Utilization of social sciences in public discourse: Labeling problems

This article reports the main results of an empirical research project on the utilization of social sciences in the field of labor market and educational policy in West Germany since the 1960s. The research interest focused upon utilization of social science knowledge in public discourse paralleling policy decisions. The analysis shows that the social sciences are used extensively for labeling social problems. The use made of social science knowledge can be described as a certain combination of instrumental and conceptual utilization. In the concluding section of the article, the innovation problem of social science utilization is considered. Dr. Matthias Wingens is senior research associate with the Sociological Research Center “Social Problems” at the University of Bremen. His main research interests include the utilization of social science knowledge, the sociology of knowledge, and educational research. Dr. Ansgar Weymann is chair of the Department of Sociology and head of the Sociological Research Center “Social Problems” at the University of Bremen. His main research interests include sociological theory, utilization of social research, research on education, labor market, and employment, and research on socialization and life-course.     

Beyond non-utilization of evaluations: An institutional perspective

Evaluations are spreading over a number of policy areas and are being integrated into administrative routines on many levels in organizations. Yet, a central finding in evaluation research is that the utilization of evaluations is limited. As an alternative to conventional rational and political approaches the paper explores how an institutionalist perspective explains this paradox. This article argues that the institutionalist perspective is useful in showing how evaluation procedures are symbolically appropriate in our age of “reflexive modernization”; explaining a number of empirical findings about the actual (non-)utilization of evaluations; and suggesting an alternative horizon of effects of evaluations. His recent interests include the application of cultural and institutional perspectives on evaluation.     

Strategic types in institution building: A fit perspective

It is generally accepted that the institutionalization of new knowledge is the final stage in the process of knowledge diffusion and utilization, suggesting the need for conceptual models of institution building strategy. We describe four strategic types of institution building, which involve a transfer of knowledge and programs from a home setting to a host setting: consulting, management, adaptation, and entrepreneurial. The strategic types are conceptually derived in terms of the fit between the institutional components—content, context, and environment—in both home and host settings. Daniel S. Fogel received his B.S. and M.A. from the Pennsylvania State University and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He is currently Associate Dean and Director, Center for International Enterprise Development, and professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh. His two recent books areManaging in Emerging Market Economies: Volumes I and II. His current research focuses on strategic flexibility and innovation in interorganizational networks.     

Changing planes: rhizosemiotic play in transnational curriculum inquiry

This essay juxtaposes concepts created by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari with worlds imagined by Ursula Le Guin in a performance of ‘rhizosemiotic play’ that explores some possible ways of generating and sustaining what William Pinar calls ‘complicated conversation’ within the regime of signs that constitutes an increasingly internationalized curriculum field. Deleuze and Guattari analyze thinking as flows or movements across space. They argue, for example, that every mode of intellectual inquiry needs to account for the plane of immanence upon which it operates—the preconceptual field presupposed by the concepts that inquiry creates. Curriculum inquiry currently operates on numerous nationally distinctive planes of immanence. I argue that the internationalization of curriculum studies should not presume a singular transnational plane of immanence but, rather, envisage a process performed by curriculum scholars with the capacities and competencies to change planes—to move between one plane of immanence and another and/or to transform their own planes. My essay is a ‘narrative experiment’ that takes seriously Deleuze’s argument that a work of philosophy should be, in part, a kind of science fiction, and also takes inspiration from Le Guin’s science fictional stories of ‘changing planes’ to generate productive and disruptive transnational agendas in curriculum inquiry.

