The Role of Philanthropic Funding in Building Research Evidence to Support an Aging Population: A Case Study from Ireland

This case study examines the role of philanthropic funding in building capacity for aging research in Ireland, and how this investment has addressed the lack of evidence to support planning for an aging population. The funding has supported a range of initiatives including the national longitudinal study on aging (TILDA), the creation of three professorships/chairs, and the establishment of four new research centers. Important potential outcomes are emerging across other domains including research-informed policy development and the generation of health benefits. The efforts of academic researchers to ensure that their findings are readily accessible to end users and to forge robust working relationships with all stakeholders have helped to enhance the use of research findings. Overall, philanthropy has played a pivotal role in building capacity, infrastructure, and expertise in academic settings in Ireland. Moreover, this work provides an excellent example of how such efforts can begin to inform effective planning and service provision.     

Redistributed Manufacturing and the Impact of Big Data: A Consumer Goods Perspective

Abstract

Digitalization and the growth of big data promise greater customization as well as change in how manufacturing is distributed. Yet, challenges arise in applying these new approaches in consumer goods industries that often emphasize mass production and extended supply chains. We build a conceptual framework to explore whether big data combined with new manufacturing technologies can facilitate redistributed manufacturing (RDM). Through analysis of 24 consumer goods industry cases using primary and secondary data, we investigated evolving manufacturing configurations, their underlying drivers, the role of big data applications, and their impact on the redistribution of manufacturing. We find some applications of RDM concepts, although in other cases existing manufacturing configurations are leveraged for high volume consumer goods products through big data analytics and market segmentation. The analysis indicates that the framework put forward in the paper has broader value in organizing thinking about emerging interrelationships between big data and manufacturing.     

Digital methods in a post-API environment

ABSTRACT

Qualitative and mixed methods digital social research often relies on gathering and storing social media data through the use of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). In past years this has been relatively simple, with academic developers and researchers using APIs to access data and produce visualisations and analysis of social networks and issues. In recent years, API access has become increasingly restricted and regulated by corporations at the helm of social media networks. Facebook (the corporation) has restricted academic research access to Facebook (the social media platform) along with Instagram (a Facebook-owned social media platform). Instead, they have allowed access to sources where monetisation can easily occur, in particular, marketers and advertisers. This leaves academic researchers of digital social life in a difficult situation where API related research has been curtailed. In this paper we describe some rationales and methodologies for using APIs in social research. We then introduce some of the major events in academic API use that have led to the prohibitive situation researchers now find themselves in. Finally, we discuss the methodological and ethical issues this produces for researchers and, suggest some possible steps forward for API related research.     

‘Cycles of disadvantage’ revisited: young people,families and poverty across generations*

ABSTRACT

One of Andy Furlong’s abiding concerns was to show how the problems of working-class youth are often, straightforwardly, the outcome of inequalities in employment opportunities. On rarer occasions, however, this explanation fits less well. Some young people grow up in families where poverty seems more deeply embedded and inherent to those families. Here, old ideas about a cultural ‘underclass’ can be tempting to politicians and policy makers. Our qualitative research, with 20 families living in extremely deprived U.K. neighbourhoods, showed that neither a simple lack of job opportunities nor ‘cultures of worklessness’ explained why hardship persisted for them. Our argument is that circumstances which appear to fit with the idea of an inter-generational, cultural ‘underclass’, in fact, have their provenance in a semi-permanent constellation of external socio-economic pressures bearing on successive generations of families over decades. Examples did include a shared context of declining job opportunities but extended to a contracting and disciplinary Welfare State, punitive criminal justice systems, poor-quality education and the physical decline of working-class neighbourhoods. We take one example – the destructive impact of local drug markets – to uncover the complex, obscure processes that compound the disadvantage faced by working-class young adults and their families over generations.     

The importance of using multiple outcome measures in infant research

Collecting data with infants is notoriously difficult. As a result, many of our studies consist of small samples, with only a single measure, in a single age group, at a single time point. With renewed calls for greater academic rigor in data collection practices, using multiple outcome measures in infant research is one way to increase rigor, and, at the same time, enable us to more accurately interpret our data. Here, we illustrate the importance of using multiple measures in psychological research with examples from our own work on rapid threat detection and from the broader infancy literature. First, we describe our initial studies using a single outcome measure, and how this strategy caused us to nearly miss a rich and complex story about attention biases for threat and their development. We demonstrate how using converging measures can help researchers make inferences about infant behavior, and how using additional measures allows us to more deeply examine the mechanisms that drive developmental change. Finally, we provide practical and statistical recommendations for how researchers can use multiple measures in future work.     

Rappin' on the Tyne: White Hip Hop Culture in Northeast England – an Ethnographic Study

This article offers an ethnographic account of the significance of rap music and hip hop culture for white youth in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne in north-east England. Although white appropriations of black music in Britain have been well documented in sociological work, there is currently very little research on white responses to rap and hip hop. During the course of this article I identify two distinct responses on the part of white Newcastle youth to rap and hip hop. I then go on to argue that, despite their differing nature, each of these responses can be seen as bound up with issues of locality and local experience.