Systems Methodology in Social Science Research PDF Download

Author: R. Cavallo
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401732043
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
From the beginning, the systems research movement has shown a high potential for offering a conceptual framework for the understanding of social systems. Much of this potential has been realized, but a major gap remains with regard to operational investigative aids. Developments of the last ten years with a method ological orientation and emphasis seem finally to be filling this gap. The purpose of this book is to describe the most advanced of these developments and to make them available to a wider audience. The emphasis is on developments that are primarily oriented toward interaction with expertise in the social sciences and that thus hold the most promise for social systems investigation. In particu lar, attempts have been made to provide substantiation and illustration of three main points: (1) the common motivation and essential integrability that systems research provides for developments and considerations along a very broad spec trum of interests; (2) the very diverse nature of the types and forms of considera tions that may be meaningfully integrated; and (3) the operational and usable nature that developments in systems methodology represent for research in the social sciences. The book is divided into three parts with a generally increasing degree of specificity. The first part (Chapters 1, 2, and 3) deals with foundational issues associated with modeling and methodology as areas worthy of study in their ix X PREFACE own right.

Author: Anol Bhattacherjee
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781475146127
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
This book is designed to introduce doctoral and graduate students to the process of conducting scientific research in the social sciences, business, education, public health, and related disciplines. It is a one-stop, comprehensive, and compact source for foundational concepts in behavioral research, and can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to research readings in any doctoral seminar or research methods class. This book is currently used as a research text at universities on six continents and will shortly be available in nine different languages.

Author: R. Cavallo
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940099236X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
While general systems research has had a considerable impact on research in the social sciences, this impact has been mainly conceptual and has not served to provide the operational and methodological aids for research which are possible. In addition, many of those systems-oriented directions and results which do impact social science research have developed inde pendently and in piecemeal fashion in recent decades. The main develop ment of this book is a cohesive framework within which to integrate results of general systems research and which provides a means for the organiza tion of data and observations - and operational procedures by which to proceed - in the investigation and study of social and socio-technical systems. The book systematically develops in the first five chapters ail of the basic concepts and aspects which make up the framework, showing wherever possible the main sources of these concepts and placing them in historical perspective. The developments of the first five chapters are pulled together and integrated, in the last chapter, into a conceptual and operational general systems problem solving framework which extends the investiga tive capabilities of researchers of specific systems. The last chapter also contains an example of an overall investigation which utilizes the frame work and which proceeds from system definition through the derivation of explanatory knowledge regarding the object system and which illustrates in detail most of the concepts and elements of the framework.

Author: Reinette Biggs
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000401537
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 700

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems provides a synthetic guide to the range of methods that can be employed in social-ecological systems (SES) research. The book is primarily targeted at graduate students, lecturers and researchers working on SES, and has been written in a style that is accessible to readers entering the field from a variety of different disciplinary backgrounds. Each chapter discusses the types of SES questions to which the particular methods are suited and the potential resources and skills required for their implementation, and provides practical examples of the application of the methods. In addition, the book contains a conceptual and practical introduction to SES research, a discussion of key gaps and frontiers in SES research methods, and a glossary of key terms in SES research. Contributions from 97 different authors, situated at SES research hubs in 16 countries around the world, including South Africa, Sweden, Germany and Australia, bring a wealth of expertise and experience to this book. The first book to provide a guide and introduction specifically focused on methods for studying SES, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainability science, environmental management, global environmental change studies and environmental governance. The book will also be of interest to upper-level undergraduates and professionals working at the science–policy interface in the environmental arena.

Author: Gillian Ragsdell
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461513138
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Peter A. Coming Palo Alto, CA November, 2000 This volwne represents a distillation of the plenary sessions at a unique millenniwn year event -a World Congress of the Systems Sciences in conjunction with the 44th annual meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS). The overall theme of the conference was "Understanding Complexity in the New Millenniwn. " Held at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto, Canada, from July 16-22,2000, the conference included some 350 participants from over 30 countries, many of whom were representatives of the 21 organizations and groups that co-hosted this landmark event. Each of these co-host organizations/groups also presented a segment of the program, including a plenary speech. In addition, the conference featured a nwnber of distinguished "keynote" speeches related to the three daily World Congress themes: (1) The Evolution of Complex Systems, (2) The Dynamics of Complex Systems, and (3) Human Systems in the 21st Century. There were also seven special plenary-level symposia on a range of timely topics, including: "The Art and Science of Forecasting in the Age of Global Wanning"; "Capitalism in the New Millenniwn: The Challenge of Sustainability"; "The Future of the Systems Sciences"; "Global Issues in the New Millenniwn"; "Resources and the Environment in the New Millenniwn"; "The Lessons of Y2K"; and "Can There be a Reconciliation Between Science and Religion?" Included in this special commemorative volume is a cross-section of these presentations.

Author: Michael Lewis-Beck
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761923633
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Featuring over 900 entries, this resource covers all disciplines within the social sciences with both concise definitions & in-depth essays.