Building the virtual city: Public participation through e-democracy

In this paper, we outline how we have developed a series of technologies that enable planning information to be disseminated to affected citizens so that professionals and politicians can engage with these stakeholders in realizing more effective plans. Our main theme is based on the generic idea of the “virtual city” which is conceived in terms of the geography and geometry of the real city. This is a digital representation using a variety of software and multimedia, made interactively available over the web. We begin with a brief comment on different types of virtual city and then summarize the key problems of using such virtualities in public participation, more recently considered as part of the e-democracy movement. We outline our previous attempts to engage in such online participation in east London for these have been an essential prerequisite to the development of “Virtual London,” the application reported here which is currently being fashioned for widespread dissemination of planning information by the Greater London Authority (GLA). We then argue that virtual cities should go well beyond the traditional conceptions of 3D GIS and CAD into virtual worlds and online design. But we also urge caution in pushing the digital message too far, showing how more conventional tangible media is always necessary in rooting such models in more realistic and familiar representations. He has pioneered various multimedia, virtual reality methods 3D GIS, and CAD for problems of public participation in planning. He is currently the director of the Greater London Authority’s Virtual London project within CASA. Amongst his recent contributions, he has published (with S. Evans, M. Batty, and S. Batty) “Community Participation in Urban Regeneration Using Internet Technologies,” in London: A Sustainable World City and “30 Days in ActiveWorlds: Community, Design, and Terrorism in a Virtual World,” in The Social Life of Avatars, Presence and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments. Stephen Evans is also a senior research fellow at CASA. His background is in GIS and he has worked on several projects including LEO—London Environment Online, PROPOLIS—the development of GIS interfaces to urban land use transportation models, and currently on the Virtual London and Camden Panoramas projects. Amongst his recent work, he has published (with P. Steadman) “Interfacing Land-Use Transport Models with GIS: The Inverness Model,” in Advanced Spatial Analysis: The CASA Book of GIS and (with A. Hudson-Smith and M. Batty) “Homes in Hackney Point to the Future,” Planning, 12 July 2002. Michael Batty is professor of Spatial Analysis and Planning and director of CASA. He has a joint appointment between the Department of Geography and the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning. His books range from Urban Modelling to Fractal Cities. He is editor of Environment and Planning B. The work of his group can be seen at 〈http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk〉 and in the recent book Advanced Spatial Analysis. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2001 and was awarded the CBE for “services to geography” in 2004.     

Listening to Pictures

A review of Peter Steele’s: The Whispering Gallery: Art into Poetry, in which Steele writes poems on and to paintings and the sculpture Black Sun (By Inge King) in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. Each work on which there is a poem is reproduced. In this book Steele writes more to the ‘contour’ of the topic-work than he did in Plenty. His poems – as ever sidenoted – are tensed between the topicality of the work of art in question, and Kant’s aesthetic which involves ‘the free play of the cognitive faculties’. In ths tension lies the particular pleasure of Steele’s poetry.     

Workaholism in the Netherlands: Measurement and Implications for Job Strain and Work–Nonwork Conflict

Cette recherche traite de la mesure et des conséquences du travail comme conduite addictive aux Pays‐Bas. La première étude décrit le développement et la validation d’une version hollandaise de la Work Addiction Risk Scale (WART) de Robinson (1999 ). Une analyse factorielle portant sur les réponses de 356 sujets a montré que la structure factorielle de la WART hollandaise était analogue à celle de la version américaine. La deuxième étude (N= 232) avait pour objectif de décider si la sous‐échelle ?tendances compulsives? (CT) de la WART pouvait être utilisée comme mesure abrégrée du travail addictif. Le recouvrement entre l’échelle complète de 25 items et la sous‐échelle CT était large et la répartition des corrélations avec les autres concepts très proche. La troisième étude (N= 199) mit à l’épreuve un modèle des effets du travail addictif (CT) sur l’épusiement et le conflit travail—hors‐travail, montrant que le travail addictif affectait ces deux variables dépendantes à la fois directement et indirectement (par l’intermédiaire des exigences perçues du travail). On conclut 1) que la version hollandaise de la WART est très proche de la version américaine d’origin; 2) que la WART et la sous‐échelle CT sont toutes deux des mesures valides du travail addictif; 3) que le travail addictif est un concept virtuellement majeur pour l’étude du travail et du stress. This research deals with the measurement and consequences of workaholism in the Netherlands. Study 1 describes the development and validation of a Dutch version of Robinson's (1999 ) Work Addiction Risk Scale (WART). Confirmatory factor analysis (total N= 356) revealed that the factorial structure of the Dutch WART was similar to that of the US original. Study 2 (N= 232) examined whether the Compulsive Tendencies (CT) subscale of the WART could be used as a short measure of workaholism. The overlap between the full 25‐item WART and the CT subscale was high, whereas the patterns of correlations with other concepts were very similar. Study 3 (N= 199) tested a process model for the effects of workaholism (i.e., CT) on exhaustion and work–nonwork conflict, showing that workaholism affected these two outcome variables both directly and indirectly (via perceived job demands). It is concluded that: (i) the Dutch version of the WART is very similar to the US original; (ii) the WART and the CT subscale are both valid measures of workaholism; and (iii) workaholism is a potentially important concept in the study of work and stress.     

