Social Studies of Social Science: A Working Bibliography

The social sciences are currently going through a reflexive phase, one marked by the appearance of a wave of studies which approach their disciplines’ own methods and research practices as their empirical subject matter. Driven partly by a growing interest in knowledge production and partly by a desire to make the social sciences ‘fit-for-purpose’ in the digital era, these studies seek to reinvigorate debates around methods by treating them as embedded social and cultural phenomena with their own distinctive biographical trajectories – or “social lives”. Empirical studies of social scientific work and the role of methods within it, however, remain relatively scarce. There are several reasons for this but, for one thing, it can be difficult to find examples of how such studies might be undertaken. This contribution draws together a literature scattered across various social science disciplines and their sub-fields in which social science methods have been studied empirically. We hope this working bibliography will provide a useful resource for those who wish to undertake such studies in the future. We also hope to show that the more recent literature can be connected to, and stands to be informed by, a much broader literature. We do not pretend that our bibliography is complete and comprehensive but we do think it represents a starting point for those who wish to pursue these issues for themselves

The transfer of IgA from mucus to plasma and the implications for diagnosis and control of nematode infections

Immunoglobulin A (IgA) activity has been associated with reduced growth and fecundity of Teladorsagia circumcincta. IgA is active at the site of infection in the abomasal mucus. However, while IgA activity in abomasal mucus is not easily measured in live animals without invasive methods, IgA activity can be readily detected in the plasma, making it a potentially valuable tool in diagnosis and control. We used a Bayesian statistical analysis to quantify the relationship between mucosal and plasma IgA in sheep deliberately infected with T. circumcincta. The transfer of IgA depends on mucosal IgA activity as well as its interaction with worm number and size; together these account for over 80% of the variation in plasma IgA activity. By quantifying the impact of mucosal IgA and worm number and size on plasma IgA, we provide a tool that can allow more meaningful interpretation of plasma IgA measurements and aid the development of efficient control programmes

A Bayesian generalized random regression model for estimating heritability using overdispersed count data

Background: Faecal egg counts are a common indicator of nematode infection and since it is a heritable trait, it provides a marker for selective breeding. However, since resistance to disease changes as the adaptive immune system develops, quantifying temporal changes in heritability could help improve selective breeding programs. Faecal egg counts can be extremely skewed and difficult to handle statistically. Therefore, previous heritability analyses have log transformed faecal egg counts to estimate heritability on a latent scale. However, such transformations may not always be appropriate. In addition, analyses of faecal egg counts have typically used univariate rather than multivariate analyses such as random regression that are appropriate when traits are correlated. We present a method for estimating the heritability of untransformed faecal egg counts over the grazing season using random regression. Results: Replicating standard univariate analyses, we showed the dependence of heritability estimates on choice of transformation. Then, using a multitrait model, we exposed temporal correlations, highlighting the need for a random regression approach. Since random regression can sometimes involve the estimation of more parameters than observations or result in computationally intractable problems, we chose to investigate reduced rank random regression. Using standard software (WOMBAT), we discuss the estimation of variance components for log transformed data using both full and reduced rank analyses. Then, we modelled the untransformed data assuming it to be negative binomially distributed and used Metropolis Hastings to fit a generalized reduced rank random regression model with an additive genetic, permanent environmental and maternal effect. These three variance components explained more than 80 % of the total phenotypic variation, whereas the variance components for the log transformed data accounted for considerably less. The heritability, on a link scale, increased from around 0.25 at the beginning of the grazing season to around 0.4 at the end. Conclusions: Random regressions are a useful tool for quantifying sources of variation across time. Our MCMC (Markov chain Monte Carlo) algorithm provides a flexible approach to fitting random regression models to non-normal data. Here we applied the algorithm to negative binomially distributed faecal egg count data, but this method is readily applicable to other types of overdispersed data

