Social Science Space

David Canter considers what the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington tells us about the power inherent in a crowd.

Understanding how to create the conditions for a thriving civil society — that works in partnership with local governments and […]

David Canter considers why the social sciences failed to influence behavior in order to stop the spread of COVID-19. The virologists had been preparing for a new virus for some years, so were already ahead of the game when they had to start creating a new vaccine. What preparations had social psychologists, sociologists or anthropologists for the inevitable emergence of a new pandemic?

If there is one thing that has become abundantly clear through this pandemic it is that a pandemic, like so many of the other really big and pressing issues facing us such as structural racism or climate change, are not problems to be faced by one discipline or sector alone.

In an engaging and highly topical presentation viewable below, Trish Greenhalgh, professor of Primary Care Health Sciences and Fellow of […]

Past research has shown that psychological factors such as an individual’s perception of risk and tendency towards risky behavior influence adherence to health behaviors. This is now being seen in the current pandemic.

An online seminar hosted by the NAS’ Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education featured a series of presentations on what can we do to lessen, reverse and even thrive in the face of changes wrought by the pandemic.

This guide of freely accessible research compiled from SAGE’s Coronavirus Research collection provides insight on what COVID-19 has revealed these past months and how we can utilize these lessons moving forward.  

Robert Dingwall cites a short story from 1957 which highlights why the development of a vaccine needs to always keep an eye on its safety, no matter what the pressures are for its immediate release.

This panel, “How Can Social Statistics Help Us Fight COVID-19,” organized by the Campaign for Social Science and SAGE Publishing and held on September 21, featured three speakers giving their perspectives on the role of timely, appropriately representative, and reliable social statistics in informing the COVID-19 response and recovery planning.

The author of a new book on the response to the coronavirus tries first to understand how apparently sane people could think it made sense to implement damaging policies, and secondly asks how the public might ensure that such a disastrous episode can never happen again.

On October 9, a free online symposium will bring together social and behavioral science researchers in the United States whose work can inform public policies related to the pandemic with policymakers and public servants who are crafting and enacting legislation and other responses to COVID-19.