How efficacious,caring samaritans cope when their help is rejected unexpectedly

This experiment, with 167 introductory psychology subjects, successfully replicated and extended to a wider array of affective, evaluative, and cognitive reactions, previous research on how would-be helpers cope when their help is rejected. It again supported the thesis that violation of perceived expectancy of acceptance mediates the effects of rejection. Using an individual difference measure of generalized self-perceptions of being a person who is sufficientlyefficacious and caring (acronym, EFCA) to help others, we found support for the predictions that high EFCAs would react more strongly than low EFCAs on “proximal” forms of coping, but relatively less strongly on “confrontational” (future-oriented) forms. Our rationale was that high EFCAs expect more acceptance, are more optimistic, and have greater self-investment in the outcome. Mixed support was obtained for the prediction that situational differences in prior expectancy of acceptance moderate the effects of rejection. Portions of the research were presented by the first author at the 98th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Boston, August 1990.     

How efficacious, caring samaritans cope when their help is rejected unexpectedly

This experiment, with 167 introductory psychology subjects, successfully replicated and extended to a wider array of affective, evaluative, and cognitive reactions, previous research on how would-be helpers cope when their help is rejected. It again supported the thesis that violation of perceived expectancy of acceptance mediates the effects of rejection. Using an individual difference measure of generalized self-perceptions of being a person who is sufficientlyefficacious and caring (acronym, EFCA) to help others, we found support for the predictions that high EFCAs would react more strongly than low EFCAs on “proximal” forms of coping, but relatively less strongly on “confrontational” (future-oriented) forms. Our rationale was that high EFCAs expect more acceptance, are more optimistic, and have greater self-investment in the outcome. Mixed support was obtained for the prediction that situational differences in prior expectancy of acceptance moderate the effects of rejection. Portions of the research were presented by the first author at the 98th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Boston, August 1990.     

Back to the future: A review essay of paul hawken, amory lovins and L. Hunter Lovins’ Natural capitalism and Bjørn Lomberg’s The skeptical environmentalist

Conclusion Despite all the hyperbole, Natural Capitalism is not a great book and even less of a radical concept. Indeed, the "natural" is wholly unnecessary, for most of its "radical insights" amounts to nothing more than a rediscovery of the fundamental tenets of a market economy. Good capitalist entrepreneurs have always been able to figure out that pollution and waste are both inefficient and expensive. They never needed government officials or business consultants to tell them that you can do well financially and environmentally at the same time. In spite of all this, if Natural Capitalism succeeds in convincing a large segment of the population that economic growth needn’t coincide with environmental degradation, it will have played a useful role—perhaps one that long-time advocates of market economies simply cannot play. One nonetheless hopes that Hawken and the Lovins will one day take a good look at what their ancestors achieved and give some credit to writers who made all of their good points—and most of their bad ones—long before they were born. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Montreal and recently completed a two year post-doctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University. His main research interests are environmental and economic development issues and intellectual property. Much of the research leading to this article was completed while the author was a research fellow at the Political Economy Research Center (Bozeman, Montana) in the Summer of 2000.     

