Malcolm Williams
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3589452 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Malcolm Williams |
| PRENOMES | Malcolm |
| SOBRENOME | Williams |
| ASSINATURA | WILLIAMS M |
| AFILIAÇÕES | RAND Corporation |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7945-1194 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 74 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 412 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 74 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1953 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Peripheralization and economic development
The concept of peripheralization explores the agency of peripheries to address uneven development, considering the power dynamics and material and discursive processes which underpin how peripheries become more (or less) peripheralized in relation to economic cores, over time. This paper adds that peripheralization is multi-causal. In other words, the paper claims that the agency of actors in peripheral areas needs to be understood as being compr…
Allen Fremont’s Contributions to Health Equity
Medical Care: August 2022 - Volume 60 - Issue 8 - p 555 doi: 10.1097/MLR.0000000000001744
Beginning Quantitative Research
Quantification and realist methodologies
The use of quantitative methods within realist methodologies are fairly rare. This is perhaps because a realist understanding of the social word as complex and dynamic (messy but not chaotic) does not sit well with traditional variable-based causal analysis which test specific theoretical assumptions, yet cannot account for interaction, moderation and emergence. In this paper, we explore the ontological challenges and epistemological issues which…
A Community-Partnered Approach to Developing Church-Based Interventions to Reduce Health Disparities Among African-Americans and Latinos
Evaluating Community Partnerships Addressing Community Resilience in Los Angeles, California
Community resilience has grown in importance in national disaster response and recovery efforts. However, measurement of community resilience, particularly the content and quality of relationships aimed at improving resilience, is lacking. To address this gap, we used a social network survey to measure the number, type, and quality of relationships among organizations participating in 16 coalitions brought together to address community resilience…
How Do Communities Use a Participatory Public Health Approach to Build Resilience? The Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience Project
Community resilience is a key concept in the National Health Security Strategy that emphasizes development of multi-sector partnerships and equity through community engagement. Here, we describe the advancement of CR principles through community participatory methods in the Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience (LACCDR) initiative. LACCDR, an initiative led by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health with academic partners, r…
IJSRM’s 100th issue
Complex realism in social research
In recent years, both realism and complexity have begun to have methodological influence in social research. Yet for the most part, these have existed separately and have had limited impact on empirical research. In this article, we develop a theoretical argument for complex realism, grounded in an ontology of probability, that may be operationalised to demonstrate the reality of social change at a micro- and meso-level. We apply our conception o…
A Tale of Two Sociologies
Several studies, in recent years, have demonstrated what has become known as the 'quantitative deficit' in UK sociology. This deficit is primarily manifested through negative student attitudes towards quantitative methods, a lack of ability in that area and a paucity of quantitative research and publication in the discipline that utilises quantitative methods. While we acknowledge the existence of that deficit, we argue in this article, and prese…
Key Concepts in the Philosophy of Social Research
"This is a splendid book, providing a readable and reliable guide to a very large range of topics and literature... the author brings together, as few of us can, the details of research methodology and practice with broader philosophical perspectives and approaches." - William Outhwaite, Emeritus Professor, Newcastle University "We need researchers who are philosophically informed rather than philosophically obsessed or philosophically oppressed.…
Effects of a Pilot Church-Based Intervention to Reduce HIV Stigma and Promote HIV Testing Among African Americans and Latinos
Key Concepts in the Philosophy of Social Research
Can't Count or Won't Count? Embedding Quantitative Methods in Substantive Sociology Curricula
This paper reports on a quasi-experiment in which quantitative methods (QM) are embedded within a substantive sociology module. Through measuring student attitudes before and after the intervention alongside control group comparisons, we illustrate the impact that embedding has on the student experience. Our findings are complex and even contradictory. Whilst the experimental group were less likely to be distrustful of statistics and appreciate h…
Acculturation and Drug Use Stigma Among Latinos and African Americans
Peer Mentoring for Male Parolees
This study demonstrated the feasibility and import of involving formerly incarcerated adults in the design, implementation, and testing of interventions intended to support their reintegration efforts
Method and measurement after fifty years – a symposium
Method and measurement after fifty years – a symposium." International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 19(1), pp. 97–98
Predictors of HIV-related stigmas among African American and Latino religious congregants
