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"This new edition of this highly regarded text introduces students to the philosophical underpinnings of the social sciences. With a new introduction and two new chapters addressing the latest challenges facing social sciences researchers today, this is an ideal introduction for students of any social sciences subject"--

Research on policy impact has focused increasingly on the practical application of social science research. Four roles are outlined -- substantive expert, information processor, change agent, & scholar -- that have helped to increase the potential usefulness of research while maintaining linkages to the academic community. The general nature of these roles is delineated, & specific implementation strategies that need to be pursued as a continuing aspect of the research enterprise are outlined. Balancing these multiple roles presents several analytical & ethical difficulties, but helps to establish credibility in both the scientific & policy-making communities. Modified HA.

Philosophy of Social Science: A Contemporary Introduction examines perennial questions of philosophy through engaging the empirical study of society. Questions of normativity concern the place of values in social scientific inquiry. Questions of naturalism concern the relationship between the natural and the social sciences. And questions of reductionism ask how social institutions relate to the people who constitute them. This accessible text offers a comprehensive overview of debates in the field, with special attention to new research programs. Topics include the relationship of social policy to social science, interpretive research, cognitive and evolutionary explanations, intentional action explanation, rational choice theory, conventions and social norms, joint intentionality, causal inference, and experimentation. Detailed examples of social scientific research motivate the philosophical questions and illustrate the important concepts. Treating philosophical commitments as implicit in social science, students of the social sciences will benefit from its application of philosophical argument to methodological and theoretical problems. The text argues that social science transforms philosophical questions, and students of philosophy will benefit from its direct engagement with contemporary debates. The Second Edition provides updates with the most recent literature and adds two new chapters: one on modeling and one on the role of race and gender in the social sciences. Key Updates to the Second Edition: A new chapter on "Modeling and Explaining," which explores how models represent social systems and whether highly idealized models explain A new chapter on "Race and Other Social Constructions," capturing much of the recent empirical research and philosophical interest in the social construction of categories like race and gender Revised and updated chapters throughout, clarifying earlier presentations and bringing discussions from the First Edition into line with new research Updated annotated Further Reading lists, which now include relevant publications from 2013 to 2022.

Abstract
The national "Double First-class" strategic plan, a new ambitious higher education policy, which was officially launched at the end of September 2017. This emphasises that 42 Chinese universities have a target of being ranked in the global "First-class" category within ten years. Under the guidance of the strategic plan, Chinese academics in Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) will face significant opportunities and challenges. Compared with those in Science and Technology (S&T), academics in the HSS have less internationalisation in terms of academic discourse power. This study used a mixed-research method to investigate Chinese HSS academics' perceptions of this innovative strategic plan across different types of universities, academics' ranks and locations of academic training. Findings showed that these three variables have significant influences on Chinese academics' perceptions in research publications, research policy understandings and academic promotion strategies.

It has been argued that social science disciplines influence their members policy research via theoretical focus, methods, norms, and system maintenance mechanisms and that these forces inhibit the usefulness of policy research for policy‐making. Political science is found to influence substantially its members policy research output and to decrease its policy usefulness, primarily by promoting explanations of policy, although the extent of influence and lack of usefulness are less than studies of other disciplines suggest. Whereas highly useful outcome analyses are produced less frequently than many advocates of policy research would hope, a sub‐stantial body of policy research undertakes objectives that when satisfied, particularly in the area of problem definition, provide moderately useful output to decision makers. In addition, policy research output is remarkably diverse substantively, but less so in terms of the purposes it serves.