The paper discusses the shift to narrative studies and the growth of biographical research in the social sciences as a way of knowing persons. Dangers inherent in false assumptions of knowledge of interviewing and semi-structured probes are noted. The author's experience with the Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method is discussed, using examples from his research on identity and the informal...

extended abstract introduction zanjan has recently enjoyed considerable population and physical growth. the rapid irregular growth in population number caused unfavorable formation of informal settlement areas in the city. islamabad is of the largest informal accommodation regions in zanjan which was built as a consequence of massive rural migration during 1970s. although the area, at present,...

This study extends previous research that showed how informal social sanctions can backfire when members prefer friendship over enforcement of group norms. We use a type of neural network to model the coordination of informal social control in a small group of adaptive agents confronted with a social dilemma. This model incorporates two mechanisms of social influence, informal sanctions and imi...

the study was designed to analyze credit receipt and enterprise performance by small scale agro based enterprises in the niger delta region of nigeria. a multistage sampling technique was adopted in selecting 264 agro based enterprises and 96 agro based enterprises that accessed informal and formal credit respectively. the heckman model was used to examine the factors affecting amount of inform...

abstract:migration is one of the main factors in regional development and social and demography policymakers pay attention to it. this phenomenon has different functions. the amount of satisfaction on dissatisfaction from migration process can be a sign of positive or negative function for migrants. the goal of this research is to survey the relation between social capital and satisfaction from...

BACKGROUND Parents' perceived informal social control, defined as the informal ways residents intervene to create a safe and orderly neighbourhood environment, may influence young children's physical activity (PA) in the neighbourhood. This study aimed to develop and test the reliability of a scale of PA-related informal social control relevant to Chinese parents/caregivers of pre-schoolers (ch...

Previous findings on the relationship between neighborhood informal social control and child abuse have been mixed. We implemented a scale created by Emery, Trung, and Wu to study protective informal social control of child maltreatment (ISC_CM) by neighbors in a three-stage random cluster sample of 541 families in Seoul, South Korea. Random-effects regression models found that protective ISC_C...