Nahrungsverschleiss im Kausimulator

In der vorliegenden Dissertation wurde der Einfluss von harten und krossen Nahrungsmitteln wie z. B. Müsli oder Brötchen auf die Lebensdauer von Fül-lungskompositen untersucht und eine Versuchsanordnung zur Erzeugung von In-vitro-Verschleiß an Kompositen erarbeitet. In Vorversuchen wurden in einer Universalprüfmaschine verschiedene harte Nahrungsmittel Bruchtests unterzogen und die dabei auftretenden Kräfte gemes-sen. Die Morphologie der verwendeten Kauflächen zeigte einen signifikanten Einfluss auf die Höhe der Kraft (p=0,007), nicht jedoch die Geschwindigkeit, mit der die Belastung erfolgte (p=0,494). Beim Zerbeißen auf einer flachen Plattform trat mit 355,5 N (± 200,5) bei Bonbons die höchste Bruchkraft aller getesteten Nahrungsmittel auf, mit einer Keramikkrone als Unterkieferzahn bei Popcornmais (209,4 N ± 120,8), der durch die Kaufläche abgestützt wurde. Bei Verwendung der Keramikkrone zerbrachen die Bonbons aufgrund punktförmi-ger Kraftinduktion bereits bei 138,2 N (± 38,9). In den Hauptversuchen wurden Kompositproben in einem Kausimulator jeweils 50.000 Kauzyklen unterzogen. Dies geschah bei der einen Hälfte der Proben unter Verwendung des von der ACTA-Maschine bekannten Abrasivmediums aus Hirse, bei der anderen Hälfte wurde Wasser zugegeben. Bei allen Komposi-ten wurde der Substanzverlust durch Zugabe der Hirse gesteigert, es änderte sich jedoch die Rangfolge bezüglich des Verschleißes. Bei den Versuchen mit Was-ser zeigten Solitaire (286,8 ± 70,3 mm³E-3) und Tetric Ceram (286,5 ± 198,6 mm³E-3) den größten Substanzverlust, bei Hirseverwendung Solitaire (843,3 ± 435,7 mm³E-3) und Heliomolar RO (788,1 ± 164,4 mm³E-3). Mit Wasser trat bei Heliomolar RO der geringste Verschleiß auf (29,7 ± 6,7 mm³E-3), mit Hirse bei Definite (547,0 ± 187,8 mm³E-3). Die Situation mit Wasser als Medium entspricht einer reinen Knirschbelastung, die vor allem bei pathologischem Bruxismus Verschleiß in okklusalen Kontakt-bereichen (OCA) verursacht. Die Versuchsanordnung mit der ACTA-Suspension entspricht der Belastung beim Kauen von Nahrung. Dabei treten in vivo, vor allem beim Zerkleinern harter und krosser Nahrung, sowohl im Kon-taktbereich als auch in kontaktfreien Bereichen (CFA) erhebliche Belastungen auf, die über Fatigue, Abrasion und überkritische Belastung zu Mikro- und Ma-krofrakturen an Zahnhartsubstanz und Füllungskompositen führen können. Bei In-vivo-Untersuchungen zur Lebensdauer von Kompositfüllungen treten interin-dividuelle Streuungen auf, die auch durch diätetische Einflüsse krosser und har-ter Nahrungsmittel zu erklären sind. Die Versuche mit der Hirsesuspension ent-sprechen der Durchschnittsbelastung dieser Untersuchungen. In rasterelektronenmikroskopischen Aufnahmen der Kompositproben nach Kau-belastung sowie zweier Kompositbiopsien, die Verschleiß in vivo unterworfen waren, zeigte sich, dass die Kausimulationsanordnung mit Hirse in der Lage ist, die beim Zwei-Körper-Verschleiß entstehenden scholligen Auflagerungen aus herausgelösten Füllkörperpartikeln von der Probenoberfläche zu entfernen. So-mit kann eine weitere Annäherung der Verschleißsimulation im Kausimulator München III an die Situation in vivo erfolgen und so die Belastung für Patienten in klinischen Untersuchungen reduziert werden. Bei der Betrachtung der klini-schen Eignung von neuen Kompositen sind jedoch auch weitere Faktoren wie Brucheigenschaften und Leistungsfähigkeit des verwendeten Adhäsivsystems zu beachten, was klinische Studien weiterhin unumgänglich macht. Zusammenfassend lässt sich ein Einfluss der individuellen Nahrungsauswahl auf die Haltbarkeit von Füllungskompositen feststellen, besonders bei hoher Bela-stung durch das Zerkleinern harter Nahrung. Für die Zukunft erscheint das Vor-gehen sinnvoll, Versuche mit und ohne Abrasivsuspension durchzuführen, au-ßerdem sollten verschiedene Nahrungsmedien auf ihr Verschleißverhalten unter-sucht werden

