom knowledge and experiential clinical knowledge are seldom officially recognised. The rhetoric of critical social science however, suggests that emancipation and empowerment of teachers and students would follow their enlightenment as to the nature of these contradictions. This assumption discounts the ways in which hegemonic ideology shapes the consciousness of nurses to accept dominant views of what constitutes professional practice or legitimate knowledge and how that may be obtained.

Authoritarianism↗
PubMed1980

Human food selection: why do we know so little, and what can we do about it?

Most of the 'variance' in human food selection can be attributed to culture and individual experience. It is argued that while rigorous research on biological determinants of food selection is very valuable, we must also invest heavily in more exploratory, social science oriented studies. Only in this way can we approach most of the major determinants of food choice. We must recognize that food selection is multidetermined and context dependent. At this early stage of scientific development in this field, we must be willing to consider tradeoffs between rigor or quantification and promising preliminary and qualitative studies.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Who benefits from community-based participatory research? A case study of the Positive Youth Project.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has evolved as a popular new paradigm in health research. This shift is exciting, yet there is still much to discover about how various stakeholders are affected. This article uses a critical social science perspective to explore who benefits from these changes through an analysis of a CBPR case study (The Positive Youth Project). Two major categories of beneficiaries emerged: the research itself and the partner-stakeholders. The benefits, however, were not gained without substantial human resource investment, nor were they necessarily equitably spread. Participation costs included heavy demands of time, an added burden of work, frustration with the process, missing other opportunities, risking loss of anonymity, and loss of control. Care needs to be taken to ensure that concrete benefits accrue for all project partners and costs are minimized. Another way of framing benefits is to look at the community capacities built to address future health and social issues.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Grounded theory, feminist theory, critical theory: toward theoretical triangulation.

Nursing and social science scholars have examined the compatibility between feminist and grounded theory traditions in scientific knowledge generation, concluding that they are complementary, yet not without certain tensions. This line of inquiry is extended to propose a critical feminist grounded theory methodology. The construction of symbolic interactionist, feminist, and critical feminist variants of grounded theory methodology is examined in terms of the presuppositions of each tradition and their interplay as a process of theoretical triangulation.

Feminism↗