Abstract Aid donors devote substantial sums to economic and social research. This is justified by its contribution to development. Aid agencies should act as agents for the intended beneficiaries of research, principally LDC policy‐makers. The research agenda should reflect the perspectives of both researchers and beneficiaries. Due to market failure, donors need to support research capacity. They can do this through their funding policy towards individual research projects, support for broader programmes of research, or by lump‐sum financing of research institutions. The location of research affects its contribution to development: there may be a trade‐off between quality of research and other objectives.

Describes a “tool kit” approach to applied social research into food and nutritional issues. Briefly describes the main differences between qualitative and quantitative research styles in terms of outlook and methods. Using the example of research into cream and its consumption in the context of health promotion, argues that different research methods and styles are appropriate to different issues and the type of findings required. Illustrates a distinction between findings about structure and findings about process. Concludes that an open‐minded approach and a pragmatic view of research methods as a potential range of options (a “tool kit”) are desirable in applied research settings.

Historically, social research methodologies have been construed as being less significant in their contribution to social change. This perception emanates from those who view social research methodologies as an accessory to the natural sciences. Contrary to this view, this article, on the schooling experiences of children who have been left behind by their parents in Zimbabwe, is used to contribute to the debate. It seeks to present our experiences in the application of social research methodologies, including challenges and their contribution to social change. However, this change remains a contested issue in research because there is no consensus on how to measure it. The study followed a qualitative research approach, using an interpretive phenomenological study design. A purposive sampling strategy was used to select 12 secondary school children (12–18 years old). Data were constructed through two methods, interviews and document analysis. The overall finding of the study revealed that social sciences methodologies can make a contribution to social change. This was illustrated by the fact that when social methodological approaches were used, children were enabled to confidently express their lived experiences by creating a child-friendly environment such as child-centeredness, democratic participation and inclusivity. Consequently, the findings have shed some light on the way in which policy makers should develop policies with regard to left-behind children (LBC). On the basis of these findings, the article argues that social research methodologies can make a difference in social change, despite challenges that may emerge. The findings may have implications for social researchers and for our study. For example, the findings could minimise hermeneutics injustice by mediating what the marginalised groups, such as children, may express despite scepticism about their authenticity which is important for social change.

Significance testing and multivariate models are revolutionary tools for quantitative social research. However, even great tools have the potential for misuse. This paper discusses three common ways in which these fundamental tools have been misused: (1) misinterpreting significance tests, (2) a misplaced focus on net effects, and (3) overconfidence in the control variables. For each misuse, I identify a conceptual myth, specify the source of the misconception, and suggest a remedy. In addition, numerical data on college graduates and a recent debate over gender inequality in the American labor market illustrate these problems and remedies. The problems and remedies are applicable to all kinds of multivariate analysis based on statistical modeling (e.g., OLS regression, logit, tobit, other limited dependent variable regressions, simultaneous equations models, and so forth).

"Linear Statistical Models and Related Methods, With Applications to Social Research." Technometrics, 28(2), p. 180

The research program proposed by Robert Park in 1915, and largely carried out by himself, Ernest Burgess, and their students over the next twenty years, brought empirical sociological research into an academic setting on a scale not accomplished previously. This "appropriation" of social research was justified by the idea that knowledge produced by academic scientists was of a higher order than research findings of nonacademics.' University-based scientists alone were thought to be capable of a "pure sociological gaze" entailing the disavowal of immediate interventionist goals in their encounters with their objects of study. Historical studies have often adopted this justification for admitting new practices into the field as an explanation for scientific change.2 They forget that the criteria of scientificity they adopt are a product of the same historical development and were imposed by the very actors whose work they are now used to evaluate. Thus the symbolic struggle to impose a new definition of science, in which Park had to engage in order to gain legitimacy for practices previously regarded as unscientific, is left unanalyzed. The problem of "scientific advance" thereby becomes the purely logistic problem of organizing the institutional forms that more closely realize a static notion of science. As a consequence, the analysis of sociology as an institutional form is severed from the analysis of its symbolic products, and the relation between the two is either overlooked or treated as a wholly contingent one. Many studies of "institutionalization," or of "professionalization;' of social science are products of this approach in which the sociology of sociology subjects only the organizational or administrative aspects of science to its scrutiny, stopping at the actual content of sociological works, which is left to textual analysis by historians of ideas.

This paper provides a detailed discussion of the questions relating to the role of the researcher in relation to the researched when the researcher and the researched are both of Muslim origin. Issues relating to questions of objectivity, transparency, bias and interpretation are elaborated upon as part of the analysis of impacts and outcomes in relation to methodological process. It is argued that, ultimately, the subjective positions of researcher and researched are less important than the objective nature of the research process. The intention of this paper is to convey, to other Muslim and non‐Muslim social researchers engaged in research on Islam and Muslims, how to avoid or identify the range of risks and pitfalls that may emerge in operationalising and evaluating social research in a highly charged political, cultural and social research arena.

In some 'covert' participant-observation studies, social researchers defend their omission of informed consent on the basis of a need to protect subjects from apprehension, nervousness, or even criminal prosecution. In other instances, researchers contend that deception is rampant in society, and that their methods are no more immoral than the behaviour that ordinarily prevails. These defenses of covert methods fail to appreciate the range of risks that may be involved, and in the latter case, fail to show that these methods are in fact morally indistinguishable from the 'deception' that people typically engage in. Ultimately, these proposed defenses of covert methods succeed only in arousing greater concern about informed consent in social research, and the researcher's privilege in bypassing it.

Secondary Analysis in Social Research: A Guide to Data Sources and Methods with Examples. By Catherine Hakim, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1982. xvi, 202 p. 21.5 cm £12.95 (hardbound), £5.95 (paperbound). (Contemporary Social Research Series; 5.)

Intervening variables are analyzed for their impact on the transformation of social science intelligence into organization policies. Functions, structures, theories, and methods of applied social research are found to have a direct bearing upon the type and degree of utilization of research results in organizational decisions. Each of the four variables illustrates differences not only in procedures or instruments but also between the values and goals of applied and academic social research. The growing emphasis in academic circles upon methodological perfection and the growing integration of applied social research into organizational policies is bound to widen the discrepancy in values between the two professions, argue the authors. The message for the social researcher who wishes his data to be utilized is implied in the concluding section of this paper, which draws upon the results of a study of applying social science research to organizational change projects in the area of industrial and labor relations in The Netherlands.