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Research combines two leading theories to better explain how and why people cooperate with one another

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Testing theories about how and why people cooperate with one another

A team of economists from Switzerland and Germany has found, via model testing, that two leading theories created to explain why humans engage in cooperation with one another tend to fail under scrutiny. In their paper published in the journal Nature the group describes how further model and field testing showed that it was only when the two theories were combined that they proved able to describe scenarios where humans cooperated.

Humans cooperate with one another on a variety of levels and in different kinds of situations. Research suggests that the reason humans have evolved in a way that promotes cooperation is that it leads to an eventual payoff for both parties. Such research has also shown that it is much easier to explain how and why reciprocity works when it is clear that the person performing the first act is reasonably sure they will see the other person again, likely leading them to reciprocate.

Much more difficult to explain is why humans sometimes engage in behaviors that would normally be seen as a first move in cooperation, when there is no assurance they will see the recipient again, and thus may not reap a reward. In this new study, the research team tested theories that have attempted to explain such behavior.

The researchers began their effort by noting that there are two leading theories that explain such behavior; one offers a hypothesis that suggests the behavior evolved surrounding ancestral groups and rules that have formed over time. The second suggests that such behavior is due to group competition.

The team created models to test both theories and found that neither approach led to reliable support for reciprocity and thus rewards for continued behavior . But they found that when they grouped the two theories together, things worked much better. Repeated interactions within groups, while there was also competition, could lead to super-additive cooperation, where the two mechanisms interacted synergistically to support high levels of ingroup cooperation and low levels of outgroup cooperation.

The team ventured to Papua New Guinea to test their ideas on two groups of people living there, the Perepka and the Ngenika. In experiments involving giving money to one person and asking them to share it with a partner, they found that applying both theories yielded results similar to those they had found with their models.

Journal information: Nature

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Stanford Medicine study identifies distinct brain organization patterns in women and men

Stanford Medicine researchers have developed a powerful new artificial intelligence model that can distinguish between male and female brains.

February 20, 2024

sex differences in brain

'A key motivation for this study is that sex plays a crucial role in human brain development, in aging, and in the manifestation of psychiatric and neurological disorders,' said Vinod Menon. clelia-clelia

A new study by Stanford Medicine investigators unveils a new artificial intelligence model that was more than 90% successful at determining whether scans of brain activity came from a woman or a man.

The findings, published Feb. 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, help resolve a long-term controversy about whether reliable sex differences exist in the human brain and suggest that understanding these differences may be critical to addressing neuropsychiatric conditions that affect women and men differently.

“A key motivation for this study is that sex plays a crucial role in human brain development, in aging, and in the manifestation of psychiatric and neurological disorders,” said Vinod Menon , PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of the Stanford Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory . “Identifying consistent and replicable sex differences in the healthy adult brain is a critical step toward a deeper understanding of sex-specific vulnerabilities in psychiatric and neurological disorders.”

Menon is the study’s senior author. The lead authors are senior research scientist Srikanth Ryali , PhD, and academic staff researcher Yuan Zhang , PhD.

“Hotspots” that most helped the model distinguish male brains from female ones include the default mode network, a brain system that helps us process self-referential information, and the striatum and limbic network, which are involved in learning and how we respond to rewards.

The investigators noted that this work does not weigh in on whether sex-related differences arise early in life or may be driven by hormonal differences or the different societal circumstances that men and women may be more likely to encounter.

Uncovering brain differences

The extent to which a person’s sex affects how their brain is organized and operates has long been a point of dispute among scientists. While we know the sex chromosomes we are born with help determine the cocktail of hormones our brains are exposed to — particularly during early development, puberty and aging — researchers have long struggled to connect sex to concrete differences in the human brain. Brain structures tend to look much the same in men and women, and previous research examining how brain regions work together has also largely failed to turn up consistent brain indicators of sex.

test

Vinod Menon

In their current study, Menon and his team took advantage of recent advances in artificial intelligence, as well as access to multiple large datasets, to pursue a more powerful analysis than has previously been employed. First, they created a deep neural network model, which learns to classify brain imaging data: As the researchers showed brain scans to the model and told it that it was looking at a male or female brain, the model started to “notice” what subtle patterns could help it tell the difference.

This model demonstrated superior performance compared with those in previous studies, in part because it used a deep neural network that analyzes dynamic MRI scans. This approach captures the intricate interplay among different brain regions. When the researchers tested the model on around 1,500 brain scans, it could almost always tell if the scan came from a woman or a man.

The model’s success suggests that detectable sex differences do exist in the brain but just haven’t been picked up reliably before. The fact that it worked so well in different datasets, including brain scans from multiple sites in the U.S. and Europe, make the findings especially convincing as it controls for many confounds that can plague studies of this kind.

“This is a very strong piece of evidence that sex is a robust determinant of human brain organization,” Menon said.

Making predictions

Until recently, a model like the one Menon’s team employed would help researchers sort brains into different groups but wouldn’t provide information about how the sorting happened. Today, however, researchers have access to a tool called “explainable AI,” which can sift through vast amounts of data to explain how a model’s decisions are made.

Using explainable AI, Menon and his team identified the brain networks that were most important to the model’s judgment of whether a brain scan came from a man or a woman. They found the model was most often looking to the default mode network, striatum, and the limbic network to make the call.

The team then wondered if they could create another model that could predict how well participants would do on certain cognitive tasks based on functional brain features that differ between women and men. They developed sex-specific models of cognitive abilities: One model effectively predicted cognitive performance in men but not women, and another in women but not men. The findings indicate that functional brain characteristics varying between sexes have significant behavioral implications.

“These models worked really well because we successfully separated brain patterns between sexes,” Menon said. “That tells me that overlooking sex differences in brain organization could lead us to miss key factors underlying neuropsychiatric disorders.”

While the team applied their deep neural network model to questions about sex differences, Menon says the model can be applied to answer questions regarding how just about any aspect of brain connectivity might relate to any kind of cognitive ability or behavior. He and his team plan to make their model publicly available for any researcher to use.

“Our AI models have very broad applicability,” Menon said. “A researcher could use our models to look for brain differences linked to learning impairments or social functioning differences, for instance — aspects we are keen to understand better to aid individuals in adapting to and surmounting these challenges.”

The research was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (grants MH084164, EB022907, MH121069, K25HD074652 and AG072114), the Transdisciplinary Initiative, the Uytengsu-Hamilton 22q11 Programs, the Stanford Maternal and Child Health Research Institute, and the NARSAD Young Investigator Award.

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu .

Artificial intelligence

Exploring ways AI is applied to health care

Stanford Medicine Magazine: AI

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14 recent scientific breakthroughs

From photos of the infant universe to an energy advancement that could save the planet

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Petri dish illustration

1. Cell therapy for melanoma

2. rhino ivf, 3. pristine configuration, 4. restoring reefs, 5. ai to find aliens, 6. inverse vaccines, 7. sequencing the y-chromosome, 8. discovering the motion of space-time, 9. gene therapy for muscular dystrophy, 10. improving heart health, 11. ai mind reading, 12. slowing alzheimer's, 13. mice with two male parents, 14. carbon capture.

Devika Rao, The Week US

Scientists in many fields got little attention for a couple of years as the world focused on the emergency push to develop vaccines and treatments for Covid-19. But that doesn't mean they weren't still busy researching a dizzying series of developments that are now being reported as major discoveries and achievements.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first cellular therapy for aggressive forms of melanoma. The treatment, called Amtagvi, is "designed to fight off advanced forms of melanoma by extracting and replicating T cells derived from a patient's tumor," said NPR . These cells are also called tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL). T cells are integral in the immune system but can become "dysfunctional inside tumors." 

"The approval of Amtagvi represents the culmination of scientific and clinical research efforts leading to a novel T cell immunotherapy for patients with limited treatment options," Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement . The treatment won't work for everyone, but research by the National Institutes of Health showed a "56% response rate among patients with melanoma, and 24% of patients had a complete disappearance of their melanoma, regardless of where it was," Axios said. "This is the tip of the iceberg of what TIL can bring to the future of medicine," Patrick Hwu, CEO of Moffitt Cancer Center, said to Axios .

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Scientists were able to impregnate a southern white rhino using in-vitro fertilization (IVF).  Researchers in Kenya implanted a southern white rhino embryo into another of the same species using the technique in September 2023, resulting in a successful pregnancy. The technique could be used to save the northern white rhino from total extinction. "We achieved together something which was not believed to be possible," Thomas Hildebrandt , head of the reproduction management department at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, said in a press conference. 

There are two species of white rhinos: northern and southern. The northern white rhino is on the verge of extinction due to poaching, with only two females remaining. Luckily, scientists have sperm preserved from the last male rhino, which could be combined with an egg from the female and implanted into a southern white rhino female to act as a surrogate. Using a white rhino embryo to test the procedure was a "proof of concept" which is a "milestone to allow us to produce northern white rhino calves in the next two, two and a half years," Hildebrandt said.

Scientists discovered six exoplanets that revolve around a star in a rare pattern called orbital resonance, said a study published in the journal Nature . This means that "for every six orbits completed by planet b, the closest planet to the star, the outermost planet g completes one," CNN said, adding that "as planet c makes three revolutions around the star, planet d does two, and when planet e completes four orbits, planet f does three."

The system was deemed a "rare fossil" by Rafael Luque, a postdoctoral scholar in the University of Chicago's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. "We think only about one percent of all systems stay in resonance," Luque said in a statement . "It shows us the pristine configuration of a planetary system that has survived untouched." The discovery could help further the study of sub-Neptunes, which are planets larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. They are not present in our solar system. "There is little agreement among astronomers about how these planets form and what they're made of — so an entire system consisting of sub-Neptunes could help scientists determine more about their origin," Luque said.

Coral bleaching has been a rapidly growing problem as climate change worsens. Without intervention, the reefs will continue to deteriorate. To counter this, scientists have explored the idea of a "coral gym," essentially a "laboratory to make corals stronger," NPR said. The goal is to "train" coral to survive more extreme conditions.

Warming oceans and rising temperatures are the largest contributors to coral degradation. "One of the things that we do in this lab is subject them to different environmental conditions and evaluate who's a little bit stronger," Ian Enochs, lead of the Coral Program at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said to NPR. Researchers created a "complex matrix of aquariums" where they can "subject different types of corals to different environments and not only understand how they might survive, but perhaps help them to do so."

Scientists have created an artificial intelligence model that can detect alien life , said a study published in the journal PNAS . The algorithm can "distinguish between samples of biological and nonbiological origin 90% of the time," after being "trained using living cells, fossils, meteorites and lab-made chemicals," Live Science said. "Put another way, the method should be able to detect alien biochemistries, as well as Earth life," Robert Hazen, co-author of the study, said in a statement .

The AI "does not involve a machine having to look for specific things," but rather "looks for differences between samples," BBC said. "These results mean that we may be able to find a lifeform from another planet, another biosphere, even if it is very different from the life we know on Earth," Hazen continued. "And, if we do find signs of life elsewhere, we can tell if life on Earth and other planets derived from a common or different origin."

Scientists may have found a way to calm immune responses for those with autoimmune disorders using an " inverse vaccine ," said a study published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering . The immune system responds to specific identifying markers on invaders like viruses and bacteria called antigens, "but some immune cells react to self-antigens," which are "molecules from our own cells," said Science . "In autoimmune diseases, these misguided immune cells turn against patients' own tissues."

The new research worked by "directing potential self-antigens to the liver," where "immune cells there pick up self-antigens and then stifle T cells that could target these molecules." The experiment was performed on mice. "The method they use is promising and potentially can induce better tolerance," neurologist and neuroimmunologist A.M. Rostami said to Science, adding that "we don't know" whether this approach is "applicable to human disease in which we don't know the antigen."

Scientists have finally sequenced the entire Y chromosome, one of the human sex chromosomes present in those assigned male at birth. The feat has been "notoriously difficult" because of the Y chromosome's "complex repeat structure," said a research paper published in the journal Nature .

"Just a few years ago, half of the human Y chromosome was missing" from knowledge of the human genome, Monika Cechova, co-lead author on the paper, said to CNN . "I would credit new sequencing technologies and computational methods for this," Arang Rhie, who also worked on the paper, said to Reuters . The X chromosome was fully sequenced back in 2020.

Understanding the Y chromosome can help with a number of health issues, including fertility. Genes have also "been shown to be required for the prevention of cancer and cardiovascular disease," Kenneth Walsh, a professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said to CNN.

Scientists found evidence that the fabric of space and time gets warped by gravitational waves. "What we measure is the Earth kind of moving in this sea," astrophysicist Michael Lam said to The Washington Post . "It's bobbing around — and it's not just bobbing up and down, it's bobbing in all directions." The findings affirm a facet of Einstein's Theory of Relativity that "space is not serenely empty, and time does not march smoothly forward," the Post said.

What scientists discovered was the "low-pitch hum of gravitational waves resounding throughout the universe," and the findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters . While the cause of the hum is not certain, scientists believe it originated from supermassive black holes circling each other, said The Wall Street Journal . "Before now, we didn't even know if supermassive black holes merged, and now we have evidence that hundreds of thousands of them are merging," said Chiara Mingarelli, a Yale University astrophysicist and a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), which led the research, to the Journal.

The gravitational wave finding "does not put any torque on everyday human existence," said the Post, "but it does offer potential insight into the physical reality we all inhabit."