Congregation-based HIV stigma reduction interventions should consider incorporating contact with HIV-affected people. It may also be helpful to address attitudes toward drug addiction and sexual orientation. (PsycINFO Database Record
Situated objectivity, values and realism
This article is a defence of objectivity in sociology, not as is usually conceived as 'value freedom' or 'procedural objectivity', but rather as a socially constructed value that can nevertheless assist us in accessing social reality. It is argued that objectivity should not be seen as the opposite to subjectivity, but rather arising from particular intersubjectively held values (both methodological and societal) held in particular times and plac…
How Effective Is Correctional Education, and Where Do We Go from Here? The Results of a Comprehensive Evaluation
This report assesses the effectiveness of correctional education programs for both incarcerated adults and juveniles and the cost-effectiveness of adult correctional education. It also provides results of a survey of U.S. state correctional education directors that give an up-to-date picture of what correctional education looks like today. Finally, the authors offer recommendations for improving the field of correctional education moving forward
The Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience Project — A Community-Level, Public Health Initiative to Build Community Disaster Resilience
Public health officials need evidence-based methods for improving community disaster resilience and strategies for measuring results. This methods paper describes how one public health department is addressing this problem. This paper provides a detailed description of the theoretical rationale, intervention design and novel evaluation of the Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience Project (LACCDR), a public health program for increasing…
Correlates of HIV Testing among African American and Latino Church Congregants
Road to Resilience
This infographic illustrates how communities can become more resilient as they plan ahead for potential disasters.
Situated Objectivity in Sociology
An Orchestra of Soloists
Interpretivism and Generalisation
This article is concerned with the status of generalisation in interpretive sociology. The case made is that generalisation is inevitable, desirable and possible. It is held that interpretivism must employ a special kind of generalisation, characterised here as moderatum. These limits are the limits of interpretivism itself and the paper concludes that this implies the adoption of methodological pluralism in order to realise the full potential of…
Generalization in Qualitative Research
Earlier treatments of moderatum generalization (e.g. Williams, 2000a) explicitly addressed interpretivist sociology. This article extends that earlier argument by examining some of its implications for a wider range of qualitative research methods. It first adopts an empirical approach, providing concrete illustrations from the most recent volume of Sociology of what sociologists actually do when describing the meaning of their findings. In the l…
Methodological Pluralism in British Sociology
The dominant position on research methodology and methods among British sociologists has for many years been that of 'methodological pluralism'. However, concerns have lately been expressed about the lack of research involving quantitative methods, not least by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). A study of the four mainstream British journals over two years, together with associated sources, demonstrates national patterns of researc…
Digital social research, social media and the sociological imagination
Technological innovation in digital communications, epitomised in the shift from the informational web (Web1.0) to the interactional web (Web2.0), provokes new opportunities and challenges for social research. Web2.0 technologies, particularly the new social media (e.g. social networking, blogging and micro-blogging) as well as the increased accessibility of the World Wide Web through highly portable and prevalent devices like smart phones, table…
Does British Sociology Count
The research reported here is from the first national survey of British undergraduate attitudes to the methodological character of the discipline and specifically to quantitative methods.The study found that most sociology students saw their subject as closer to the humanities than the sciences. However, whilst as anticipated many students expressed anxiety about quantitative methods and 'number', a slight majority nevertheless expressed no such …
Living Alone
In recent decades there has been a significant rise in the numbers of people who live alone and it was predicted that by 2002 that a third of all households will be single-person households. The predicted increase has occurred with indications of continued growth in this type of living arrangement. Furthermore, although living alone remains common among older age groups, the largest growth has been within younger populations. This demographic tre…
Can we, should we, measure ethnicity
This paper discusses some of the methodological issues in the measurement of ethnicity in the social survey. Measurement encounters two sets of interrelated problems: those of the definition and nature of ethnicity as a social phenomenon and its individual subjective experience and those of the derivation of valid and reliable categories. Commonly used single-item measures fail to capture many ethnic groups and may be of limited value. Extending …
Science and Social Science
Getting Actionable About Community Resilience
Community resilience (CR)—ability to withstand and recover from a disaster—is a national policy expectation that challenges health departments to merge disaster preparedness and community health promotion and to build stronger partnerships with organizations outside government, yet guidance is limited. A baseline survey documented community resilience–building barriers and facilitators for health department and community-based organization (CBO) …
