METHODOLOGY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
Year:2011 | Volume:17 | Issue:68|Papers Count:8

One of the most fascinating projects for philosophers is to give a satisfactory account of our inductive practice (the so-called description project). In this paper, after revisiting Hume's skeptical challenge to the problem of induction, we will argue that Hume's argument does not undermine the reliability of induction but rather render it unjustifiable. In the first part of the paper, we will argue that Hume's argument rest on a false description of our inductive behavior. In the second part, we will appeal to Bayesian approach to deal with the problem of induction. In the light of Bayesian achievements, one can take a huge step towards getting the description project done.

Phenomenology can be considered as a research strategy. The aim of this text is to explain phenomenology in the form of a research strategy as a research tool. Just as any other research strategy, phenomenology guides the research process through all the phases. The basic three steps according to Husserl: 1. epoche (suspension) 2.idision (reductionism) and 3. empathy. Based on the Moustakas' attempt to expand it to sever consecutive and operational steps, the researcher will be able to employ this research tool in his investigation. Since, there is not a certain application of this research strategy in the country, the possibility and desirability of it as a model will be discussed. This may open up new grounds for further research in phenomenology.

Some sciences work like devices in developing the other sciences; such as logic which works like a device in keeping the thoughts away from errors, and its rules and principles are used in true thinking and developing logical inferences in many sciences. Thus, hermeneutics is known as the knowledge of interpreting and clarifying the other sciences. Although hermeneutic was initially created for interpreting sacrosanct texts, during its revolution it is used in different sciences and has helped their extensions a lot. In this article, we are going to explain about the major approach of hermeneutics in two classifications: traditional and philosophical. In the traditional approach, we are going to refer to Dilthey and Schleiermacher ideas and in the philosophical approach we are going to represent Gadamer and Heidegger views. We want to show the usage of these approaches in political and international relation sciences such as: employing them in the theories of making theoretical decisions and individual analyses, theorizing international relations (English and feministic school), disambiguating the concepts and political thoughts.

The need assessment is not a certain situation in instructional research, but it is an important and effective method of instructional planning and designing in the Kemp model, the instructional development institute model, developing instructional systems, and criterion referenced instructional model. Need assessment provides a good situation for creating strategies, policies, aims and logical activities to satisfy needs. The aim is to introduce applied methods for a comprehensive need assessment method for institutional, instructional and cultural programmers, researches, scholars, and students. In order to this, the present work studies the nature, aim, and process of objective-oriented methods (with classical, analogue, inductive, Klein proposed techniques), adaptive-oriented methods (along with the techniques of Delphi, Fishbowl, Telstar), and problem-oriented methods (with techniques of Foul 'Tree, Key tasks test, job analysis, and compound methods in macro-level subject-free needs assessment, centered long-term, the micro-regional and the micro-institutional levels).

Critical approaches to discourse analysis are among the general views that analyze discourse from the social and political perspectives. Based on this view, language is not a transparent mirror of the reality but it is a tool interwoven with power relations enclosing the social structure of the reality. Critical approaches to discourse analysis include two general approaches: a) Foucauldian discourse analysis, and b) critical discourse analysis. This study attempts to present the theoretical grounds of critical approaches to discourse analysis by using descriptive and analytic methods. For this purpose, first a brief description of post-structuralism has been presented as one of most important sources of inspiring this view, and then Focauldian discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis have been analyzed both separately and comparatively. In fact, the method of data collection is documentary. The most general distinction between Focauldian discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis is that in the first, the general meaning of discourse is considered, which views discourse as independent and relatively autonomic.

Ideas and thoughts in the process of formation do not necessarily go through a proper, logical process; instead they have a natural occurrence and emergence. Hence, studies of religiosity emerged before modeling and modeling emerged before contemplation on the principle of their construction. Following the primary simple studies about religiosity, modeling for religiosity became necessary and hence investigation in the logic and principles of construction of models, which followed several decades of research for construction and presentation of different models of religiosity, became relevant. The present paper is placed in the final stage of the said process, that is, a logical study of principles of construction of models for religiosity. The main hypothesis of the present paper is: we are facing religiosities not religiosity and hence a valid, acceptable model for every religiosity should be extracted from that very specific religion. This hypothesis which has been defined vis-a-vis the universalistic and particularistic approaches in the modeling of religiosity, has been defined in seven parts.

This paper aims to analyze the citations in "The Journal of Methodology of Social Sciences and Humanities" articles. The methodology of this study is a citation analysis. The findings show that 135 articles were published in 19 volumes of this journal. Thirty-eight articles of those published were worked as a group and the rest as an individual. The total citations are 3,104 and the average of citations per article and per volume is respectively 22.99 and 163.4. The books and English references had the highest citations, 1,877 and 1,766 respectively. The self-citations are 132. The most cited author and translator are respectively Ali Paya and Abdolkarim Soroush with 22 and 25 citations. The most cited Persian and English books are respectively "The Explanation in the Social Sciences" and "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" with 13 and 10 citations. The most cited Persian journal and English journal are respectively "The Journal of Methodology of Social Sciences and Humanities" and "Philosophy of Science" with 30 and 13 citations. The average of the half-life of the Persian references is 9 years and 6 months and of the English references is 16 years and 11 months.