The Food and Drug Administration approved gene therapy for children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, said NPR . The treatment is limited to children aged four and five while more research is being done on its safety and effectiveness.

Muscular dystrophy appears in boys far more often than girls and can be debilitating, or even fatal in a person's 30s or 40s. The treatment, developed by Sarepta Therapeutics, has faced some criticism, as there are some concerns about whether it is actually safe and effective.

A daily pill, bempedoic acid, has proved its ability to reduce the risk of heart disease, especially in those who have adverse reactions to statins, said a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine . Statins are normally prescribed to reduce cholesterol; however, many individuals cannot take them or choose not to take them because of side effects. "Statins are known to cause muscle aches in a subset of people," said USA Today .

Bempedoic acid works similarly to statins, but since it is only activated in the liver, is less likely to cause muscle aches. Side effects include an increased risk of gout.

Scientists have created an AI-based decoder that can turn a person's brain activity into text, said a paper published in the journal Nature . The system is non-invasive, meaning it doesn't require any surgical implants, and uses the same AI technology as chatbot ChatGPT . The technology scanned brain activity and predicted what words a person was listening to.

"We don't like to use the term mind reading," Alexander Huth, who worked on the research, said to CNN . "We think it conjures up things that we're actually not capable of." He said the "real potential application of this is in helping people who are unable to communicate." To allay any concerns about whether the technology could pose a threat to privacy once further developed, Jerry Tang, the lead author of the paper , said everyone's brain data should be private. "Our brains are kind of one of the final frontiers of our privacy."

A drug from pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly showed signs of slowing the advance of Alzheimer's disease by approximately one-third, BBC said. The drug, called donanemab, acts as an antibody specifically created to attack and remove "sticky gunk" called beta-amyloid, which "builds up in the spaces between brain cells, forming distinctive plaques that are one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's," BBC said. "We are now entering the time of disease modification, where we might realistically hope to treat and maintain someone with Alzheimer's disease, with long-term disease management rather than palliative and supportive care," Dr. Cath Mummery of the U.K.'s National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery said to the outlet.

A side effect, however, is fatal swelling in the brain, which potentially affected three of the clinical trial participants.

Researchers successfully created live baby mice with two male parents . According to new research, this was done by manipulating the chromosomes of a male stem cell, which turned it into a female egg cell, said ABC News . "This is the first case of making robust mammal oocytes from male cells," said Katsuhiko Hayashi of Kyushu University, who led the research, to The Guardian .

While the vast majority of the mice pups did not survive, the few that did grow up normally and were fertile adults. The genetic manipulation required to create the embryos is "a significant advance with significant potential applications," said Keith Latham , a developmental biologist at Michigan State University. It could be used to treat or prevent genetic disorders, or even help same-sex couples have biological children.

Scientists have found a way to capture atmospheric carbon dioxide and convert it to baking soda to be stored in the sea. In a recent study published in the journal Science Advances , researchers also found a way to make carbon capture more efficient by using a hybrid of existing methods. "This simple ability to capture CO2 at a high quantity, in a small volume of material, is a unique aspect of our work," the study's lead author, Arup SenGupta, said to BBC .

Baking soda is also safe to store in the ocean. "Higher alkalinity also means more biological activity; that means more CO2 sequestration," SenGupta said. In turn, the ocean can act as an "infinite sink" with an "immense capacity for accessible CO2 storage lasting hundreds to thousands of years," the University of Edinburg's Stuart Haszeldine said to New Scientist .

However, to truly be effective, carbon capture needs to be expanded, and will only reach the appropriate scale if "it's made a licensing condition of continuing to sell fossil fuels," said Myles Allen from the University of Oxford.

Editor's note : This article will be updated throughout the year.

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 Devika Rao has worked as a staff writer at The Week since 2022, covering science, the environment, climate and business. She previously worked as a policy associate for a nonprofit organization advocating for environmental action from a business perspective.  

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Transforming the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses.

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Celebrating 75 Years! Learn More >>

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From Breakthroughs to Best Practices: How NIMH Transforms Research Into Real-World Care

Patricia Arean, Susan Azrin, Michael Freed, Adam Haim, Jennifer Humensky, Stephen O’Connor, Jane Pearson, Mary Rooney, Matthew Rudorfer, Joel Sherrill, and Belinda Sims, on behalf of the Division of Services and Intervention Research. 

February 26, 2024 • 75th Anniversary

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For 75 years, NIMH has transformed the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses through basic and clinical research—bringing hope to millions of people. This Director’s Message, guest written by NIMH’s Division of Services and Intervention Research , is part of an anniversary series celebrating this momentous milestone.

More than one in five adults in the United States live with a mental illness, and this number is expected to rise in the coming decades. Since its establishment, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has known that people need more than exciting scientific discoveries—they need access to effective treatments and the best quality of care available. After all, finding new treatments and cures means little to the millions of people impacted by mental illnesses if there is no way to translate these breakthroughs into policy and practice.

In the Division of Services and Intervention Research (DSIR) , we provide the critical link between basic and clinical science and explore the best practices to implement those evidence-based treatments. We’re dedicated to growing and investing in this field of science, and although much work is still to be done, we’ve had some notable successes impacting real-world public health practices and policies.

Improving outcomes for people with early psychosis

A depiction of the Coordinated Specialty Care Model.

One example of research that has bridged the divide between science and policy is the Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode , or RAISE, studies. Research has shown that young people with schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders have much better outcomes when they receive effective treatment within months of their first symptoms. The RAISE studies, which NIMH supported, focused on methods to detect and treat early psychosis in a timelier fashion. These studies found that a type of care called coordinated specialty care (CSC)—a recovery-oriented, team-based approach to treating early psychosis—was more effective than the typical care used at the time.

A map showing the number of Coordinated Specialty Care programs in each U.S. state.

NIMH engaged extensively with members of the early schizophrenia care community to ensure RAISE findings would be relevant and actionable for rapid translation into practice. These efforts created the momentum for the broad expansion of CSC treatment programs nationwide. In 2023, the creation of associated billing codes further supported this model of mental health care, allowing for increased adoption by care providers.

From CSC programs in two states in 2008, the United States now has more than 360 such programs, allowing more people to receive this evidence-based care.

Removing barriers to schizophrenia treatment

Clozapine, the only drug approved for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, is underutilized in the United States, particularly among African American communities. Many reasons have been linked to this disparity, including provider bias, lack of trust in the mental health care system for African American clients, and an overprescribing of first-generation antipsychotic medication for African Americans with schizophrenia. Additionally, clozapine has been associated with an increased risk of the onset or exacerbation of neutropenia, a condition that affects white blood cells and impairs the body’s ability to fight infection. Benign ethnic neutropenia is a chronic form of neutropenia that's present from birth and commonly seen in people of African descent.

In 2015, NIMH supported a large, multinational study  that investigated the use of clozapine in individuals of African descent who have benign neutropenia  . Individuals with treatment-resistant schizophrenia who had benign neutropenia had previously been declared ineligible to receive clozapine treatment due to the Food and Drug Administration’s prescribing guidelines related to this medication. The finding of this NIMH-supported study opened up clozapine treatment to a whole new group of individuals with schizophrenia, allowing them to benefit from this important medication.

The ECHO model. Courtesy of Project ECHO.

Building upon these findings, NIMH is currently funding research that evaluates the effectiveness of an educational program for clinicians about clozapine  . Hundreds of prescribers and clinicians throughout the state of Maryland are participating in an innovative educational tele-mentoring program that connects them with centralized experts. The prescribing activity of clinicians participating in the educational program will be compared with those who have not participated to see if the program is effective at increasing the use of clozapine among those who would benefit from it.

Given the real-world context of this study, the findings can potentially inform clinical practice and make a needed treatment more accessible to many African Americans.

Preventing mental illnesses in youth

Recognizing that many mental health conditions have their origins early in life, NIMH has supported several seminal studies showing the effectiveness of interventions designed to prevent conduct disorder and other behavioral conditions in youth. These include evaluations of a classroom-wide behavioral intervention called the Good Behavior Game   , a school-home wraparound intervention called Fast Track  , and a brief family-based intervention for toddlers called Family Check-up  .

Today, NIMH continues to support the analysis of data from participants in these studies who have been followed into adulthood   . Initial results from these longitudinal analyses show sustained effects of the interventions on conduct disorder and unanticipated positive impacts on other mental health outcomes, such as reductions in adolescent and adult depression, anxiety, and suicide risk, thus demonstrating the broad and enduring effects of early prevention efforts.

Early intervention represents an important pathway to making quality care accessible to everyone, particularly when embedded within a broader approach that addresses social determinants of health . NIMH is currently supporting research that tests strategies to improve access to prevention services, including primary care-based depression prevention for adolescents  and mental illness prevention for at-risk Latinx youth  .

Suicide prevention in emergency departments

ED-SAFE study phases. Courtesy of Boudreaux, E. D. & ED-SAFE investigators.

An estimated 20% of people who die by suicide visit the emergency department in the 60 days before their death, making these settings an important target for suicide prevention efforts. Given the importance of emergency departments as a place to identify and provide support for people at risk for suicide, NIMH has supported research establishing the effectiveness of suicide prevention services in these settings.

An example of this research is the multisite Emergency Department Safety Assessment and Follow-up Evaluation (ED-SAFE) study. ED-SAFE demonstrated  that providing universal screening for suicide risk and a brief safety planning intervention in emergency departments, combined with limited follow-up contacts once people had been discharged, decreased subsequent suicide attempts by 30% compared to usual care.

A follow-up study also supported by NIMH, called ED-SAFE 2  , tested the integration of universal screening for suicide risk and safety planning into the clinical workflow of eight emergency departments. Study results  indicated that integration of this clinical workflow resulted in sustained reductions in suicide deaths and subsequent acute health care visits.

These landmark studies convey the power of providing relatively brief, well-timed interventions during emergency encounters to reduce the risk of later suicide. NIMH continues to fund research to expand the reach of emergency department-based interventions, including the use of digital health technologies and strategies to overcome workforce shortages and other barriers to implementing suicide screening and intervention (for instance, digital technology to increase the reach of ED-SAFE  ; a multi-component, tailored strategy for suicide risk reduction  ). NIMH works closely with public and private partners to take recent data, like those collected during the ED-SAFE studies, and help translate them into real-world practice   .

Moving forward

The studies and projects shared here are only a few examples of exciting areas of investment that have resulted in real-world changes in care. Although we’ve made progress, we recognize the need to continue supporting research with near-term potential and cultivating a vibrant workforce to lead the next generation of services and intervention research.

Further, NIMH is committed to working with researchers, communities, payors, advocacy groups, state policymakers, federal agencies, and others to help support intervention and services science that will significantly impact mental health policy and care practices—ultimately helping people access better mental health care.

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The Two Main Research Types – A Brief Overview

In this module, we will have a short overview of the two main types of research before we dive further into learning more about each in detail.

Content includes:

  • Qualitative methods brief introductory overview
  • Quantitative methods brief introductory overview

Objectives:

  • Identify the three main types of qualitative research.
  • Describe the processes of inductive versus deductive reasoning, and the types of research for both.
  • Distinguish quantitative experimental and nonexperimental research.

Here we go! We are now going to start learning a bit about research. Remember, research is the underpinning for EBP. Research provides the evidence, and EBP takes that evidence and embeds it into practice to improve clinical outcomes.

The two major classes of research are:

  • Qualitative Research – subjective, seeks a human’s experience as a narrative
  • Quantitative Research – objective, seeks to statistically make inferences about a sample to generalize to the larger population

We need to have a solid understanding of the difference between the two main types of research before we study the nuances of each.

Three Main Types of Qualitative Research

Qualitative Research : Qualitative research is rooted in research that originated in anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Qualitative research is not experimental, it seeks to understand the lived experiences in humans and seeks to understanding meaning, and it is subjective in nature. The overarching goal of qualitative research is theory-generating. It is an inductive process (inductive reasoning). Most often, qualitative research features an interview style. This allows the researcher to ask open-ended questions and the participants share their experiences and/or explanation of particular meanings in life.

Qualitative research differs from quantitative research in that:

  • It is completely subjective .
  • It utilizes an inductive   (versus deductive) approach.
  • It does not utilize a hypothesis.
  • It generates a theory from the data to explain the social phenomenon that the researchers were interested in.
  • The researcher is involved with the participants for data collection.
  • The data is analyzed with a thematic nature. That is, themes from the collected narratives are analyzed to see trends or themes in what the participants shared.
  • The results are not generalizable to the population.

There are three types of qualitative research designs:

Inductive versus Deductive Reasoning

The main difference between inductive and deductive reasoning is that inductive reasoning aims at developing a theory while deductive reasoning aims at testing an existing theory.

Think of inductive (theory producing) as to qualitative research and deductive (theory testing) as to quantitative research.

Inductive reasoning moves from specific observations to broad generalizations, and deductive reasoning the other way around.

Both approaches are used in various types of research, and it’s not uncommon to combine them in one large study.

according to the latest research there are two main

Here is a qualitative study in which the researchers conducted interviews in order to obtain the subjective perspectives of the participants.

according to the latest research there are two main

Quantitative Experimental and Nonexperimental Research.

Quantitative Research: In quantitative research, the goal is to utilize the statistical data to generalize results to the population studied. Some key features include utilizing the statistics to help answer the clinical question and determine whether the hypothesis is indeed statistically supported.