Building Community Disaster Resilience
An emerging approach to public health emergency preparedness and response, community resilience encompasses individual preparedness as well as establishing a supportive social context in communities to withstand and recover from disasters. We examine why building community resilience has become a key component of national policy across multiple federal agencies and discuss the core principles embodied in community resilience theory—specifically, …
Applying Community Engagement to Disaster Planning
Community resilience (CR) is a priority for preparedness, but few models exist. A steering council used community-partnered participatory research to support workgroups in developing CR action plans and hosted forums for input to design a pilot demonstration of implementing CR versus enhanced individual preparedness toolkits. Qualitative data describe how stakeholders viewed CR, how toolkits were developed, and demonstration design evolution. Sta…
A Tale of Two Sociologies
Several studies, in recent years, have demonstrated what has become known as the 'quantitative deficit' in UK sociology. This deficit is primarily manifested through negative student attitudes towards quantitative methods, a lack of ability in that area and a paucity of quantitative research and publication in the discipline that utilises quantitative methods. While we acknowledge the existence of that deficit, we argue in this article, and prese…
Can we measure homelessness? A critical evaluation of the method of 'capture-recapture
This paper considers the possibility of accurately measuring the numbers of persons homeless in a given location, at particular times. It is maintained that such data are necessary to the efficient apportioning of resources, but hitherto have been unobtainable through 'traditional' methods of counting. In recent years researchers have advocated the use of the method of 'capture-recapture', a technique which utilizes information from duplicate cas…
The Problem of Representation
This paper is concerned with the question of representation in survey research, specifically in respect of the operationalisation of variables. In sociology, empiricist explanations of the social world are largely discredited and some form of realism is now commonly favoured by researchers. Here I will argue that whilst realism has made theoretical progress in sociology, in survey research there has been an unfortunate accommodation between empir…
Women and Handguns
Social research ? the emergence of a discipline
This paper advances the conjecture that Social Research is becoming a discipline in its own right, independent of substantive disciplines such as sociology, social policy or political science. In the first part of the paper I briefly examine the historical foundations of research and the factors that led to its growth in the last two decades. In the second part of the paper I discuss the implications arising from an increased demand for methods t…
Complex realism in social research
In recent years, both realism and complexity have begun to have methodological influence in social research. Yet for the most part, these have existed separately and have had limited impact on empirical research. In this article, we develop a theoretical argument for complex realism, grounded in an ontology of probability, that may be operationalised to demonstrate the reality of social change at a micro- and meso-level. We apply our conception o…
Can't Count or Won't Count? Embedding Quantitative Methods in Substantive Sociology Curricula
This paper reports on a quasi-experiment in which quantitative methods (QM) are embedded within a substantive sociology module. Through measuring student attitudes before and after the intervention alongside control group comparisons, we illustrate the impact that embedding has on the student experience. Our findings are complex and even contradictory. Whilst the experimental group were less likely to be distrustful of statistics and appreciate h…
Special issue
The Legitimation of Ethnicity
In this article we examine the complex processes involved in small‐scale ethnicity emergence and legitimation, and highlight the multi‐dimensional elements present in moving from a strong regional identity to an externally legitimate ethnic group. We use C ornwall as a case study: administered as an E nglish county, there has been a historic ethno‐cultural movement for recognition alongside recent inclusion in national statistics; however, legiti…
Social Objects, Causality and Contingent Realism
This paper is a realist argument for the existence of “social objects”. Social objects, I argue, are the outcome states of a contingent causal process and in turn posses causal properties. This argument has consequences for what we can mean by realism and consequences for the development of a realist methodology. Realism should abandon the notion of natural necessity in favour of a view that the “real” nature of the social world is contingent and…
Situated Objectivity
This paper is a re‐examination of the issue of objectivity in sociology. Though it begins from the premise that objectivity is a necessary precondition for a minimally scientific sociology, it sides with subjectivists who claim that values are ever present in investigation. Values are shown to exist along a continuum in investigation. The paper develops the argument that objectivity is a value itself and is nested in other values that will take o…
A Community-Partnered Approach to Developing Church-Based Interventions to Reduce Health Disparities Among African-Americans and Latinos
Why is Cornwall Poor? Poverty and In-Migration since the 1960s