Standardization and the democratic design of information and communication technology

The way information and communication technology (ICT) develops can promote or hinder the democratic potential of this critical societal infrastructure. Concerns about the role standards development organizations (SDOs) play in this context predate the “digital age” but are reemerging amid substantial changes in the institutional landscape of standardization. This article explores the increasingly critical link between the institutional design of SDOs and the democratic design of ICT. We review some principles of democracy in terms of the design of technology, apply these to standardization, and discuss the role public policy may play here, while distinguishing between input and output legitimacy. Eric J. Iversen is the guest editor of this issue of Knowledge, Technology, & Policy. His biographical sketch accompanies his Introduction. Thierry Vedel is a researcher with the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris. He is based at the Center for Political Research (CEVIPOF) at the National Foundation for Political Science. Having worked on public policies in the area of new communication technologies, he is currently engaged in research on electronic democracy and the governance of communication networks in a context of globalization. Thierry Vedel teaches communication and politics at the University of Paris 2 and at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. He may be reached via http://www.cevipof.mshparis.fr/. His current research is focused on the interaction of technical and institutional innovations and on the evolution, development, and governance of the Internet.     

Artificial intelligence and metaphor making: Some philosophic considerations

This article argues that the metaphors presently employed in describing artificial intelligence represent the use of personification and anthropomorphism. They attempt to develop an isomorphic relationship between the human mind and a computer’s logic. It is suggested that an analogic metaphor is more appropriate in describing this relationship and is more epistemologically correct. Reprinted from Knowledge and Policy: The International Journal of Knowledge Transfer and Utilization, Spring 1990, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 46–61. His current research interests include the behavioral and philosophic aspects of artificial intelligence and expert computer systems in work situations, and the behavioral perceptions of decision processes in the workplace.     

Policy research between the accumulation and implementation of knowledge

An important issue in the development of the field of applied research methodology is the increasing diversity of research questions, methodologies, and types of utilization. This is reflected in the fact that policy research is directed toward the analysis of social problems as well as designing and implementing policy strategies. In this context, different types of knowledge are produced in policy research (e.g., problem diagnosis, evaluation research, futures research). Moreover, policy research employs both qualitative and quantitative scientific approaches, as well as different implementation strategies of knowledge utilization. This article provides an overview of the most important developments in this area in The Netherlands during the past decade. This paper is a translation of “Beleidsonderzoek in het Spanningsveld tussen Kennisvergaring en Kennistoe passing: Ontwerpen van Toegepast Onderzoek,” by J. Hutjes. InSociologisch en Antropologisch Jaarboek, C. J. M. Corver, and M. Elchardus (Eds.), pp. 133–167, 1989.     

The Influence of Language Form and Conventional Wording on Judgments of Illness

Prior research indicates that category labels influence category judgments, but little is known regarding the effects for familiar categories with significant social consequences. The present studies address this issue by examining the effect of linguistic form on judgments of illnesses. Both mental and physical illnesses were presented in each of three linguistic forms: noun, adjective, and possessive phrase. In Study 1, participants were asked to judge the permanence of a set of novel illnesses that differed in wording (e.g., “He is a baxtermic”; “He is baxtermic”; “He has baxtermia”). In Studies 2 and 3, participants were asked to judge which forms of wording were most familiar for actual mental illnesses (e.g., schizophrenia) and physical illnesses (e.g., diabetes). In Study 4, participants were asked to judge the permanence of a set of familiar illnesses that differed in wording. The results indicated that for novel illnesses, nouns (“is a”) imply greatest permanence and possessive nouns (“has”) imply least permanence. However, for familiar illnesses, permanence judgments are also influenced by how frequently each form appears in ordinary language use. Mental illnesses are more often expressed with relatively permanent forms (“is” and “is a”) , whereas physical illnesses are more often expressed with relatively transient forms (“has”). The results demonstrate the importance of both linguistic form and conventional wording patterns on how categories are interpreted.     