There are two main types of quantitative research:

  • Experimental : In experimental research, the researcher introduces  an intervention or treatment.
  • Non-Experimental : In non-experimental research, the researcher does not introduce an intervention or treatment, but instead acts as a bystander. Meaning, they collect data without introducing a treatment.

We will explore those two types in much detail in the next module.

Quantitative research differs from qualitative research in that:

  • It is completely objective .
  • It utilizes a deductive   (versus inductive) approach.
  • It utilizes a hypothesis(es).
  • It tests a theory.
  • The researcher is usually not directly involved with the participants for data collection in order to minimize bias.
  • The data is analyzed statistically in order to generalize results to the larger population.

according to the latest research there are two main

Experimental Research : In the following article, the researchers introduced an intervention, which was a “Program for Enhancing the Positive Aspects of Caregiving” (a particular education program).

according to the latest research there are two main

Non-experimental Research : In the following article, the researchers did not introduce an intervention or treatment. They handed out surveys for the participants to complete about their activity and depression levels.

according to the latest research there are two main

Video: Qualitative Types and Experimental/Nonexperimental Research

In summary, there are two main approaches to research designs: Quantitative and qualitative. They each seek to answer questions, but quantitative research is meant to generalize its findings to the population whereas qualitative research seeks to understand phenomenon and develop theories about the human lived experiences.

References & Attribution

“ Light bulb doodle ” by rawpixel licensed CC0

“ Orange flame ” by rawpixel licensed CC0 .

Chen, P., Nunez-Smith, M., Bernheim, S… (2010). Professional experiences of international medical graduates practicing primary care in the United States. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 25 (9), 947-53. 

Haedtke, C., Smith, M., VanBuren, J., Kein, D., Turvey, C. (2017). The relationships among pain, depression, and physical activity in patients with heart failure. Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, 32 (5), E21-E25.

Pankong, O., Pothiban, L., Sucamvang, K., Khampolsiri, T. (2018). A randomized controlled trial of enhancing positive aspects of caregiving in Thai dementia caregivers for dementia. Pacific Rim Internal Journal of Nursing Res, 22 (2), 131-143.

Evidence-Based Practice & Research Methodologies Copyright © by Tracy Fawns is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Biden Administration Is Said to Slow Early Stage of Shift to Electric Cars

The change to planned rules was an election-year concession to labor unions and auto executives, according to people familiar with the plan.

The bright red body of a Ford F-150 Lightning truck suspended a couple of feet over a chassis on an assembly line.

By Coral Davenport

Coral Davenport has been covering the government’s effort to fight climate change by regulating tailpipe pollution since the first rules in 2009.

In a concession to automakers and labor unions, the Biden administration intends to relax elements of one of its most ambitious strategies to combat climate change, limits on tailpipe emissions that are designed to get Americans to switch from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles, according to three people familiar with the plan.

Instead of essentially requiring automakers to rapidly ramp up sales of electric vehicles over the next few years, the administration would give car manufacturers more time, with a sharp increase in sales not required until after 2030, these people said. They asked to remain anonymous because the regulation has not been finalized. The administration plans to publish the final rule by early spring.

The change comes as President Biden faces intense crosswinds as he runs for re-election while trying to confront climate change. He is aiming to cut carbon dioxide emissions from gasoline-powered vehicles, which make up the largest single source of greenhouse gases emitted by the United States.

At the same time, Mr. Biden needs cooperation from the auto industry and political support from the unionized auto workers who backed him in 2020 but now worry that an abrupt transition to electric vehicles would cost jobs. Meanwhile, consumer demand has not been what automakers hoped, with potential buyers put off by sticker prices and the relative scarcity of charging stations.

Sensing an opening, former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner, has seized on electric cars, falsely warning the public that they “don’t work” and telling autoworkers that Mr. Biden’s policies are “lunacy” that he would extinguish on “the first day” of his return to the White House.

Last spring, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed the toughest-ever limits on tailpipe emissions . The rules would be so strict, the only way car makers could comply would be to sell a tremendous number of zero-emissions vehicles in a relatively short time frame.

The E.P.A. designed the proposed regulations so that 67 percent of sales of new cars and light-duty trucks would be all-electric by 2032, up from 7.6 percent in 2023, a radical remaking of the American automobile market.

That remains the goal. But as they finalize the regulations, administration officials are tweaking the plan to slow the pace at which auto manufacturers would need to comply, so that electric vehicle sales would increase more gradually through 2030 but then would have to sharply rise.

The change in pacing is in response to automakers who say that more time is needed to build a national network of charging stations and to bring down the cost of electric vehicles, and to labor unions that want more time to try to unionize new electric car plants that are opening around the country, particularly in the South.

But delaying the most stringent requirements of the rule could come at a cost to the climate, after the hottest year in recorded history.

An Ambitious Initial Plan

Postponing the sharp increase in electric vehicle sales until after 2030 would still eliminate roughly the same amount of auto emissions as the original proposal by 2055, according to E.P.A. models. But it would mean the nation would continue to pump auto emissions into the atmosphere in the short run. Scientists say every year counts in the government’s efforts to prevent the planet from tipping into more deadly and costly climate disasters.

“You’ll have faster warming if U.S. transportation emissions don’t decline before 2030,” said James Glynn, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

Scientists have warned that if average global temperatures increase by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels, humans would struggle to adapt to increasingly violent storms, floods, fires, heat waves and other disruptions

The planet has already warmed by about 1.2 degrees Celsius .

Ali Zaidi, Mr. Biden’s senior climate adviser, declined to discuss the details of the final regulation. But he said in an interview that Mr. Biden’s climate policies, combined with record federal investment in renewable energy, would still help to reach the president’s goal of cutting the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.

“I feel very good about how our policies, including the regulatory actions, are fitting together to boost our ability to hit our 2030 targets and setting us up for the longer term trajectory,” Mr. Zaidi said.

Still, experts say it’s uncertain whether Mr. Biden can meet his twin goals of cutting the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and eliminating them by 2050, a target that scientists say all nations must achieve to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Wary Unions

Labor support has been a key part of Mr. Biden’s political coalition and his portrayal of himself as a fighter for the middle class.

That backing was threatened last spring, when the Environmental Protection Agency proposed the new limits on tailpipe emissions. Soon after, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, wrote that the union was withholding its endorsement of Mr. Biden’s re-election bid over “concerns with the electric vehicle transition.”

The union has been wary of electric vehicles, since they require fewer workers to assemble and many electric vehicle plants are being built in states with few unions.

In public comments it filed regarding the proposed rule, the United Auto Workers pressed the Biden administration to relax the compliance timeline so that it “increases stringency more gradually, and occurs over a greater period of time.” Union leaders repeated that request in discussions with senior White House officials, including Mr. Zaidi, over the past six months. Biden administration officials said the union’s comments had “resonated.”

Last fall, when the union went on strike against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, in part over fears about the industry’s transition to electric vehicles, Mr. Biden sought to assuage their concerns and became the first president to stand with workers on the picket line.

By early January, the E.P.A. sent a revised version of its auto emissions rule with the longer time frame to the White House. Weeks later, the United Auto Workers endorsed Mr. Biden .

A spokesman for the union declined multiple requests to interview Mr. Fain.

After the endorsement, Mr. Trump called Mr. Fain a “dope” on Truth Social, his social media site. “He bought into Biden’s ‘vision’ of all Electric Vehicles, which require far fewer workers to make each car but, more important, are not wanted in large numbers by the consumer, and will ALL be made in China,” Mr. Trump wrote.

Barry Rabe, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, noted the way Mr. Trump has focused on the anxiety over electric vehicles that pervades that auto-making state, one of a handful of swing states where the election is likely to be decided.

“Trump has been very effective previously at using wedge issues,” Mr. Rabe said. “Whenever he comes to the state, this comes up. And this is not abstract in Michigan, it’s a real question. ‘What plant am I going to be working in?’”

Worried Automakers

Although a record 1.2 million electric vehicles were sold in the United States last year, growth is slowing , even as the new regulations would require a nearly tenfold increase in such sales within just eight years.

While buyers of new electric vehicles are eligible for up to $7,500 in federal tax credits, only 18 models are currently eligible for that full credit, down from about two dozen last year. One of those eligible models, the Ford F-150 Lightning , an all-electric pickup truck that once had a waiting list of 200,000, last year saw sales of 24,000, far short of the 150,000 sales projected by Ford.

And while construction of E.V. chargers is expanding, nearly doubling from about 87,000 in 2019 to more than 172,000 last year, analysts project that the nation will need more than two million chargers by 2030 to support the growth in electric vehicles envisioned by the proposed rules.

All that worries auto companies, which have invested about $146 billion over the past three years in researching and developing electric vehicles, according to the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit organization in Ann Arbor, Mich. Auto companies would face billions of dollars per year in fines if the emissions associated with their auto sales exceed the limits set by the new regulations.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents 42 car companies that produce about 97 percent of the new vehicles sold in the United States, asked the administration for the same slowdown sought by the United Auto Workers.

“Pace matters,” said John Bozzella, president of the alliance, in an interview. “Give the market and supply chains a chance to catch up, maintain a customer’s ability to choose, let more public charging come online.”

Analysts say the current lag in electric vehicle sales is to be expected, as the market for early adopters — typically wealthier, coastal residents who have bought an E.V. as a second car — is saturated.

“It may be some time before the larger middle class, middle-of-the-country market is ready to embrace buying plug-in cars,” said K. Venkatesh Prasad, the senior vice president of research at the Center for Automotive Research.

It could be easier to sell many more electric vehicles after 2030, Mr. Prasad said.

“There is new technology coming in, prices changing, consumer behavior changing,” he said. “If you’re running one of these businesses and you get some extra time, you would use every second. You can do things that allow you to better source components, test out new technologies, battery technology will get cheaper and allow people to drive longer distances, there is more investment in charging infrastructure, and in the minds of consumers you could start to see more acceptance of this.”

Some analysts said the trade-off, relaxing the rules to give auto companies and workers what they want, could be worth it if it helps Mr. Biden win the election, since Mr. Trump has made clear that if he wins, he plans to roll back the rules entirely.

David Victor, co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California San Diego, said, “You have more emissions for a few years but you raise the odds that the rule will stick.”

Coral Davenport covers energy and environment policy, with a focus on climate change, for The Times. More about Coral Davenport

More From Forbes

College transfers are on the increase again, nscrc report finds.

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The number of community college students transferring to four-year institutions increased by almost ... [+] 8% last fall.

College student transfers grew by 5.3% overall in fall 2023 compared to fall 2022, according to the latest Transfer and Progress report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The increase represents a gain of about 63,000 students year over year.

Transfers from two-year colleges to four-year institutions led the growth with a 7.7% increase, a healthy recovery from a 4.3% decline in the prior year. As a result, transfer enrollment now accounts for 13.2% of all continuing and returning undergraduates, up from 12.5% in fall 2022 and 12.3% in fall 2021. Those figures mean about 1 in 8 undergraduates changed the school in which they were enrolled last fall.

“Students are on the move again, and this is good news,” said Doug Shapiro, NSCRC Executive Research Director, in a press release . “More community college students entering bachelor’s programs this fall means greater access to four-year degrees, especially for those from lower-income backgrounds.”

The NSCRC report provides data on both undergraduate transfers and the progress of several recent cohorts of community college starters. The transfer data are based on the behavior of 11.7 million undergraduate students in fall 2023, drawn from a three-year fixed panel of institutions that consistently reported data between fall 2021 and 2023.

Different Types Of Transfer

Student mobility between institutions can occur in three directions, and while every type of transfer saw gains, the rates of increase differed among them.

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  • Reverse transfer , in which four-year college students transfer into two-year colleges, showed the smallest increase at 1.2%.
  • Lateral transfer, where students transfer from one two-year college to another or between four-year universities, was up 6% for four-year lateral transfers and 2.4% for two-year lateral transfers.
  • Upward transfer , where students transfer from a two year college to a four-year institution, is the largest category of student transfers. It showed the biggest gain, with a 7.7% increase, equivalent to more than 39,000 additional students. That growth was achieved despite the fact that overall community college enrollment remained largely unchanged.

Institutional Differences

All four-year sectors experienced growth in upward transfers. Private for-profit schools had the biggest percentage increase (15.5%), followed by private nonprofits (11.8%), primarily online schools (8.1%) and public institutions (6.4%).

Four-year institutions with greater selectivity in their admission policies saw the largest gains. Upward transfers increased the most at very competitive (13.1%) and highly selective four-year institutions (7.8%), compared to less selective (5.7% increase) and competitive (3.9%) institutions.

Student Characteristics

Among upward transfers, men increased by 9.8% and women by 6%. Upward transfers increased the most for younger students (20 years and younger) and older students (40 years or older) with 16.9% and 9.1% increases, respectively.

All racial/ethnic groups experienced gains in upward transfers with the exception of Asian students, whose rates declined by 4.5%. Upward transfers by Black students increased by 7.9%, followed by white students (7.0%), Native American students (6.3%) and Hispanic students (6%).

Two-year college students from middle- and low-income neighborhood backgrounds made particularly large gains in transfer enrollment at more selective four-year colleges, suggesting that students are increasingly viewing this pathway as a more affordable option for obtaining a bachelor’s degree from prestigious institutions.

Upward transfers who had already earned an associate’s degree increased by 2.4%, a pronounced gain over the prior year when they declined by almost 10%. Similarly, upward transfers who had been awarded a certificate increased by 11.2%, reversing a 1.2% drop for the prior year.