Cornwall is arguably the most economically deprived area of Britain, yet since the 1960s it has experienced one of the highest levels of in-migration of any county in Britain. Migrants are mostly of working age and economically active, yet not only does a move to Cornwall appear to economically impoverish them, but large-scale inmigration has been associated with a declining economy since it began. This article examines the historic roots of pove…
Rom Harré on Social Structure and Social Change
Social cues, such as eye gaze and pointing fingers, can increase the prioritisation of specific locations for cognitive processing.A previous study using a manual reaching task showed that, although both gaze and pointing cues altered target prioritisation (reaction times [RTs]), only pointing cues affected action execution (trajectory deviations).These differential effects of gaze and pointing cues on action execution could be because the gaze c…
Science and Social Science
Terminology in Canada
Preview this article: Terminology in Canada, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/term.1.1.18wil-1.gif
Women and Handguns
Releasing the past to help the present
Powerlessness and HIV prevention among people who trade sex for drugs ('strawberries')
Researchers and members of the drug culture have employed the term 'strawberries' to describe African American women who trade sex for drugs. Data from six US cities participating in a community-based drug research project were analysed to examine the determinants of trading sex for drugs. As shown by our data, some African American women match the street description commonly attributed to 'strawberries'. However, our results also show that tradi…
Single Case Probabilities and the Social World
This paper is a re‐examination of Popper’s propensity interpretation of probability in respect of its potential methodological value in social science. A long standing problem for the (standard) frequency interpretation of probability is that whilst it is able to treat both aggregate and individual phenomena as having measurable properties, it cannot explain the ontological relationship between such concrete individual cases and aggregates. Poppe…
Social research ? the emergence of a discipline
This paper advances the conjecture that Social Research is becoming a discipline in its own right, independent of substantive disciplines such as sociology, social policy or political science. In the first part of the paper I briefly examine the historical foundations of research and the factors that led to its growth in the last two decades. In the second part of the paper I discuss the implications arising from an increased demand for methods t…
Sokal, Chaos and the Way Forward
David Byrne, Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 1999, £45.00 (£:15.99 paperback), viii+206 pp. (ISBN 0-415-16296-3)Raymond A. Eve, Sara Horsfall and Mary E. Lee (eds.), Chaos, Complexity and Sociology: Myths, Models and Theories). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997, £37.00 (£16.99 paperback), xxxii+328pp. (ISBN 0-7619-0890-0 pbk)Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures. London: Profile, 1998…
Interpretivism and Generalisation
This article is concerned with the status of generalisation in interpretive sociology. The case made is that generalisation is inevitable, desirable and possible. It is held that interpretivism must employ a special kind of generalisation, characterised here as moderatum. These limits are the limits of interpretivism itself and the paper concludes that this implies the adoption of methodological pluralism in order to realise the full potential of…
Is there Any Such Thing as Homelessness? Measurement, Explanation and Process in 'Homelessness' Research
Homelessness, however defined, is an outcome of earlier social and individual processes, but is it a social construction that classifies diverse circumstances and individuals under a convenient description, or can a discrete set of social processes, with clear lines of causation, be identified? This question is more than of academic interest, for if public authorities and campaigning organizations are to tackle a perceived social problem they nee…
Can we measure homelessness? A critical evaluation of the method of 'capture-recapture
This paper considers the possibility of accurately measuring the numbers of persons homeless in a given location, at particular times. It is maintained that such data are necessary to the efficient apportioning of resources, but hitherto have been unobtainable through 'traditional' methods of counting. In recent years researchers have advocated the use of the method of 'capture-recapture', a technique which utilizes information from duplicate cas…
Commitment and Investigation in Knowing the Social World
INTRODUCTION: Pregnancy is a crucial period which ultimately directly impacts two individuals health and wellbeing. Within the UK, a standardised pattern of care is established with collaborations across disciplines to the benefit of women and babies. During the COVID19 pandemic, this pattern of care was disrupted to align with protective protocols which until now, has not been formally reported. METHODS: A retrospective, mixed methods study of U…
An Introduction To The Philosophy Of Social Research
This is an accessible introduction to the philosophy of social research which relates philosophical ideas to actual research practice. The book makes effective use of illustrations from the UK, US and Europe to examine specific problems and broader issues. The book is intended for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in social research methods within sociology, social policy, politics, social psychology, human geography; philosophy of social sc…
The Application of Argumentation Theory to Translation Quality Assessment
Translation quality assessment (TQA) models may be divided into two main types: (1) models with a quantitative dimension, such as SEPT (1979) and Sical (1986), and (2) non-quantitative, textological models, such as Nord (1991) and House (1997). Because it tends to focus on microtextual (sampling, subsentence) analysis and error counts, Type 1 suffers from some major shortcomings. First, because of time constraints, it cannot assess, except on the…