The market logic of information

Futurists have imagined the Internet as a separate “cyberspace” and as a force for an idealized marketplace. Business practice and economic theory, however, lead to a different picture. (1) “Always-on” connections bring new interface problems and social skills. (2) Reduced transaction costs and increased economies of scale bring outsourcing, concentration, and globalized economy of focused monopolies. (3) The economies of scope inherent in modular computing systems bring “shallow diversity”: processes and products generated by a common underlying framework. This new picture omits many countervailing factors. Even so, the very existence of alternative scenarios should sharpen questions for research. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from MIT in 1989, having conducted dissertation research in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory on computational models of improvised activities. Before arriving at UCLA he taught at the University of Sussex and UC San Diego, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and the University of Paris. He is the author of Computation and Human Experience (Cambridge University Press, 1997), and the coeditor of Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape (with Marc Rotenberg, MIT Press, 1997), Reinventing Technology, Rediscovering Community: Critical Studies in Computing as a Social Practice (with Douglas Schuler and Ablex, 1997), and Computational Theories of Internation and Agency (with Stanley J. Rosenschein, MIT Press, 1996). His current research concerns the role of emerging information technologies in institutional change; including privacy policy and the networked university. He edits an Internet mailing list called the Red Rock Eater News Service that distributes useful information on the social and political aspects of networking and computing to 5, 000 people in 60 countries.     

The Logic of Knowledge Based Obligation

Deontic Logic goes back to Ernst Mally’s 1926 work, Grundgesetze des Sollens: Elemente der Logik des Willens [Mally. E.: 1926, Grundgesetze des Sollens: Elemente der Logik des Willens, Leuschner & Lubensky, Graz], where he presented axioms for the notion ‘p ought to be the case’. Some difficulties were found in Mally’s axioms, and the field has much developed. Logic of Knowledge goes back to Hintikka’s work Knowledge and Belief [Hintikka, J.: 1962, Knowledge and Belief: An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions, Cornell University Press] in which he proposed formal logics of knowledge and belief. This field has also developed quite a great deal and is now the subject of the TARK conferences. However, there has been relatively little work combining the two notions of knowledge (belief) with the notion of obligation. (See, however, [Lomuscio, A. and Sergot, M.: 2003, Studia Logica 75 63–92; Moore, R. C.: 1990, In J. F. Allen, J. Hendler and A. Tate (eds.), Readings in Planning, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, CA]) In this paper we point out that an agent’s obligations are often dependent on what the agent knows, and indeed one cannot reasonably be expected to respond to a problem if one is not aware of its existence. For instance, a doctor cannot be expected to treat a patient unless she is aware of the fact that he is sick, and this creates a secondary obligation on the patient or someone else to inform the doctor of his situation. In other words, many obligations are situation dependent, and only apply in the presence of the relevant information. Thus a case for combining Deontic Logic with the Logic of Knowledge is clear. We introduce the notion of knowledge based obligation and offer an S5, history based Kripke semantics to express this notion, as this semantics enables us to represent how information is transmitted among agents and how knowledge changes over time as a result of communications. We consider both the case of an absolute obligation (although dependent on information) as well as the (defeasible) notion of an obligation which may be over-ridden by more relevant information. For instance a physician who is about to inject a patient with drug d may find out that the patient is allergic to d and that she should use d′ instead. Dealing with the second kind of case requires a resort to non-monotonic reasoning and the notion of justified belief which is stronger than plain belief, but weaker than absolute knowledge in that it can be over-ridden. This notion of justified belief also creates a derived notion of default obligation where an agent has, as far as the agent knows, an obligation to do some action a. A dramatic application of this notion is our analysis of the Kitty Genovese case where, in 1964, a young woman was stabbed to death while 38 neighbours watched from their windows but did nothing. The reason was not indifference, but none of the neighbours had even a default obligation to act, even though, as a group, they did have an obligation to take some action to protect Kitty. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the conferences SEP-2004, and DALT-2004.     