Changes In Major

More than half (54.1%) of transfer students moving to another institution changed their major, an increase of 7% over the prior fall. Changed majors were more common for students originally concentrating on liberal arts and sciences, general studies and humanities (82%) than for those majoring in science, technology, engineering and math fields (61.7%).

Among transfer students originally majoring in liberal arts and sciences, general studies and humanities, their top 5 new majors after transfer were business; health professions and related clinical sciences; psychology; computer and information sciences; and biological and biomedical sciences.

The top five new majors for transfers previously majoring in a STEM field were liberal arts and sciences general studies and humanities; health professions and related clinical sciences; computer and information sciences; business; and education.

Transfer Completion Rates

A second section of the report analyzed transfer rates, annual progress and six-year outcomes for seven cohorts of first-time community college students, totaling 6.4 million individuals.

One key finding was that 68.5% of students who started community college in fall 2014, 2015 and 2016 and subsequently transferred to a four-year institution earned a college credential (AA, BA, certificate) within six years. That completion rate was more than double the completion rate (30.7%) of students who transferred laterally and three times the rate for students who did not transfer (22.7%).

About The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center

The NSCRC is the research arm of the National Student Clearinghouse. It collaborates with higher education institutions, states, school districts, high schools, and educational organizations to gather accurate longitudinal data that can be used to guide educational policy decisions. NSCRC analyzes data from 3,600 postsecondary institutions, which represented 97% of the nation’s postsecondary enrollment in Title IV degree-granting U.S. higher education institutions, as of 2020.

Michael T. Nietzel

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Money blog: 9 key financial moments in March will affect your pocket - starting on Sunday

Rail fares, pension credit and interest rates are all on the agenda in March. Read this and more in the Money blog, your place for consumer and economic news. Listen to the latest Ian King Business Podcast as you scroll.

Thursday 29 February 2024 19:47, UK

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If you're around London's West End next week, you could be able to get yourself a free pizza. 

Covent Garden restaurant Fatto a Mano (which has a very decent 4.5 stars on Google Reviews) is giving away pizzas next week in partnership with restaurant discovery app Appetite. 

The offer is available between 4-8 March, and you'll just need to turn up.

You may need to be quick, though - a recent pita giveaway from Miznon Soho led to hundreds of Londoners queuing outside. 

The cost of insuring your home has risen by 36% in the last year, new data has revealed.

Data shows the average combined policy now costs £215 - this falls slightly for bungalows which cost on average £204 to insure, while a flat costs on average £199 for a combined policy.

And it not just combined home insurance policies that have risen - contents-only premiums have seen an increase of 30%, rising from £57 to £74, and buildings-only saw a similar increase of 29% from £130 to £168.

Data suggests the more bedrooms a property has, the higher the cost is likely to be. 

The average cost of a combined policy for a one-bedroom place is £158, with the cost rising with each additional bedroom, to £385 for properties with five or more bedrooms.

Ceri McMillan, home insurance expert at Go.Compare , said the data also showed that combined home insurance policies are on average the most expensive for those in Northern Ireland, although Greater London is only £38 less at an average of £309.

Costs are lowest for those in the North East of England, with the average cost of a premium sitting below average at £179.

Here are the average costs for home insurance by region: 

  • Greater London - £309
  • Scotland - £210
  • North East - £179
  • North West - £188
  • East Midlands - £197
  • West Midlands - £187
  • Wales - £193
  • South West - £196
  • South East - £237
  • North Ireland - £347

Asda shoppers have expressed their annoyance after being left unable to use the supermarket's loyalty scheme.

The supermarket's app-based Rewards scheme allows customers to collect loyalty points and receive vouchers to get a discount on their shopping bill.

However, customers have been unable to use the loyalty scheme at any of the supermarket's new Express convenience stores.

An Asda spokesperson told the Money team its Express stores were currently unable to process Rewards but it would be available eventually.

"Asda Express is a new shopping format for us and we are currently going through a process of updating the systems to enable Asda Rewards to be accepted," they said.

"We have a team of people focused on this and expect this to be rolled out into all of our stores in the future."

One shopper, Alison, told The Mirror she was "shocked" to find she was unable to use her £10 voucher. 

"I was shocked and a little saddened as £10 off would've really helped but I thought I would just collect my points instead but they told me I couldn't even do that," she said.

Asda said it would open 110 Asda Express convenience stores this month - a record for a single month - to accelerate its growth strategy.

It comes after it acquired 470 convenience stores and petrol stations from Co-op and EG group in 2022, with plans to convert the sites acquired to Asda Express stores before the end of March. 

Sainsbury's has revealed plans to cut around 1,500 roles as part of a previously announced shake-up of its operations.

Sky News revealed earlier this month how the company, which also owns Argos, had  refused to rule out job losses  under the strategy update for investors.

It included a greater focus on food within its supermarkets, claiming more space from general merchandise and clothing.

Read the full story here ...

Rail fare rises, an interests rate decision and an end to cold weather payments are just some of the money changes taking place next month. 

Most of the changes are likely to impact how far your money can stretch, so we've put together a list of the most important ones for you to bear in mind. 

3 March - Rail fares increase

Regulated train fares in England will rise by up to 4.9% on Sunday.

The cost of a ticket usually rises annually, but the government stepped in to cap them amid soaring inflation. 

About 45% of fares are regulated, including most season tickets, travelcards, some off-peak returns, and anytime tickets around major cities.

5 March - Pension credit deadline 

Hundreds of thousands of pensioners could pocket an extra £299 if they claim Pension Credit by 5 March.

Those who successfully apply for the benefit by Tuesday would be able to secure the final cost of living payment thanks to backdating rules.

Pension Credit, which averages over £3,900 a year, is there to lend a hand with day-to-day expenses for those who have reached state pension age and are on a low income.

About 1.4 million people are already receiving pension credit, but an estimated 880,000 eligible households are yet to claim it.

6 March - spring budget

The chancellor will reveal the government's spring budget on Wednesday, outlining the financial plan for the rest of the year. 

Tax cuts, a new vape duty and proposals for a 99% mortgage scheme are just some of the changes reportedly being considered by Jeremy Hunt. 

He has also hinted he's open to shaking up Lifetime Individual Savings Account rules and raising the threshold at which the controversial high income child benefit charge applies. 

20 March - Inflation data released

The Office for National Statistics will release its latest consumer price inflation (CPI) data.

The figure measures the change in prices paid for everyday items and services. 

The government uses CPI for the Bank of England's target inflation rate of 2%. 

It's also used when it reviews and uprates certain state benefits and tax thresholds.

21 March - Interest rates decision

The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee will make a decision on interest rates. 

The current bank rate sits at 5.25%. 

The Bank rate anchors the rates high street banks charge on mortgages and those they offer on savings (though often not the latter, to the chagrin of savers). 

28 March - Benefits paid early 

Some benefits claimants may receive their payment earlier than usual at the end of March due to bank holidays. 

If your normal payment date lands on Friday 29 March or Monday 1 April, then money will land in your account on Thursday 28 March.

31 March - Broadband, TV and mobile contracts rise 

Millions of customers will see their broadband and mobile bills increase on either 31 March or 1 April as telecoms providers raise the price of their contracts. 

Customers of common providers face hikes of between 6.7% and 8.8%.

 31 March - Household Support Fund closes 

The £842m Household Support Fund scheme is due to close on 31 March.

The support has been extended four times, but the government has not confirmed if it will be extended for a fifth time. 

The fund helps people struggling to pay for food, energy and other essential items. 

It typically comes in the form of supermarket vouchers, energy assistance or cash grants. 

31 March - Warm Home Discount scheme ends 

Households will stop getting £150 off their energy bill from 31 March. 

The scheme worked as a one-off discount applied to electricity bills for those who were eligible between early October 2023 and 31 March 2024.

The French government has said it will outlaw the use of meat terms on plant-based meat products - meaning customers will no longer see labels for "vegan ham" or "veggie sausages". 

Terms that have been banned include "steak", "ham", "prime rib" and "escalope". 

New labels will include "cultured nut products" instead of vegan cheese, while vegetarian sausages will become "veggie tubes". 

Companies will be fined €7,500 for breaching the law, which comes into force in May.

Exceptions are being made for products containing a small amount of plant-based content that "does not replace foodstuff of animal origin".

For example, Merguez sausages can contain up to 5% plant-based proteins. 

Producers have a year to sell their remaining stock before facing penalties.

Mortgage approvals to home buyers jumped to the highest level since 2022 in January.

Some 55,227 mortgages for purchase got the green light, up from 51,506 the previous month. It's the highest level since October 2022.

The Bank of England figures offer reason for optimism in the housing market at the start of 2024 - and they echo the sentiment of data from Rightmove and Zoopla.

But what's actually going on in the housing market?

Buyers are accepting 'new normal'

Danny Belton, head of lending at the Mortgage Advice Bureau, says more mortgage approvals is a symptom of buyers accepting that higher rates are "the new normal".

"January was an incredibly positive month, starting the year off with a bang," he said. "The cuts to mortgage rates at the start of the year undoubtedly had a role to play, but the data tells the story of buyers realising the new normal, and those who are unwilling to wait for homeownership any longer. 

"Now we're almost certainly past the peak of the Bank of England's rate hikes, and prospective homebuyers are feeling confident that the worst is behind us."

Average mortgage rates have ticked up in recent weeks as expectations for a base rate cut pushed back from May to June - and while this is likely to be a temporary blip, there is still a way to go before optimism is translated into a full-on market revival.

Phones lines to brokers have 1,500-long queues as rates come and go

Hina Bhudia, partner, Knight Frank Finance, said that a gentle easing of mortgage rates "has given way to much more volatile conditions".

"The cheapest lender on the high street is often inundated with calls and is forced to notch rates up to cool demand - we've seen phone line queues of as many as 1,500 brokers attempting to secure rates for customers before they are withdrawn overnight."

Not all the data is positive

Data put out by the Bank of England today is positive, but not all the numbers offer cause for celebration.

Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills, said: "Completed housing transactions, which remained subdued, continue to lag on more up to date activity indicators.

"Real time data from TwentyCi indicates that there was an improvement in underlying housing market conditions in February, with activity levels 10% above the pre-pandemic average, even accounting for slightly higher than normal fall thorough rates.

"The biggest uptick in activity has been in the £300,000 to £500,000 price band, where activity levels in the month were 30% higher than the same time last year.

"But despite increased activity, the market remains price sensitive. The same data indicates that there has been a 52% increase on the number of properties experiencing a change in asking price (compared with the 2017-19 norm)."

(Graphics: iStock)

The Body Shop will shut dozens more of its stores within weeks, administrators have said. 

The closures will result in 489 job losses.

It previously announced it would close nearly half of its stores in the UK, along with cutting 40% of roles at its London headquarters. 

Administrators said the brand's current portfolio is "no longer viable" after "years of unprofitability".

The latest company accounts showed The Body Shop had 927 administrative staff and 1,641 store workers in 2022.

By Emily Mee, Money team

You could be forgiven for feeling a twinge of jealousy when you see someone packing it all in to go travelling for a few months. 

Perhaps it's made you wonder if you could do the same thing yourself. 

Of course, it won't be realistic for everyone and the reality is it takes a lot of planning and saving. For many people during the cost of living crisis, it's simply not possible to save much, if at all.

But if you're wondering where to begin (and how much you might need to save), we've got some advice from two travel bloggers who have been there and done that...

Megan Wright ( @travelwrighter ), who is originally from Chicago, ended up travelling the world when her UK visa expired in 2017.

Her travels saw her get her scuba licence, go island hopping in the Philippines, explore Vietnam and join a surf camp in Sri Lanka. 

While she says she would go travelling long-term again "in a heartbeat", she warns that not being financially prepared can put a dampener on your trip. 

"If you don't have financial security, you're probably not going to enjoy it as much and you're going to be stressed about it the whole time," she says. 

At the very least, you should know where you're going and have a breakdown of the costs in advance so you can plan your saving.

Megan shares lots of budgeting tips on her Instagram page and talks about how she worked out the money needed for her trip. 

She suggests estimating a daily budget based on where in the world you'll be by looking up the average costs of accommodation, food and activities.

If you're travelling to different places, she says you should do this for each region. 

For her trip, she budgeted £50 per day to spend in southeast Asia - although she says she would now budget £60 to £65 per day because of inflation. 

She has some basic steps in her Instagram post below about how she saved £20,000 for her trip - and there is more in-depth advice on her Instagram and on the Travel Wrighter Podcast . 

Michelle Halpern, who runs travel blog Live Like It's The Weekend , says she was planning for a year and a half before she left for her travels. 

She decided to take the plunge after feeling "burnt out" by her work at a fashion company and seeing a colleague leave to travel around southeast Asia. 

"For me, it took a long time of saving a percentage of my salary and freelancing on the side, all while cutting back on some of the luxuries I was used to in order to save about $30,000," she says.

"Even after I left, I still had a freelance gig that I knew would continue on during my travels and help support me financially."

Both women said cost was a big reason for why they chose their travel destinations. 

"During my round-the-world trip, I focused a lot on traveling to destinations where my money would go furthest like Vietnam, the Philippines, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, India and Indonesia," says Michelle.

She says she even ended up joining a coding retreat in Bali to learn to build her website, before turning the experience into a work/stay trade partnership. 

Megan says she chose southeast Asia based on how much she could realistically save in a year. 

Is there anything else to consider? 

