Tag: Social Science

Business, Featured15 Comments
Typewriter with a piece of paper that says: EQUALITY

How to Promote Gender Equality in Your Workplace

Social Science Insights

A forthcoming international survey of 240,000 workers by Barbara Annis shows that women feel professional exclusion in their workplaces, while men remain unaware that there’s a problem. Men resort to expressing old fashioned chivalry like opening doors and offering to pay for lunch, thinking this makes women feel more comfortable and appreciated. In fact, it is the way that men exclude women from promotional opportunities, meetings, and mentorship that is a problem for women.

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Social Science

Measuring Well-Being: Why Health, Gender and Communities Need to be Counted in Surveys

Social Science Insights

The OECD’s Better Life Index attempts to compare well-being amongst OECD nations using education, housing, environment measures. The Economist has reproduced this graphic, which ranks Australia first, the USA second and Norway third.

On the one hand these types of surveys are useful because they measure social conditions rather than simply material wealth. On the other hand, this particular graphic neglects other socio-economic measures that give a different picture of national well-being.

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Social Policy
A white woman with a stethoscope smiles at a Black woman patient

How to Empower Patients

Social Science Insights

I’m going to start doing shorter blog posts along with my usual longer analyses. These quick posts will be part of my Social Science Snack series, which will show how research can improve business, the community sector and social media.  My aim is to write about social science research in a way that makes the academic language and ideas more widely accessible. I also focus on providing solutions to specific organisational problems.

Today’s Social Science Snack is about how community health services might empower patients.

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Social Policy
A packed crowd in a stadium

Social Science of Crowds

Social Science Insights

Social policy makers need ongoing research into the social behaviour of crowds. This is partly about urban planning, such as management of landscapes, improving infrastructure, decreasing traffic congestion and so on. Governments also need to understand crowd behaviour because local communities need to improve social service delivery.

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Research in Action
A Chinese man sits in a Chinese shop reading his phone

Sociology of Culture

Social Science Insights

Sociology defines culture as something we do (social practices). It involves using things such as dress and food to communicate our social belonging to particular groups, as well as using other physical resources (materials).

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Social Science

Critique of ‘The Happiness Industry’

Social Science Insights

Australian social psychologist Hugh Mackay‘s new book The Good Life critiques the “outbreak” of positivity as a consumer industry. I share with you Mackay’s interview with Radio National as an example of public social science. 

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Business6 Comments
A white man frowns as a white woman is talking to him and pointing to a book

Making the Most of Communication Styles Within Business

Social Science Insights

Today’s post provides an overview of the key personality types that are used in management training and in team building exercises. I will then talk about some of the limitations of applying personality types too strictly within organisations. I’ll discuss how managers and leaders can adopt a more flexible model of personality types to improve how their team members communicate with one another, which in turn will boost their team contributions at work.

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Social Policy
Sunsent over lake in Illawarra

Research Consultancy to Improve Civic Participation

Social Science Insights

On Sociology at Work, a not-for-profit that I run, Scott Burrows writes about his work addressing youth unemployment in picturesque Illawara, in regional New South Wales, Australia. Scott works a sociologist and research consultant for private industry.

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Social Policy
Three young men and two young women talk and laugh as they walk the street

Including Youth in Community Consulting

Social Science Insights

Societies make many negative assumptions about the types of young people who are forced into criminal activity, and why this might occur. Yet, as Sociology professor Randy Blazak points out, youth voices are often missing from these discussions. Professor Blazak talks about the problem of labelling at-risk youth “gang members.” He notes that not listening to these youth’s experiences can become a “self-fulling prophecy.” He explains: “People don’t get better when you focus on the bad stuff.” In sociology, we know this as labelling theory.

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