1,721,008 research outputs found
Back from the future: A narrative approach to study the imagination of personal futures
Full text linkThis article responds to the call for prospective methodologies in the social sciences by developing a narrative approach to study the imagination of personal futures. The approach encompasses an analytical framework regarding dimensions of projectivity and an elicitation method (Letters from the Future). Using an example letter from a study about post-Referendum futures in Greece, the article draws on psychological, sociological, and futures studies research to elucidate key issues in projectivity research. The article clarifies potentials and challenges in three thematic clusters: (1) Balancing clarity and reach concerns the quality of narrative accounts of the future and proposes techniques for eliciting personally meaningful accounts; (2) The experience and meaning of time foregrounds narrative sense-making involved in imagining the future, thereby highlighting futures thinking as cultural capacity; (3) Engaging spaces of the possible foregrounds imagination in (co-)constructing narratives of and from the future. Finally, the article reviews strengths and limitations
Wonderful life: The power of sharing and reflecting on meaningful moments
Full text linkWhat if there is an afterlife. There, all your memories will be erased, except for one. Which memory do you choose to take with you to eternity? This thesis investigates the emergence of meaning and the way a sense of meaning in life may be enhanced. It explores meaning through the personal, lived experience of meaningful moments and is based on the memories of more than one hundred people, varying in age, profession and background, chosen in answer to the question above. The study investigates the way these moments work and the way recollecting and sharing these moments may strengthen a sense of meaning in life. A narrative approach was chosen throughout this thesis. Narrative psychology accepts that people make sense of events and give meaning to life through the stories they exchange. Taking a narrative approach means employing this meaning-constructing quality of narratives to investigate the emergence of meaning. The results of this thesis are brought together in four key findings. In sum, the thesis gives insight in (1) different categories of meaningful moments, in (2) the mechanisms of the mindset of wonder as a crucial aspect of the meaning orientation towards life, in (3) meaning as a personal process of discovery and creation, and in (4) meaning as an interactive process of meeting through sharing meaningful moments. Meaning being fundamental to our health and wellbeing, these findings may contribute to building this fundament and enhancing a sense of meaning in life. The thesis pleads for a shift in thinking and acting towards a mindset of wonder: an open mindset, in which we see ourselves not as solitary beings, but as part of a larger whole. It is this mindset that enables the discovery meaning in all kinds of situations, as well as the creation of meaning that serves this larger whole and thereby, ourselves. For meaning is more than a mental healthcare issue, but is to be part of the fabric of everyday life
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The imagination of resilience in future narratives from people receiving psychiatric care
Full text linkThis contribution is part of an edited book (ksgv, in Dutch) that resulted from a symposium on positive psychology and meaning in life in the context of spiritual care. With positive psychology’s shift in focus from psychopathology and complaints to strengths and possibilities, attention for the future as guide to the present also becomes more important. This contribution introduces an approach to spiritual care based on personal future stories. The research question is: How do people who receive psychiatric care portray their resilience and its development in stories about their desired future? In a qualitative analysis of 43 Letters from the Future of people who were admitted to a German psychiatric clinic, two forms of resilience appeared to occur: 1) a negative form aimed at distancing a problem situation in order to create room for a desired future; 2) a positive form aimed at vividly depicting a desired future situation as an alternative to a current concern. The chapter ends with a reflection on the implications of a forward-looking approach to the practice of spiritual care. Recognition of suffering remains important, but the starting point is shifted to a horizon of possibilities and the desire for a meaningful life
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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