Aside from the financial considerations, it's also worth thinking about why you want to take the plunge - and whether you're doing it for the right reasons.

"Your problems don't disappear just because you're jetting halfway across the world," says Michelle.

"Not that I necessarily expected them to, but I do think this idea of 'quitting your job to travel' can be romanticised on social media. 

"Just because you're sitting on an epic beach in Thailand doesn't mean you're automatically going to be happy and content. You have to do the inner work to get to that place."

She also says long-term travel comes with its "own set of challenges" - sometimes loneliness, tiredness, and the inevitable things going wrong, so you'll need to be prepared for it not always being a walk in the park. 

Megan adds that solo travel is "not necessarily for everyone" - but the best way to find out is to give it a go. 

Overall, both say travelling long-term changed their lives for the better. 

"If I had to do it all over again, it wouldn't even be a question," says Michelle. 

"I think if someone is in a place in their life where the idea of exploring long-term travel keeps them up at night, then they should go for it, but plan for it in a smart way so that they're able to enjoy the experience rather than stressing over finances."

Wealthy Britons' spending habits are hampering the Bank of England's efforts to hit its 2% inflation target, according to a rate setter on its Monetary Policy Committee.

Immune to higher interest rates, people on higher incomes are spending "disproportionately" on non-essentials like entertainment, travel and eating out, Catherine Mann told the Financial Times .

Services inflation is not falling fast enough as a consequence, despite easing energy and goods costs.

She said there is "a lack of consumer discipline", resulting in business' charging more.

"There is not a lot of consumer discipline on a large enough fraction of categories of services to represent active deceleration in services price inflation," the FT quoted Ms Mann as saying.

Services inflation rose by 6.5% in the year to January, according to Office for National Statistics.

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according to the latest research there are two main

Rising CO2 levels could have 'very severe' global impact, according to the latest research

rising-co2-levels-and-its-impact-on-climate-change

New research is predicting the effect of rising CO2 levels on climate change. Image:  Unsplash

according to the latest research there are two main

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Stay up to date:, climate change.

  • Scientists are getting closer to working out the exact impact that the rising CO2 levels will have on climate change.
  • The research has led to increased certainty that global warming could bring very severe impacts and risks worldwide.
  • These advances provide a much more solid base of evidence on which climate change policy can be further developed.

At the dawn of the industrial revolution, the Earth’s atmosphere contained 278 parts of CO₂ per million . Today, after more than two and a half centuries of fossil fuel use, that figure is around 414 parts per million (ppm). If the build-up of CO₂ continues at current rates , by 2060 it will have passed 560 ppm – more than double the level of pre-industrial times.

Exactly how the climate will respond to all this extra CO₂ is one of the central questions in climate science. Just how much will the effect of CO₂ on climate change be?

Have you read?

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A major new international assessment of the Earth’s climate sensitivity, now published in the journal Reviews of Geophysics , addresses this question. This research has improved our understanding of how much the world will eventually warm if the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is maintained at double the level of pre-industrial times.

While an exact figure is still not possible, low levels of warming are now found to be far less likely than previously thought. Very high carbon dioxide levels are slightly less likely too. There is much greater certainty that, if left unchecked, global warming would be high enough to bring very severe impacts and risks worldwide.

The study, which was organised by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and involving many leading climate scientists (including one of us: Tim), looks at a measure called “ equilibrium climate sensitivity ”. This refers to how much global average temperatures will increase by in the long-term following a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations. It can be estimated using three main lines of evidence:

  • Temperature measurements made with thermometers from 1850 (when enough global coverage began) to the near present. By comparing temperatures, CO₂ levels and the effect of other climate drivers in the past and present, we can estimate the longer-term changes.
  • Evidence from paleoclimate records from the peak of the last ice age 20,000 years ago, when CO₂ was lower than now, and a warm period around 4 million years ago when CO₂ was more comparable to today. We can tell how warm the climate was and how much CO₂ there was in the atmosphere based on the make-up of gases trapped in air bubbles in ancient ice cores.
  • Present-day observations – for instance from satellite data – and evidence from climate models, theory and detailed process models that examine the physics of interactions within the climate system.

Despite its importance, equilibrium climate sensitivity is very uncertain and for many years the standard estimate has been 1.5°C to 4.5°C. In its 5th Assessment Report , the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave these values as the “likely range”, which meant it considered there was at least a 66% chance that it fell within this range. Or, in other words, it judged there was up to a 33% chance that warming would either be less than 1.5°C or more than 4.5°C.

The new study suggests that this “likely range” has narrowed to, at most, 2.3°C to 4.5°C – or possibly an even narrower range*. The lower end of the range has therefore risen substantially, meaning that scientists are now much more confident that global warming will not be small.

Global warming assessments old and new

Ranges of equilibrium climate sensitivity from the IPCC and the new study.

We won’t be saved by low sensitivity

An important implication of the increase in CO₂ level is that humans would be taking an even bigger risk than previously thought if we relied on low climate sensitivity to allow us to meet the Paris Agreement target of keeping global temperatures to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to “pursue efforts” to limit warming to 1.5°C. This is therefore further confirmation that CO₂ emissions need to be rapidly reduced and ultimately reach net zero if the Paris targets are to have a good chance of being met.

According to the study, if CO₂ does reach double the pre-industrial level and stays there (or to be precise, if the total effect of all human impact on greenhouse gases and other climate drivers reaches an equivalent level), then there is up to an 18% chance that temperatures will rise to 4.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and a no more than 5% chance that they will go above 5.7°C. This has important implications for climate change risk assessments . In a risk assessment, it is normal to consider outcomes that are possible even if they are not the most likely.

The latest climate models have a wide range of climate sensitivities, with our own Met Office models at the high end. This happens because climate sensitivity is not something that scientists input to the models, but rather it emerges from the same complex interactions the models simulate.

This diversity of models lets us understand the regional changes in climate and extreme weather associated with different climate sensitivities, and assess their potential impacts. This includes the high sensitivities that are less likely but still possible. At the other end of the range, seeing the minimum changes we can expect will help inform climate change adaptation measures.

The new study allows a key aspect of climate models, their climate sensitivity, to be seen in the context of other evidence. While there is still more to be done to assess more precisely how the global climate will respond to further increases in greenhouse gases, these advances provide a much more solid base of evidence on which climate change policy can be further developed.

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Regions & Countries

More than eight-in-ten americans get news from digital devices.

The transition of news from print, television and radio to digital spaces has caused huge disruptions in the traditional news industry, especially the print news industry . It is also reflected in the ways individual Americans say they are getting their news. A large majority of Americans get news at least sometimes from digital devices, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 7, 2020.

Large majority of Americans get news on digital devices

More than eight-in-ten U.S. adults (86%) say they get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet “often” or “sometimes,” including 60% who say they do so often. This is higher than the portion who get news from television, though 68% get news from TV at least sometimes and 40% do so often. Americans turn to radio and print publications for news far less frequently, with half saying they turn to radio at least sometimes (16% do so often) and about a third (32%) saying the same of print (10% get news from print publications often).

To better understand the ways Americans get their news in the digital age, we surveyed 9,220 U.S. adults from Aug. 31 to Sept. 7, 2020. Everyone who took part is a member of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology . This is the latest report in Pew Research Center’s ongoing investigation of the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Roughly half of Americans prefer to get news on a digital platform; about a third prefer TV

When asked which of these platforms they prefer to get news on, roughly half (52%) of Americans say they prefer a digital platform – whether it is a news website (26%), search (12%), social media (11%) or podcasts (3%). About a third say they prefer television (35%), and just 7% and 5% respectively say they prefer to get their news on the radio or via print.

Though digital devices are by far the most common way Americans access their news, where they get that news on their devices is divided among a number of different pathways. About two-thirds of U.S. adults say they get news at least sometimes from news websites or apps (68%) or search engines, like Google (65%). About half (53%) say they get news from social media, and a much smaller portion say they get news at least sometimes from podcasts (22%).

Americans more likely to get news on digital devices from news websites, apps and search engines than from social media

Past research done by the Center has tracked the various ways Americans get news, both online and offline . This survey asks about similar topics in a different way (see the wording of the questions here ); because of this, some of these measures cannot be directly compared to past reports. These changes in question wording reflect the Center’s efforts to improve the way we measure news consumption .

News websites most preferred way to get digital news

Among digital platforms, the most preferred one for news is news websites or apps: About a quarter of U.S. adults (26%) prefer to get their news this way, compared with 12% who prefer search, 11% who prefer to get their news on social media and 3% who say they prefer podcasts.

Younger Americans vary widely from their elders in news consumption habits

Underneath these numbers lie stark differences by age, with those under 50 showing very different news use patterns than their elders. Americans ages 50 and older use both television and digital devices for news at high rates, while the younger age groups have almost fully turned to digital devices as a platform to access news.

Those under 50 turn more frequently to digital devices for news

About half or more of adults 50 and older are still turning to TV for news often – 54% of those 50 to 64 and about two-thirds (68%) of those 65 and older. But among those ages 30 to 49, just a quarter say they get news on TV often, and just 16% say the same among those 18 to 29. For those age groups, digital devices are the dominant choice for news, with 67% of those 30 to 49 and 71% of those 18 to 29 getting news from a digital device often.

Among those 50 and older, differences between digital and non-digital news sources are less pronounced. Among adults 50 and older, 64% get news at least sometimes from both television and digital devices.

Online, most turn to news websites except for the youngest, who are more likely to use social media

Within digital platforms for news, most age groups turn to news websites at higher rates than other platforms, with one exception. Americans ages 18 to 29 stand out in that the most common digital way they get news is social media, with 42% saying they get news this way often versus 28% saying the same of either news websites or search engines.

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology .

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Many americans get news on youtube, where news organizations and independent producers thrive side by side, key facts about digital-native news outlets amid staff cuts, revenue losses, americans favor mobile devices over desktops and laptops for getting news, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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The Methodological Basis of Defining Research Trends and Fronts

N. a. mazov.

1 Trofimuk Institute of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, 630090 Novosibirsk, Russia

2 State Public Scientific Technological Library, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, 630102 Novosibirsk, Russia

V. N. Gureev

3 Novosibirsk State Technical University, 630087 Novosibirsk, Russia

V. N. Glinskikh

The methodological and technical aspects of identifying research fronts and trends in the development of science are considered. Based on the literature data, a comparison of scientometric methods for finding research fronts was carried out: analysis of publication activity, direct citation analysis, co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, and content analysis. The advantages of the combined application of various approaches are shown, the role of expert assessment and verification of the results of scientometric analysis is emphasized. We revealed topical problems associated with the detection of scientific fronts by scientometric methods and showed promising directions in their solution.

INTRODUCTION

The search for scientific trends and research fronts, that is, topical or promising research, is one of the most significant problems in science policy, scientometrics, and the history and philosophy of science and is of decisive importance at the stages of planning scientific activities. The topic of scientific trends and fronts is obvious if it is dictated by socio-political, environmental, and economic factors or threats to national health [ 1 ]. These can be natural disasters, terrorist attacks [ 2 ], economic crises, or the appearance of dangerous diseases in the human population, such as the outbreak of influenza A/H1N1 pandemic in 2009 [ 3 ] or SARS Cov2 in 2019–2020. In these cases, the scientific community, states, research and funding organizations are actively and consistently involved in the search for solutions to emerging problems. The fronts of science are much less obvious in the absence of such events; they then themselves become an object of study, requiring the development and use of methodological foundations and appropriate tools to identify them.

Scientific trends and fronts, as a rule, are the object of research of science itself, and their identification is an attempt to search for new growth points, as represented by the most promising ideas and developments that are important for the further development of science and technology. In other words, a search is carried out for changing objects of research in their relation to existing knowledge and to each other [ 4 ]. When identifying research trends and fronts it is predominantly scientometric methods that are used.

In a continuation of previous studies in the field of scientific trends in various fields of knowledge [ 5 – 7 ] and in the absence of reviews on the topic of detecting research fronts, we further consider the concepts of research trends and fronts, classify approaches, and describe the tools for their detection, as well as study the current issues that are pending their decision. When reviewing the literature, the Scopus and RJ “Informatika” databases of VINITI were used without restrictions on time and types of documents. The request included the following keywords: “research front”, “research trend”, and “research focus”. Additionally, sources from lists of references based on search results were used.

A METHODOLOGY FOR IDENTIFICATION OF RESEARCH TRENDS AND FRONTS

In general, a research front is understood as the situation where the interests and needs of society coincide with the current scientific results [ 8 ]. The key object of analysis in identifying research fronts is the groups of scientific publications and their interrelationships. According to the classical definition of D. Price, a research front is a densely cited network of recently published papers [ 9 ]. In a more detailed definition, a research front is understood as a group of recently published articles with a common topic, which are strictly connected by a network of citations among themselves and weakly connected with publications outside the group [ 10 ]. At the same time, strong links between citations within a group are characteristic of a research front at the initial stage of its development, while at later stages, with an increase in the number of citations, including from other scientific areas, this connection weakens. The strength of citation links between publications of clusters is determined by predetermined threshold values that are unique for each scientific field. The sizes of research fronts also depend on the discipline, which usually ranges from a few publications to several dozen. As an example, in the latest report on research fronts from Clarivate Analytics the spread is from 2 to 50 articles [ 11 ]; sometimes a minimum threshold is set, for example, 10 publications [ 12 ].