Rom Harré on Social Structure and Social Change
Social cues, such as eye gaze and pointing fingers, can increase the prioritisation of specific locations for cognitive processing.A previous study using a manual reaching task showed that, although both gaze and pointing cues altered target prioritisation (reaction times [RTs]), only pointing cues affected action execution (trajectory deviations).These differential effects of gaze and pointing cues on action execution could be because the gaze c…
Why is Cornwall Poor? Poverty and In-Migration since the 1960s
Cornwall is arguably the most economically deprived area of Britain, yet since the 1960s it has experienced one of the highest levels of in-migration of any county in Britain. Migrants are mostly of working age and economically active, yet not only does a move to Cornwall appear to economically impoverish them, but large-scale inmigration has been associated with a declining economy since it began. This article examines the historic roots of pove…
Why is Cornwall Poor? Poverty and In-Migration since the 1960s
Cornwall is arguably the most economically deprived area of Britain, yet since the 1960s it has experienced one of the highest levels of in-migration of any county in Britain. Migrants are mostly of working age and economically active, yet not only does a move to Cornwall appear to economically impoverish them, but large-scale inmigration has been associated with a declining economy since it began. This article examines the historic roots of pove…
The Problem of Representation
This paper is concerned with the question of representation in survey research, specifically in respect of the operationalisation of variables. In sociology, empiricist explanations of the social world are largely discredited and some form of realism is now commonly favoured by researchers. Here I will argue that whilst realism has made theoretical progress in sociology, in survey research there has been an unfortunate accommodation between empir…
Living Alone
In recent decades there has been a significant rise in the numbers of people who live alone and it was predicted that by 2002 that a third of all households will be single-person households. The predicted increase has occurred with indications of continued growth in this type of living arrangement. Furthermore, although living alone remains common among older age groups, the largest growth has been within younger populations. This demographic tre…
Methodological Pluralism in British Sociology
The dominant position on research methodology and methods among British sociologists has for many years been that of 'methodological pluralism'. However, concerns have lately been expressed about the lack of research involving quantitative methods, not least by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). A study of the four mainstream British journals over two years, together with associated sources, demonstrates national patterns of researc…
Situated Objectivity
This paper is a re‐examination of the issue of objectivity in sociology. Though it begins from the premise that objectivity is a necessary precondition for a minimally scientific sociology, it sides with subjectivists who claim that values are ever present in investigation. Values are shown to exist along a continuum in investigation. The paper develops the argument that objectivity is a value itself and is nested in other values that will take o…
Methodological Pluralism, British Sociology and the Evidence-based State
We very much welcome Professor Carl May’s courteous and cogently argued response to our original article. His observations elaborate issues which also concern us, and contain much with which we would agree. The fact that we would like to take this opportunity to respond briefly to, and clarify, some of the specific issues he raises should not obscure this general concord. At the outset, we would like to establish that if our references to ‘junior…
Generalization in Qualitative Research
Earlier treatments of moderatum generalization (e.g. Williams, 2000a) explicitly addressed interpretivist sociology. This article extends that earlier argument by examining some of its implications for a wider range of qualitative research methods. It first adopts an empirical approach, providing concrete illustrations from the most recent volume of Sociology of what sociologists actually do when describing the meaning of their findings. In the l…
Long‐Termness’ with Regard to Sickness and Disability
Longitudinal data are used to explore the reliability of long‐term illness measures using information on ‘long‐term/permanent sickness or disability’ as recorded via the question on economic activity in the Census of England and Wales. Specifically it is asked ‘what evidence is there that individuals answer the item on long‐term sickness or disability in the same way at different time points?’. The research is based on data from the Office for Na…
Gender Life Course Transitions from the Nuclear Family in England and Wales 1981-2001
In recent years there has been much political debate in the popular media about the fate of the nuclear family in the UK. Very little work has been done, using population data, to actually demonstrate the decline, or indeed continuance of this type of household formation. In this paper we use Office for National Statistics (ONS) longitudinal census data, from England and Wales, to explore the formation, dissolution and continuance of the nuclear …
Sociology (51 obras) · Political science (27 obras) · Epistemology (26 obras) · Psychology (26 obras) · Computer Science (23 obras) · Social science (20 obras) · Medicine (19 obras) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice (17 obras) · Philosophy (17 obras) · Geography (14 obras)