Social Science Space

Transcribing can be a pain, and although recent progress in speech recognition software has helped, it remains a challenge. Speech recognition programs, do, however, raise ethical/consent issues: what if person-identifiable interview data is transcribed or read by someone who was not given the consent to do so? Furthermore, some conversational elements aren’t transcribed well by pattern recognition programs.

Twitter and other social media platforms represent a large and largely untapped resource for social data and evidence. In this post, Wasim Ahmed updates his recurring series on the Impact Blog, to bring you the latest developments in digital methods and methodologies for researching Twitter and other social media platforms.

To end his trilogy of articles on the research metric system (and Google Scholar in particular), Louis Coiffait explores what improvements could be made.

In his second article about the citation system and Google Scholar, Louis Coiffait looks at some of the current criticisms.

Louis Coiffait’s third article in his series on impact looks at the system of citation metrics, in particular Google Scholar.

In his second article in a series on impact, Louis Coiffait looks at how REF and KEF treat impact in the UK.

The recent brouhaha involving the BBC and the singer points out something the journalists and qualitative researchers share: the need to develop a common approach to the ethics of interviewing.

So if markets are truly good for English higher education, as many seem to think, should we follow that train of thought to its logical conclusions?

In an effort to prevent ‘gaming’ the REF, new recommendation from Lord Stern cuts down on the freedom of academics to move from institution as they see fit. Is the cure worse than the disease?

Many social scientists find themselves members of a cult of quantification, argues Robert Dingwall, in love with numbers for their own sake even when those numbers produce no useful knowledge.

Back in the summer, John Holmwood, the current BSA President, sent me an email about impact and research ethics. Various […]

Due to the confusion over what counts as evidence, mental health research has largely failed to make a significant impact on workplace wellbeing and employment relations practices. Elizabeth Cotton argues that in order to make a positive difference, academic research will have to involve new technologies and communication strategies aimed at helping people to improve their mental health at work.