The concept of a research trend is close in meaning to a research front. A research trend is the collective action of a group of researchers, each of which begins to pay considerable attention to a specific scientific topic: read scientific publications on this topic, refer to them, and publish the results of their own research [ 4 ]. At times the concepts of the research front and research trend are used synonymously [ 13 ].

The main types of research fronts according to the common classification of G. Small [ 8 ] are shown in Fig. 1 . The method for identifying the stage of a research front involves comparing clusters of publications for two or more equal consecutive periods of time.

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Types of research fronts.

The Clarivate Analytics together with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in its periodic reports distinguishes only two types of research fronts: key ( key hot fronts ) and incipient ( emerging fronts ) [ 11 ]. Research fronts are also revealed by the Elsevier company based on SciVal data, where the most promising topics are determined by the Prominence indicator.

Under the influence of various factors, the research fronts of the extensive phase can turn into an intensive one, for example, when new promising research methods appear, with increased funding for the field, when there is an urgent need to develop a topic under the influence of external factors, etc. [ 1 ,  12 ]. As a result of the development of a research front, according to G. Small, it can either develop into a new discipline, or be absorbed by a broader field, which adapts the achievements of a research front to a wide group of studies [ 8 ]. In the first case, this indicates the growth of a scientific front, in the second, it indicates its influence on science. As a rule, scientific fronts of interdisciplinary research develop in separate directions, while the absorbed research fronts have little to do with interdisciplinarity, but are gaining citations faster.

Study on research fronts is significant from both fundamental and applied points of view. At the theoretical level, they determine the vector of development of scientific progress and allow tracing the origin and evolution of one field or another, the division and merging of areas of knowledge, contribute to the spread of knowledge between scientific disciplines [ 14 ], and allow adjusting organizational processes when new knowledge meets traditional paradigms that dictate research topics, standards and regulations [ 15 ]. The identification of research fronts is of practical interest for a wide range of stakeholders involved in the definition of priority areas of scientific research and their funding.

To date, three main scientometric approaches are widely used to identify research trends and fronts: analysis of the dynamics of changes in scientific production, citation analysis with its varieties, and content analysis, as well as their various combinations.

Analysis of Publication Activity to Identify Research Trends

Analysis of publication activity is usually used to identify research trends, while citation analysis is used to identify research fronts [ 4 , 16 ]. When analyzing scientific production, expressed by the number of publications, one resorts to models of the growth of scientific knowledge:

(1) in the first model, the growth of knowledge is considered as the cumulative development of new ideas based on previous recent scientific achievements;

(2) the second model assumes that the development of new ideas is based on the entire body of human knowledge, and not only on recent achievements. According to this model, there is a selective choice of grounds for a new idea from all of human scientific experience;

(3) the third model is based on the theory of scientific revolutions by T. Kuhn [ 17 ] and presupposes an intensive growth of knowledge interrupted by periods of calm.

There is no consensus about which of the proposed models most closely corresponds to reality, especially since each of them, to one degree or another, explains the ongoing scientific events in various disciplines. Each of these paradigms can correspond to some mathematical model of the growth of scientific literature, for example, linear or exponential [ 18 ]. In natural science disciplines, exponential growth often prevails; when identifying scientific trends researchers therefore turn to D. Price on the exponential growth and obsolescence of scientific literature [ 19 , 20 ]. The scattering law is used to identify a scientific information trend according to S. Bradford [ 21 ], which allows identification of the core of scientific journals of a given subject.

An example of a study using this method is the work to identify research trends in the field of tourism [ 22 ]. A circle of authors and organizations that form a research trend on this topic was determined according to zones of concentration and dispersion of Bradford’s scientific information, as well as the analysis of the scientific productivity and authoritativeness of publications. The analysis of research trends in the field of borehole geophysics was carried out by the authors of this work: the leading positions of this field in the field of earth sciences were identified, the most productive authors were detected and the redistribution of leading positions between countries over the past 20 years was shown [ 7 ]. Further identification of research trends and fronts in the field of geophysics is extremely important, since it is associated with the search for new research areas, primarily for the creation of innovative technologies. In the field of borehole geophysics, “cheap” logging technologies will be the most demanded by both large and small service companies in the near future, which is due to the end of time of “expensive” oil.

Citation Analysis to Identify Research Fronts

The main method in identifying research fronts is citation analysis, which makes it possible to trace the growth of interest and relevance of a particular topic by the dynamics of changes in the number of citations of publications of a particular field. Citation analysis is considered more objective in comparison with expert assessment, since it takes the opinion of the entire scientific world community of scientists expressed in references [ 23 ]. The approach is based on the observation that recent scientific publications are the most cited. Thus, the identification of thematic clusters of the most cited publications allows us to identify the research front of the corresponding discipline [ 9 ]. The response time to published papers varies across disciplines, but on average is 2–5 years, during which half of simultaneously published publications are cited [ 24 ]. Within the framework of citation analysis, where both cited and citing publications are clustered, a research front is understood as:

(a) a group of the most cited publications identified by direct citation analysis [ 4 , 9 ];

(b) a group of co-cited publications identified by co-citation analysis, positions 6 and 7 in Fig. 2b [ 25 – 27 ]. The cluster of a research front, in addition to co-cited publications, may include citing publications, positions 1, 6 and 7 in Fig. 2b [ 28 ]. This definition of research fronts was used by E. Garfield [ 29 ]; this approach is still implemented by the Clarivate Analytics in periodic reports on research fronts using Web of Science databases [ 11 ]. There is also a third approach, where a research front refers to publications that cited a cluster of co-cited publications, position 1 in Fig. 2b [ 30 ];

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The principles of clustering publications used in identifying research fronts. A, direct citation analysis; B, co-citation analysis; B, bibliographic coupling. The top row usually represents recently published publications, the bottom row represents publications of the last 2–5 years. Citation analysis can cover out-of-sample publications.

(c) a group of publications with similar references, identified by the bibliographic coupling method, positions 3 and 4 in Fig. 2b . According to this approach, the articles of a research front themselves may not have citations [ 2 , 12 , 31 – 33 ];

(d) with the joint application of the indicated approaches, a research front is understood, for example, as a group of co-cited publications plus a group of publications with similar references [ 30 , 34 – 37 ], a group of co-cited publications plus publications citing this group [ 38 ], or several groups of publications based on the results of all three approaches [ 28 , 39 , 40 ]. As a rule, when used together, each method is used separately, after which the results are compared or combined. However, it is possible to build complex combined approaches: for example, clustering by bibliographic coupling of those publications in which clusters of co-cited publications are cited; this is then clustering of the first and second levels [ 30 ].

The formal similarity with the clusters of publications of research fronts is demonstrated by artificially created groups of articles united by chief editors, for example, within the framework of special issues of journals, where articles of each issue abundantly cite each other. When analyzing research fronts, groups of publications united by similar publication models are usually excluded from the analysis [ 8 ].

When describing research fronts, the concept of an intellectual base ( knowledge base , knowledge foundation , intellectual base , or intellectual structure ) is used, which means literature cited by publications of a research front [ 2 , 4 , 41 ]. Many studies demonstrate the thematic proximity of an intellectual base and research fronts [ 13 , 31 , 36 , 42 ]. When analyzing co-citation, sometimes confusion of these concepts occurs; while some researchers understand co-cited publications as a research front, others consider them as an intellectual base, and the citing publications as a front (see Figure 2B ). In general, the scientometric task is to identify the points of intellectual displacement (research fronts) in the relatively stable scientific literature (intellectual base).

Co-citation analysis was simultaneously proposed by I.V. Marshakova and G. Small [ 43 , 44 ]: two documents are considered co-cited and thematically related if they both appear in the reference list of a third document (with which the two cited documents also have a thematic relationship) and the citation rate is defined as the frequency with which two documents are cited together. Researchers usually choose a small group of publications that are highly cited within a given period of time as a basis for clustering. This could be 1 or 10% of the highly cited articles, the top 10, top 20 articles, etc.

This approach to the search for scientific fronts has a drawback associated with the nature of citation [ 45 ]. Accordingly, the ability to take new publications into account, which are often of the greatest interest in the search for scientific fronts, is limited [ 46 ]. In other words, co-citation is suitable for identifying a research front at a relatively late stage, and not at the very moment of its emergence [ 8 ]. According to one of the developers of the method of G. Small, the analysis of socializing does not cover the entirety of publications on a scientific front, but rather informs about the emergence of such a front; it is designed to do a quick screening of the scientific landscape rather than a definitive delineation of some specific area [ 8 ]. The approach does not depend on the vocabulary and language of publications.

The bibliographic coupling method proposed by M. Kessler [ 47 , 48 ] presupposes that two works have a meaningful relationship to each other and are thematically related if they have one or more similar references. Thus, a research front consists of publications that jointly cite other publications. Since references to the analyzed papers are not important and only their reference lists are investigated, the method is free from lag (especially if it is applied not to journal publications, but to preprints) and allows one to analyze newly published papers.

The main idea of the method is as follows: (1) a separate bibliographic reference used in two publications is called one unit of coupling between these publications; (2) several publications form a linked group G if each member of the group has at least one coupling unit with the test paper P 0 ; and (3) the coupling strength between P 0 and any member of G is measured by the number of coupling units (n) between them. Like co-citation analysis, the bibliographic coupling method is independent of the vocabulary and language of publications and can be automated. In comparison with the analysis of co-citation analysis, the method of bibliographic coupling is used less often to search for scientific fronts [ 28 , 32 ].

One essential criterion for the study of research fronts is the choice of the citation window. The problem of choosing a citation window received full coverage in [ 32 ]: the model of a traditional static 5-year citation window was compared with a sliding overlapping citation window, as well as with the half-life of highly cited articles. Research with a static citation window was found to be the least labor-intensive; however, the most labor-intensive method with a sliding citation window helped to find more research fronts. At the same time, some of the emerging research fronts identified by the two methods did not intersect, which is why the joint use of static and sliding citation windows was recognized as the most effective.

Since the main scientometric approaches to identifying research fronts involve a procedure for clustering bibliographic data, the results of the analysis can be influenced by clustering methods and the choice of threshold values for the measure of similarity between the grouped elements [ 30 , 31 ]. The object of citation analysis can be both the publications themselves and the authors of these publications, journals and, less often, subject categories [ 49 ].

Co-citation analysis is used to search for scientific fronts in various fields of knowledge: HIV/AIDS [ 15 ], scientific collaboration [ 13 ], library and information science [ 27 ]. The method of bibliographic coupling was used to study the historical development of research fronts in the field of anthrax research [ 12 ]. The joint use of methods of co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling was carried out to search for scientific fronts in the library and information science [ 36 ] and in the field of battery research [ 37 ]. Author’s citations and content analysis of links were used to identify research fronts in the field of bacterial infections [ 23 ].

The experience of identifying research fronts not for a discipline as a whole, but for an individual organization is remarkable: in [ 49 ], the intellectual base was studied by co-citation analysis; the corpus of publications cited by the organization, on the basis of which a research fronts of the organization itself were further identified. Similar studies of the publication activity and citations of a particular organization were carried out by the authors of this work for more effective information support of scientific projects [ 50 , 51 ], while the developed methods were also applicable for identifying research trends and fronts. The search for scientific fronts can also be carried out for a separate journal: for example, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science. Using the methods of bibliographic coupling and citation analysis, research fronts were identified and a significant closeness of the intellectual base with them was shown [ 31 ].

Content Analysis to Identify Research Fronts

Methods for semantic analysis of metadata and full texts of scientific publications, including neural network technologies [ 52 , 53 ] and algorithms for detecting rapidly spreading, so-called burst terms, which express new phenomena, are widely used in identifying research fronts [ 2 , 14 , 42 , 54 ]. Content analysis investigates the frequency of the use of words in metadata and full texts and, separately, keywords, as well as their joint occurrence in publications. Analysis of the frequency and co-occurrence of keywords is carried out:

(a) on the metadata of publications; in this case, author’s or additional keywords assigned in systems are investigated (for example, KeyWords Plus [ 55 , 56 ] extracted from lists of cited literature) and words from various subject thesauri and authoritative dictionaries (for example, MeSH ), as well as automatically extracted keywords from titles and annotations;

(b) on full texts, where keywords and terms are also extracted and semantically analyzed using software tools.

Some researchers refer to the results of keyword co-occurrence analysis as a research focus, while the research front is considered to be the result of co-citation analysis [ 57 ].

To search for scientific fronts in the field of informatics and accounting, the content analysis method identified topics with growing and dying interest, as well as those that have lost their relevance [ 14 ]. To extract keywords, entity linking method was used that takes the context of the keyword into account. An approach based on the combined use of searching by association rules, keyword analysis and rapidly spreading terms is presented based on the example of anticancer developments in nanomedicine [ 54 ]. Using linguistic methods for searching for the semantic similarity of texts, the identification of research fronts was described in [ 46 ]: a method of comparing phrases and fragments of identical content, not necessarily expressed by the same keywords, was presented. Cluster analysis of author’s keywords was carried out to search for scientific fronts in the field of social sciences: the result of a study in five countries was a map of national science, indicating promising areas [ 1 ].