Sources of History for “A Psychology of Verbal Communication”

There is a standard version of the history of modern mainstream psycholinguistics that emphasizes an extraordinary explosion of research in mid twentieth century under the guidance and leadership of George A. Miller and Noam Chomsky. The narrative is cast as a dramatic shift away from behavioristic principles and toward mentalistic principles based largely on transformational linguistics. A closer view of the literature diminishes the historical importance of behaviorism, shows a prevailing “written language bias” (Linell in The written language bias in linguistics: Its nature, origins and transformations, Routledge, London, 2005, p. 4) in psycholinguistic research, and elevates some theoretical and empirical thinking of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries on language and language use to a far more important role than has heretofore been acknowledged. In keeping with the theoretical and methodological perspective of the present article, it is particularly appropriate that the German philologist Philipp Wegener be “given his due in the annals of linguistic sciences” (Koerner 1991, p. VI*). In his (1885/1991) Untersuchungen über die Grundfragen des Sprachlebens (Investigations regarding the fundamental questions of the life of language; our translation), he began his philological research with the investigation of actual speaking in everyday settings rather than with analyses of purely formal structure. Moreover, he emphasized understanding language and localized this function in the listener. Compatible with Wegener’s own investigations is another aspect of speaking that has been most seriously neglected throughout the history of research on the psychology of verbal communication. For him, as well as for Esper (In C. Murchison [Ed.], A handbook of social psychology, Clark University Press, Worchester, MA, 1935), the basic and primary genre of dialogical discourse was not ongoing conversation, but the occasional use of speech in association with other activities. Both Bühler (Sprachtheorie, Fischer, Stuttgart, 1934/1982) and Wittgenstein (Philosophische Untersuchungen/Philosophical investigations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1958) have also emphasized the importance of the genre of occasional speaking. The article concludes with a discussion of historical shifts in the relationship between psychology and linguistics.     

Knowledge utilization and planned change: An empirical assessment of the A VICTORY model

A number of models and theories of knowledge used in recent years have been purported to include determinants necessary and sufficient for predicting outcomes. There have been, however, few empirical assessments of these models reported in the literature. The present research attempts to fill this void by validating the A VICTORY model, which represents one of the most well-known theories of knowledge utilization and planned change., A heuristic factor analytic approach found that the model can be quantified and reliably measured to assess the readiness of organizations to combat violence. A two-staged discriminant analysis, using two outside criterion variables found that selected A VICTORY factors may (in part) satisfy necessary conditions for explaining, research use and planned change; but the model, in its entirety, does not sufficiently explain the reasons that organizations use research or why they engage in change of any kind. Knowlton W. Johnson is director of the College of Urban and Public Affairs' Urban Studies Center at the University of Louisville, Louisville, Ky 40292. He is also a professor in the School of Justice Administration and co-editor of theJournal of Urban Affairs. His current research in knowledge utilization includes evaluating the effects of information brokers on research use and monitoring the impact of university disseminated and/or produced information on policymaking in local and state government.     

The Effect of Induced Mood on Children’s Social Information Processing: Goal Clarification and Response Decision

We investigated whether induced mood influenced the social information processing steps of goal clarification and response decision in 480 1st–3rd graders, and in more selected groups of low accepted-aggressive (n = 39), average accepted-nonaggressive (n = 103), and high accepted-nonaggressive children (n = 68). Children participated in two sessions; in the first session peer assessments were administered. In the second session children were randomly assigned to receive either a happy, angry, or neutral mood induction prior to participating in a social cognitive interview assessing goals, outcome expectancies, and self efficacy for competent, hostile, and passive responses in the context of ambiguous provocations. Results revealed that an angry mood increased focus on instrumental goals. Low accepted-aggressive children were more susceptible to the effects of mood than were high accepted- and average-nonaggressive children. In addition, children’s predominant goal orientation was related to children’s response decisions; children with predominantly instrumental goals evaluated nonhostile responses to provocation more negatively and had higher self efficacy for hostile responses. Implications and future research directions are discussed.