An important scientific goal of studies in the health and social sciences is increasingly to determine to what extent the total effect of a point exposure is mediated by an intermediate variable on the causal pathway between the exposure and the outcome. A causal framework has recently been proposed for mediation analysis, which gives rise to new definitions, formal identification results and n...

This paper argues that recent ethics research guidelines fit poorly onto the kinds of research undertaken in the humanities, where a research conversation often forms a distinctive method of investigation that has no scientific equivalent. The NH&MRC ethics guidelines pay little attention to the issues raised in humanities and social science research. Also, ethics committees are constituted pri...

Western theoretical traditions can benefit from systematic engagement with non-Western concepts: This is shown through an analysis of the Chinese concept guanxi. After considering the general nature of guanxi, including its possible association with corrupt practices and its particular cultural characteristics, the paper goes on to identify the elements of its general form which have universal ...

Historically, access in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) has been conceptualized as the physical operation of AAC technologies; more recently, research and development in the cognitive and social sciences has helped to broaden the concept to include a range of human factors involved in the successful use of AAC technologies in social interactions. The goal of this article is to ...

data and associated hypotheses were constructed, as well as exploring the way in which the relationship between research and policy debates are understood and conducted. Those with established interest in unemployment and health will be familiar with many of the ideas that are presented, while those working in public health or entering upon social science research which may have significant pol...

Network structures are everywhere, including but not limited to applications in biological, physical and social sciences, information technology, and optimization. Network robustness is of crucial importance in all such applications. Research on this topic relies on finding a suitable measure and use this measure to quantify network robustness. A number of distance-based graph invariants, also ...

The financial industry has been strongly influenced by digitalization in the past few years reflected by the emergence of “FinTech,” which represents the marriage of “finance” and “information technology.” FinTech provides opportunities for the creation of new services and business models and poses challenges to traditional financial service providers. Therefore, FinTech has become a subject of...

This article presents a theoretical foundation for marketing based on the ideas of the Austrian school of economists. After a discussion of the methodological foundations of Austrian economics, which reject the statistical and experimental methods of the physical sciences as the means to verify theory in the social sciences, the article presents the Austrians' principle of methodological indivi...

(DFID) supports policies, programmes and projects to promote international development. DFID provides funds for this study as part of that objective but the views and options expressed are those of the author(s) alone. Abstract Experimental approaches such as randomised controlled trials have been successful in identifying and testing medical technologies. There is enthusiasm for use of similar...