Content analysis is often combined with citation analysis methods to identify scientific fronts. Thus, research fronts in the field of artificial intelligence were identified through the combined use of methods of bibliographic coupling and content analysis of keywords [ 58 ]. Methods of bibliographic coupling (by co-authors and documents) and content analysis were used to search for scientific fronts in the field of business [ 41 ]. A co-occurrence analysis method combined with co-citation analysis has been used to find research fronts in library and information science in Spain [ 42 ]. The same two methods were used to analyze co-citation fronts in astrophysical research [ 59 ]. A more sophisticated analysis of a research fronts of the interdisciplinary direction is presented using the example of magnetic nanoparticles, where co-citation and co-word networds were studied based on a sample of the 500 most-cited publications [ 60 ].

THE EFFICIENCY OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF SCIENTOMETRIC ANALYSIS IN REVEALING RESEARCH FRONTS

A researcher’s choice of a particular scientometric method is arbitrary in most cases, while in some situations it is necessary to correlate the method with the goals of the study and take the complexity of the calculations into account [ 28 , 39 ]. Different methods are more or less applicable to one type of research front or another. Thus, the emerging research fronts are better identified by the method of bibliographic coupling, which does not have a time delay. If topological clustering is preferable for research, then citation analysis turns out to be more applicable [ 39 ]. If it is necessary to cluster based on the textual similarity of publications, content analysis has proven itself better, in which the frequency analysis of words from metadata or full texts gives better results in comparison with the frequency analysis of an author’s keywords.

The choice of the approach has a significant impact on the results, as shown by the example of publications on environmental protection: the intersection of the results obtained in the co-citation analysis and the method of bibliographic coupling was only 33–41%, which in fact indicated different research fronts [ 30 ]. Comparison of methods of co-citation analysis and bibliographing coupling was carried out by M. Huang et al., who studies the methodological foundations of the search for scientific fronts [ 32 – 34 ]. In a series of publications, the advantages of the bibliographic coupling were shown: with its use, a greater number of fronts were identified, and several fronts were found at an earlier date [ 34 ]. The advantages of bibliographic coupling were disclosed in [ 39 ], although it was indicated that in certain narrow areas the method of direct citation analysis may be preferable, since significant publications may have few thematic links in their field but gain a large number of citations from related fields.

A comparison of direct citation analysis, co-citation analysis, and bibliographic coupling was carried out in [ 61 ] using the example of research fronts in the field of carbon nanotubes, gallium nitride, and complex network: the direct citation method showed the best results for identifying the early stages of the formation of new topics and contributed to the identification of a larger number research fronts. The next most effective methods were the method of bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis. Another example of comparing all three methods of citation analysis is the study of scientific fronts in biomedicine, where they were additionally compared with textual analysis [ 28 ]. To test the best approach, information on grants was analyzed: since publications on a grant are thematically similar by default, a search was made for the highest concentration of publications on specific grants in each of the clusters.

Weighted Approaches to Improve the Accuracy in Identifying Research Fronts

Over time, increasingly sophisticated approaches to defining research fronts are being developed, with the goal of increasing the accuracy of clustering. One of the trends in this field is the construction of weighted citation networks. With the assignment of weight to the publications of the cluster forming scientific fronts, a series of studies was carried out by K. Fujita et al., proving the benefits of weighted citation networks [ 39 , 40 , 53 ]. The weight of the publication, automatically determined using neural network training technologies, takes the year of publication, the number of citations of the publication, the field of knowledge, and the strength of the links between the reference list of publications and keywords into account [ 39 , 53 ]. A significant advantage of the research of this group is that various bibliometric methods are widely combined here.

The analysis of collective dynamics of knowledge networks represented by weighted citation and keyword networks, which takes both incoming and outgoing connections between network elements into account, was presented in [ 4 ], which shows the advantages of this method over the analysis of direct citation networks, since it more closely approaches identifying research trends in small areas of knowledge. For more accurate clustering, the PageRank algorithm is used to assign different weights to publications of different significance levels: not only are the most cited publications recognized as the most significant in a cluster, but also publications cited by other equally significant publications of the cluster [ 35 ].

An analysis of links that establishes the relationship between the cited publications, taking their importance and position in the citation network into account, was carried out to search for research fronts in the field of shareholder activism: during the analyzed period, the development of this field was reconstructed by means of research fronts, including seven stages, from the theoretical origin of the concept to its practical implementation [ 62 ]. A weighted approach was used in the search for scientific fronts in chemical technology: 29 clusters were identified containing an average of 5.3 publications; for each cluster, the Price index was calculated, which quantitatively characterizes the degree of novelty of the field [ 38 , 63 ].

Together with the fundamental applicability of each of the approaches in identifying research trends and fronts, the results of most studies show that the least-accurate results are obtained by the direct citation analysis, although in certain situations it shows advantages over other approaches [ 39 , 61 ]. In the accuracy of its results the combination of the co-citation analysis and the bibliographic coupling is significantly superior to direct citation analysis, which does not take thematic links between publications into account [ 34 , 39 ]. The most accurate results in most cases are yielded by the method of bibliographic coupling; co-citation analysis lags slightly behind. The best results are achieved with the combined use of different approaches (and, if possible, different data sets), which should take the variability of publication activity and citation models in different disciplines into account, but such approaches are more laborious and time consuming [ 28 ]. Many researchers, for example [ 1 , 2 , 64 ], noted the importance of involving subject experts in the qualitative assessment of the results of scientometric analysis.

Software for Revealing Research Fronts

Significant attention is paid to the study of research fronts by software developers for visualization and mapping of science [ 65 , 66 ]. The visualization of bibliographic information is especially valuable for experts because it allows real-time detection of unexpected trends, gaps in scientific knowledge, statistical biases, and other important characteristics of research fronts [ 67 ]. VOSviewer [ 22 , 41 , 57 , 68 , 69 ] and CiteSpace [ 2 , 13 , 26 , 42 , 60 ] are most often used; however, ready-made programs are often seen as having limitations, since their functionality is standardized and often does not support innovative approaches [ 35 ]. Therefore, sometimes less common software products are used, for example, Cytoscape [ 15 ] or BibTechMon [ 37 ], including programs written for a specific study [ 12 ].

One of the most functional software for identifying research fronts is CiteSpace [ 2 ]. The capabilities of the program are presented by its developer using examples of the fields of “mass extinction” and “terrorism.” Research fronts are understood as emerging transitional clusters of ideas, expressed by small groups (several dozen positions) of co-cited publications. At the same time, the study solved the problem of identifying new fields on the basis of linguistic analysis of terms from the metadata of publications (although some researchers insist on involving experts in the designation of new fields [ 12 , 23 ]).

Experience in using VOSviewer was presented by the scientific library of Kent State University (United States): the methods of bibliographic coupling, citation analysis and content analysis were used to identify research fronts in the field of the Internet of things [ 69 ]. Dynamic keyword analysis in VOSviewer allowed them show changes in research fronts in this area over time.

The Problem of the Reliability of the Results of Scientometric Analysis in Identifying Research Fronts

Since the definition of research fronts is based on an array of scientific publications, the question of the legitimacy of such an approach often arises. In addition to the general criticism of bibliometric approaches, there are somewhat fair statements about the devaluation of the institute of scientific publications associated with an increase in the number of duplicate works, plagiarism, and “predatory” journals, as well as the frequent absence of descriptions of research methods in publications, which prevents their reproducibility. Another critisism concerns the role of publications in rewarding a scientist for his/her work instead of spread of knowledge and a shift of the central channels of scientific communication towards “invisible colleges”. Taken together, this leads to the main question of how much one can rely on bibliometric research of publications to identify research trends and fronts.

Other problems of identifying research fronts are associated with journal articles and, more broadly, with the market for periodicals and its internal standards. As an example, reputable international journals are more willing to publish research results on popular and global topics. Accordingly, in such a limited array of publications, research fronts that are important at the regional or national levels may not be found.

The cautious attitude of reviewers and editorial boards to advanced ideas and developments, often at odds with the scientific tradition, remains an unresolved issue [ 70 ]. Modern publishing standards often imply a comprehensive coverage of a scientific problem and a description of a ready-made set of its solutions [ 71 ]. However, precisely in relation to research fronts, at the initial stages of developing a new problem, these requirements are the least feasible and force authors to bypass key issues, whose discussion is most important for understanding the essence of the problem and its causal mechanisms [ 64 , 71 ]. At times, the overestimated requirements of the editors of journals for breakthrough work lead to the rejection of publications that are significant for science and society. One illustrative example is the article by A.K. Geim and K.S. Novoselov on a new material, graphene, that was rejected by Nature 1 (it was later published by Science ).

Another problem of using journal publications as a basis for searching scientific fronts includes the time lag from the submission of the manuscript to the editorial office to its publication. This adds to the subsequent delay in distributing the journal to libraries or indexing it in bibliographic databases. On average, the delay due to the technological publishing processes is estimated at 1 year [ 24 ]. Even if we compare this period with the total time from the birth of a scientific idea to its publication, which, for example, is 4 years in medicine [ 59 ], the publication delay appear to be significant.

The databases for the selection of publications themselves have a significant impact on the identification of research fronts [ 27 ]. Most of research is based on publications indexed in Web of Science , and less often, Scopus . In addition to the delay in indexing, such systems have limitations in terms of regional and linguistic coverage of sources; the accuracy of bibliographic metadata is not always high [ 72 ]. Despite the annually expanding indexing of conference proceedings, where advanced scientific ideas are discussed much earlier than in print, international databases still tend to predominantly cover journal articles. The need for verification of automatically processed data was already noted in early works, caused by many discrepancies in the spelling of author’s names, variations in the abbreviation of the names of journals, etc. [ 31 ]. (For more detail on the problems of identifying bibliographic objects, see [ 73 , 74 ].)

Some questions remain open, others are eventually answered. Thus, in recent years, reviewers have paid more attention to the transparency of the methodological part of the articles; more and more often initial data are provided in the form of appendices to publications, which significantly increase the reliability and reproducibility of the results. Ethics committees are working to improve the research and publication culture of authors, preventing unfair approaches to the publication of scientific results [ 75 ].

At the philosophical level, the role of publications in the system of scientific information and the degree of their applicability to identifying research fronts are analyzed. The transformation of the main properties of a research front into the form of bibliometric indicators has been substantiated, including such front characteristics as novelty, relevance, interdisciplinarity, risk factors, and a combination of fundamental and applied significance [ 64 ]. The central place of publications in scientific research fronts is proved, since in addition to the main function of information delivery, they stabilize unstable networks of various scientific practices and elements [ 76 ]. The role of scientific publications is also demonstrated in the reconstruction of the evolutionary development of science: based on the example of research fronts in scientometrics and the historical processes of the intellectual organization of knowledge in this area, their codification and structuring with a simultaneous decrease in entropy have been shown [ 77 ]. Based on the example of one area of biomedical sciences, the methodology for constructing a time scale, which allows one to visualize the development of a research front and predict the emergence of new fronts, was presented [ 12 ]. On the basis of the theory of the aging of scientific literature, the speed of dissemination of scientific ideas is investigated and the depth of research fronts was revealed [ 24 ].

The problem of publishing breakthrough articles, whose material, methodology and results differ significantly from the scientific tradition, finds its solution in the widespread dissemination of open science, the publication of preprints, the development of repositories and models of open peer review. Publication of preprints solves the lag problem. This issue is partially resolved by the development of the system of “articles in print” that are published before the formation of printed issues, as well as early indexing of such publications in bibliographic databases. One possible solution to the problem of publication lag may include the analysis of network publications, whose rate of appearance is significantly higher, as shown by the example of the search for scientific fronts in the field of XML research [ 78 ]. In this case, unlike journal databases, special systems are used, for example, CiteSeer . It is proposed to solve the problem of publication delay of journal articles by analyzing information about the dates of the publication process (the time of receipt of the manuscript, its approval, and publication); clustering of publications taking these dates into account gives more accurate results in identifying research fronts [ 59 ].

CONCLUSIONS

Over a relatively short period of studying research trends and fronts, a significant complication of the methodology is noticeable: combined approaches, neural networks, a wide range of bibliographic and network databases, and special software is increasingly used. Scientometric methods show their promise due to their rapid adaptation to the changing conditions of the functioning of science and new publication models for the dissemination of scientific information.

The review of research carried out in this article shows that scientometric tools for identifying research fronts have proven themselves well as a source of reliable and objective information for subsequent expert assessment in various fields of knowledge. A wide methodological arsenal of various types of citation analysis and content analysis has been developed. The improvement of the approaches goes in the direction of specifying citation windows, objects of analysis, and identifying the advantages and disadvantages of each of the approaches, taking the types of scientific fronts and research goals into account.

We see the immediate tasks on identifying research fronts and trends as follows. The problem of the initial distrust of the scientific community in breakthrough developments, whose results or methods do not agree well with scientific tradition, awaits a solution. A scientometric solution to this problem is outlined in a broader analysis of network publications. The second task is to increase the speed of identifying new fronts, if possible at the stage of publishing preliminary data on new fields. This requires a further search for methods to neutralize the effect of publication lag.

This study was carried out with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project no. 19-011-00531).

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

1 Information from the seminar conducted by the editor of Nature Nanotechnology on November 28, 2017, Exhibition Center SB RAS, Novosibirsk.

Contributor Information

N. A. Mazov, Email: ur.sarbs.ggpi@ANvozaM .

V. N. Gureev, Email: ur.sarbs.ggpi@NVveyeruG .

V. N. Glinskikh, Email: ur.sarbs.ggpi@NVhkiksnilG .

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Types of Research – Explained with Examples

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  • By DiscoverPhDs
  • October 2, 2020

Types of Research Design

Types of Research

Research is about using established methods to investigate a problem or question in detail with the aim of generating new knowledge about it.