Minimum Data Requirements For Integrating Urban Development And Urban Water Infrastructure Models

Data quality and availability is a common problem in many modelling studies dealing with regional, spatially distributed case studies. This is true for both, urban development models and urban water management models. As current research in urban water management more and more tries to benefit from an integrated view of the performance of water networks in the context of dynamically growing and shrinking cities, this problem of data scarcity increases. Having different applications with different levels of details available, the question arises which data (and which temporal and spatial resolution) is really necessary to be collected in a modeling study with a certain modeling aim. This work tackles this question by running an integrated urban development and urban water model with different detail levels of input data. The approach uses variations in quality (temporal and spatial) of input data for simulating urban development (population data & projections) and given data on existing city structures (e.g. buildings, road network). Permutations of the given information propagated through the urban development model represent several scenarios to calculate parameters for the urban water models (effective impervious area (EIA), dry weather flow (DWF) and water supply demand (WSD)) As urban water models in this study SWMM (storm water management model) for drainage systems and EPAnet for water supply systems is used. Consequently the impact of the input data variation on the results of the hydraulic and hydrodynamic simulations is statistically analyzed using different performance indicators: EIA in relation to ponded volume, DWF to flow velocities and WSD to system pressure clustered by input data. For comparison reasons simulation runs with a well-established urban development model are conducted

Methodological troubles as problems and phenomena: ethnomethodology and the question of 'method' in the social sciences

Across the disciplinary frontiers of the social sciences, studies by social scientists treating their own investigative practices as sites of empirical inquiry have proliferated. Most of these studies have been retrospective, historical, after‐the‐fact reconstructions of social scientific studies mixing interview data with the (predominantly textual) traces that investigations leave behind. Observational studies of in situ work in social science research are, however, relatively scarce. Ethnomethodology was an early and prominent attempt to treat social science methodology as a topic for sociological investigations and, in this paper, we draw out what we see as its distinctive contribution: namely, a focus on troubles as features of the in situ, practical accomplishment of method, in particular, the way that research outcomes are shaped by the local practices of investigators in response to the troubles they encounter along the way. Based on two case studies, we distinguish methodological troubles as problems and methodological troubles as phenomena to be studied, and suggest the latter orientation provides an alternate starting point for addressing social scientists’ investigative practices

From methodology to methodography: a study of qualitative and quantitative reasoning in practice

Despite the huge literature on the methodology of the social sciences, relatively little interest has been shown in sociological description of social science research methods in practice, i.e., in the application of sociology to sociological work. The overwhelming (if not exhaustive) interest in research methods is an evaluative and prescriptive one. This is particularly surprising, since the sociology of science has in the past few decades scrutinised almost every aspect of natural science methodology. Ethnographic and historical case studies have moved from an analysis of the products of science to investigations of the processes of scientific work in the laboratory. Social scientists appear to have been rather reluctant to explore this aspect of their own work in any great depth. In this paper, we report on a „methodography‟, an empirical study of research methods in practice. This took the form of a small-scale investigation of the working practices of two groups of social scientists, one with a predominantly qualitative approach, the other involved in statistical modelling. The main part of the paper involves a comparison between two brief episodes taken from the work of each, one focussing on how two researchers analyse and draw conclusions from an interview transcript, the other on how collaborators work out an agreed final version of a statistical model for combining temporal and spatial data. Based on our analysis of these examples, we raise some questions about the way in which social scientists reason through their problems, and the role that characterisations of research, as research of a particular kind (e.g., qualitative or quantitative), play in actual research practice