Author: Peter Checkland
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0471986054
Category : Science
Languages : de
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Soft Systems Methodology in Action "Whether by design, accident or merely synchronicity, Checkland appears to have developed a habit of writing seminal publications near the start of each decade which establish the basis and framework for systems methodology research for that decade." Hamish Rennie, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1992 Thirty years ago Peter Checkland set out to test whether the Systems Engineering (SE) approach, highly successful in technical problems, could be used by managers coping with the unfolding complexities of organizational life. The straightforward transfer of SE to the broader situations of management was not possible, but by insisting on a combination of systems thinking strongly linked to real-world practice Checkland and his collaborators developed an alternative approach - Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) - which enables managers of all kinds and at any level to deal with the subtleties and confusions of the situations they face. This work established the now accepted distinction between 'hard' systems thinking, in which parts of the world are taken to be 'systems' which can be 'engineered', and 'soft' systems thinking in which the focus is on making sure the process of inquiry into real-world complexity is itself a system for learning. Systems Thinking, Systems Practice (1981) and Soft Systems Methodology in Action (1990) together with an earlier paper Towards a Systems-based Methodology for Real-World Problem Solving (1972) have long been recognized as classics in the field. Now-Peter Checkland has looked back over the three decades of SSM development, brought the account of it up to date, and reflected on the whole evolutionary process which has produced a mature SSM. SSM: A 30-Year Retrospective, here included with Soft Systems Methodology in Action closes a chapter on what is undoubtedly the most significant single research programme on the use of systems ideas in problem solving. Now retired from full-time university work, Peter Checkland continues his research as a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow.

Author: Roel J. Wieringa
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3662438399
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
This book provides guidelines for practicing design science in the fields of information systems and software engineering research. A design process usually iterates over two activities: first designing an artifact that improves something for stakeholders and subsequently empirically investigating the performance of that artifact in its context. This “validation in context” is a key feature of the book - since an artifact is designed for a context, it should also be validated in this context. The book is divided into five parts. Part I discusses the fundamental nature of design science and its artifacts, as well as related design research questions and goals. Part II deals with the design cycle, i.e. the creation, design and validation of artifacts based on requirements and stakeholder goals. To elaborate this further, Part III presents the role of conceptual frameworks and theories in design science. Part IV continues with the empirical cycle to investigate artifacts in context, and presents the different elements of research problem analysis, research setup and data analysis. Finally, Part V deals with the practical application of the empirical cycle by presenting in detail various research methods, including observational case studies, case-based and sample-based experiments and technical action research. These main sections are complemented by two generic checklists, one for the design cycle and one for the empirical cycle. The book is written for students as well as academic and industrial researchers in software engineering or information systems. It provides guidelines on how to effectively structure research goals, how to analyze research problems concerning design goals and knowledge questions, how to validate artifact designs and how to empirically investigate artifacts in context – and finally how to present the results of the design cycle as a whole.

Author: Kim Dong-Hwan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040117295
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Kim offers an accessible, interdisciplinary textbook using systems theory as a framework to stimulate discussion about how the social sciences develop understanding of society and its evolution. It promotes an integrated view of the social sciences by proposing politics, economics, administration, and community as the core areas of society, and explains their characteristics, how they are moved by what kind of systems, and how they have evolved through their interrelationships. This book explains how the major areas of operate on certain structures and principles, and how they have developed while maintaining certain relationships with each other. The beauty of the entire field of social sciences lies in understanding society and social sciences as a whole and the relationships that intertwines it. It is unique in that it approaches social science from an Eastern perspective, using traditional Eastern thought and social phenomena as examples in its explanations and proposes a methodology for understanding society that’s different to traditional social science textbooks, which use the application of natural science methodology and statistics to understand society. Designed for a wide range of students in sociology, politics, and economics, encouraging interdisciplinary thinking and understanding. It is written with citations of classical writings by social scientists, including Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, Mill, Marx, Engels, Proudhon, Smith, Weber, Durkheim, Buber, Myrdal, Habermas, Popper, Hayek, Putnam, and others. Through this book, readers can gain panoramic insights into how the works of these social scientists are interconnected.

Author: J. Kertész
Publisher: IOS Press
ISBN: 1643680374
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
For many years, the development of large-scale quantitative social science was hindered by a lack of data. Traditional methods of data collection like surveys were very useful, but were limited. The situation has of course changed with the development of computing and information communication technology, and we now live in a world of data deluge, where the question has become how to extract important information from the plethora of data that can be accessed. Big Data has made it possible to study societal questions which were once impossible to deal with, but new tools and new multidisciplinary approaches are required. Physicists, together with economists, sociologists, computer scientists, etc. have played an important role in their development. This book presents the 9 lectures delivered at the CCIII Summer Course Computational Social Science and Complex Systems, held as part of the International School of Physics Enrico Fermi in Varenna, Italy, from 16-21 July 2018. The course had the aim of presenting some of the recent developments in the interdisciplinary fields of computational social science and econophysics to PhD students and young researchers, with lectures focused on recent problems investigated in computational social science. Addressing some of the basic questions and many of the subtleties of the emerging field of computational social science, the book will be of interest to students, researchers and advanced research professionals alike.