It is a vital tool for scientific advancement because it allows researchers to prove or refute hypotheses based on clearly defined parameters, environments and assumptions. Due to this, it enables us to confidently contribute to knowledge as it allows research to be verified and replicated.

Knowing the types of research and what each of them focuses on will allow you to better plan your project, utilises the most appropriate methodologies and techniques and better communicate your findings to other researchers and supervisors.

Classification of Types of Research

There are various types of research that are classified according to their objective, depth of study, analysed data, time required to study the phenomenon and other factors. It’s important to note that a research project will not be limited to one type of research, but will likely use several.

According to its Purpose

Theoretical research.

Theoretical research, also referred to as pure or basic research, focuses on generating knowledge , regardless of its practical application. Here, data collection is used to generate new general concepts for a better understanding of a particular field or to answer a theoretical research question.

Results of this kind are usually oriented towards the formulation of theories and are usually based on documentary analysis, the development of mathematical formulas and the reflection of high-level researchers.

Applied Research

Here, the goal is to find strategies that can be used to address a specific research problem. Applied research draws on theory to generate practical scientific knowledge, and its use is very common in STEM fields such as engineering, computer science and medicine.

This type of research is subdivided into two types:

  • Technological applied research : looks towards improving efficiency in a particular productive sector through the improvement of processes or machinery related to said productive processes.
  • Scientific applied research : has predictive purposes. Through this type of research design, we can measure certain variables to predict behaviours useful to the goods and services sector, such as consumption patterns and viability of commercial projects.

Methodology Research

According to your Depth of Scope

Exploratory research.

Exploratory research is used for the preliminary investigation of a subject that is not yet well understood or sufficiently researched. It serves to establish a frame of reference and a hypothesis from which an in-depth study can be developed that will enable conclusive results to be generated.

Because exploratory research is based on the study of little-studied phenomena, it relies less on theory and more on the collection of data to identify patterns that explain these phenomena.

Descriptive Research

The primary objective of descriptive research is to define the characteristics of a particular phenomenon without necessarily investigating the causes that produce it.

In this type of research, the researcher must take particular care not to intervene in the observed object or phenomenon, as its behaviour may change if an external factor is involved.

Explanatory Research

Explanatory research is the most common type of research method and is responsible for establishing cause-and-effect relationships that allow generalisations to be extended to similar realities. It is closely related to descriptive research, although it provides additional information about the observed object and its interactions with the environment.

Correlational Research

The purpose of this type of scientific research is to identify the relationship between two or more variables. A correlational study aims to determine whether a variable changes, how much the other elements of the observed system change.

According to the Type of Data Used

Qualitative research.

Qualitative methods are often used in the social sciences to collect, compare and interpret information, has a linguistic-semiotic basis and is used in techniques such as discourse analysis, interviews, surveys, records and participant observations.

In order to use statistical methods to validate their results, the observations collected must be evaluated numerically. Qualitative research, however, tends to be subjective, since not all data can be fully controlled. Therefore, this type of research design is better suited to extracting meaning from an event or phenomenon (the ‘why’) than its cause (the ‘how’).

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research study delves into a phenomena through quantitative data collection and using mathematical, statistical and computer-aided tools to measure them . This allows generalised conclusions to be projected over time.

Types of Research Methodology

According to the Degree of Manipulation of Variables

Experimental research.

It is about designing or replicating a phenomenon whose variables are manipulated under strictly controlled conditions in order to identify or discover its effect on another independent variable or object. The phenomenon to be studied is measured through study and control groups, and according to the guidelines of the scientific method.

Non-Experimental Research

Also known as an observational study, it focuses on the analysis of a phenomenon in its natural context. As such, the researcher does not intervene directly, but limits their involvement to measuring the variables required for the study. Due to its observational nature, it is often used in descriptive research.

Quasi-Experimental Research

It controls only some variables of the phenomenon under investigation and is therefore not entirely experimental. In this case, the study and the focus group cannot be randomly selected, but are chosen from existing groups or populations . This is to ensure the collected data is relevant and that the knowledge, perspectives and opinions of the population can be incorporated into the study.

According to the Type of Inference

Deductive investigation.

In this type of research, reality is explained by general laws that point to certain conclusions; conclusions are expected to be part of the premise of the research problem and considered correct if the premise is valid and the inductive method is applied correctly.

Inductive Research

In this type of research, knowledge is generated from an observation to achieve a generalisation. It is based on the collection of specific data to develop new theories.

Hypothetical-Deductive Investigation

It is based on observing reality to make a hypothesis, then use deduction to obtain a conclusion and finally verify or reject it through experience.

Descriptive Research Design

According to the Time in Which it is Carried Out

Longitudinal study (also referred to as diachronic research).

It is the monitoring of the same event, individual or group over a defined period of time. It aims to track changes in a number of variables and see how they evolve over time. It is often used in medical, psychological and social areas .

Cross-Sectional Study (also referred to as Synchronous Research)

Cross-sectional research design is used to observe phenomena, an individual or a group of research subjects at a given time.

According to The Sources of Information

Primary research.

This fundamental research type is defined by the fact that the data is collected directly from the source, that is, it consists of primary, first-hand information.

Secondary research

Unlike primary research, secondary research is developed with information from secondary sources, which are generally based on scientific literature and other documents compiled by another researcher.

Action Research Methods

According to How the Data is Obtained

Documentary (cabinet).

Documentary research, or secondary sources, is based on a systematic review of existing sources of information on a particular subject. This type of scientific research is commonly used when undertaking literature reviews or producing a case study.

Field research study involves the direct collection of information at the location where the observed phenomenon occurs.

From Laboratory

Laboratory research is carried out in a controlled environment in order to isolate a dependent variable and establish its relationship with other variables through scientific methods.

Mixed-Method: Documentary, Field and/or Laboratory

Mixed research methodologies combine results from both secondary (documentary) sources and primary sources through field or laboratory research.

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The term rationale of research means the reason for performing the research study in question.

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Concept Paper

A concept paper is a short document written by a researcher before starting their research project, explaining what the study is about, why it is needed and the methods that will be used.

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GCSE grades a good predictor of life chances and wellbeing, research shows

Study of 23-year-olds found the exams were even more important for those from disadvantaged backgrounds

GCSE grades have an excellent track record in predicting the future lives and careers of young adults, according to researchers, who found the exams were even more crucial for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Academics from Leeds and York universities found that the predictive power of GCSE results outstripped those of gender or later qualifications, including university degrees, in charting the development of young people from the age of 16 into their early 20s.

“What we can definitely say is that GCSEs have a considerable impact on how your life develops into your early 20s, and that the benefits from GCSEs are over and above the education someone obtains later,” said Alexandra Starr, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of York and one of the study’s authors.

“The main message I would say is that GCSE grades are important in real life. We always talk about whether exams are only important within the education system, to climb the next rung in the educational ladder. But it’s also important beyond that.”

The research, published on Thursday in the journal Developmental Psychology , comes as nearly 800,000 students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland prepare to sit their GCSE exams this spring.

The researchers interviewed 6,500 people aged 23, recording their GCSE grades and later qualifications such as A-levels and degrees, along with their current occupation, income and questions on their financial and emotional wellbeing, as well as other measures including family background.

While those with strong GCSE results also did well in terms of university entry and prestigious occupations, the results were particularly marked for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“It’s important to encourage children to perform well in school because it’s important for their overall future. And it’s important to acknowledge this is especially true for children from less privileged backgrounds,” said Starr.

“For them it is more important to obtain good grades at GCSE level, to then have further educational opportunities such as going to university and being admitted into the courses they want to study, compared to their more privileged peers, who might have more of a support system they can rely on.”

Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, who was not involved in the research, said: “Education can be the great social leveller for children from under-resourced backgrounds – the huge challenge we face in the post-pandemic era is that too few are securing the basic GCSE grades needed to function and flourish in later life.

“Our country would be a fairer and more productive place if we targeted more education resources to those pupils who have been held back by the rising levels of inequality we are now experiencing.”

The Sutton Trust, which campaigns for social mobility through education, warned that there is a “ticking time bomb” being created by the widening attainment gap between rich and poor pupils in England.

The trust is calling for the next government to create a long-term national strategy to close the gap, including rebalancing funding back towards schools serving the most disadvantaged communities.

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IR-2024-45, Feb. 21, 2024

WASHINGTON — During the busiest time of the tax filing season, the Internal Revenue Service kicked off its 2024 Tax Time Guide series to help remind taxpayers of key items they’ll need to file a 2023 tax return.

As part of its four-part, weekly Tax Time Guide series, the IRS continues to provide new and updated resources to help taxpayers file an accurate tax return. Taxpayers can count on IRS.gov for updated resources and tools along with a special free help page available around the clock. Taxpayers are also encouraged to read Publication 17, Your Federal Income Tax (For Individuals) for additional guidance.

Essentials to filing an accurate tax return

The deadline this tax season for filing Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return , or 1040-SR, U.S. Tax Return for Seniors , is April 15, 2024. However, those who live in Maine or Massachusetts will have until April 17, 2024, to file due to official holidays observed in those states.

Taxpayers are advised to wait until they receive all their proper tax documents before filing their tax returns. Filing without all the necessary documents could lead to mistakes and potential delays.

It’s important for taxpayers to carefully review their documents for any inaccuracies or missing information. If any issues are found, taxpayers should contact the payer immediately to request a correction or confirm that the payer has their current mailing or email address on file.

Creating an IRS Online Account can provide taxpayers with secure access to information about their federal tax account, including payment history, tax records and other important information.

Having organized tax records can make the process of preparing a complete and accurate tax return easier and may also help taxpayers identify any overlooked deductions or credits .

Taxpayers who have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number or ITIN may need to renew it if it has expired and is required for a U.S. federal tax return. If an expiring or expired ITIN is not renewed, the IRS can still accept the tax return, but it may result in processing delays or delays in credits owed.

Changes to credits and deductions for tax year 2023

Standard deduction amount increased. For 2023, the standard deduction amount has been increased for all filers. The amounts are:

  • Single or married filing separately — $13,850.
  • Head of household — $20,800.
  • Married filing jointly or qualifying surviving spouse — $27,700.

Additional child tax credit amount increased. The maximum additional child tax credit amount has increased to $1,600 for each qualifying child.

Child tax credit enhancements. Many changes to the Child tax credit (CTC) that had been implemented by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 have expired.

However, the IRS continues to closely monitor legislation being considered by Congress affecting the Child Tax Credit. The IRS reminds taxpayers eligible for the Child Tax Credit that they should not wait to file their 2023 tax return this filing season. If Congress changes the CTC guidelines, the IRS will automatically make adjustments for those who have already filed so no additional action will be needed by those eligible taxpayers.

Under current law, for tax year 2023, the following currently apply:

  • The enhanced credit allowed for qualifying children under age 6 and children under age 18 has expired. For 2023, the initial amount of the CTC is $2,000 for each qualifying child. The credit amount begins to phase out where AGI income exceeds $200,000 ($400,000 in the case of a joint return). The amount of the CTC that can be claimed as a refundable credit is limited as it was in 2020 except that the maximum ACTC amount for each qualifying child increased to $1,500.
  • The increased age allowance for a qualifying child has expired. A child must be under age 17 at the end of 2023 to be a qualifying child.

Changes to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The enhancements for taxpayers without a qualifying child implemented by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 will not apply for tax year 2023. To claim the EITC without a qualifying child in 2023, taxpayers must be at least age 25 but under age 65 at the end of 2023. If a taxpayer is married filing a joint return, one spouse must be at least age 25 but under age 65 at the end of 2023.

Taxpayers may find more information on Child tax credits in the Instructions for Schedule 8812 (Form 1040) .

New Clean Vehicle Credit. The credit for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles has changed. This credit is now known as the Clean Vehicle Credit. The maximum amount of the credit and some of the requirements to claim the credit have changed. The credit is reported on Form 8936, Qualified Plug-In Electric Drive Motor Vehicle Credit , and on Form 1040, Schedule 3.

More information on these and other credit and deduction changes for tax year 2023 may be found in the Publication 17, Your Federal Income Tax (For Individuals) , taxpayer guide.

1099-K reporting requirements have not changed for tax year 2023

Following feedback from taxpayers, tax professionals and payment processors, and to reduce taxpayer confusion, the IRS recently released Notice 2023-74 announcing a delay of the new $600 reporting threshold for tax year 2023 on Form 1099-K, Payment Card and Third-Party Network Transactions . The previous reporting thresholds will remain in place for 2023.

The IRS has published a fact sheet with further information to assist taxpayers concerning changes to 1099-K reporting requirements for tax year 2023.

Form 1099-K reporting requirements

Taxpayers who take direct payment by credit, debit or gift cards for selling goods or providing services by customers or clients should get a Form 1099-K from their payment processor or payment settlement entity no matter how many payments they got or how much they were for.

If they used a payment app or online marketplace and received over $20,000 from over 200 transactions,

the payment app or online marketplace is required to send a Form 1099-K. However, they can send a Form 1099-K with lower amounts. Whether or not the taxpayer receives a Form 1099-K, they must still report any income on their tax return.

What’s taxable? It’s the profit from these activities that’s taxable income. The Form 1099-K shows the gross or total amount of payments received. Taxpayers can use it and other records to figure out the actual taxes they owe on any profits. Remember that all income, no matter the amount, is taxable unless the tax law says it isn’t – even if taxpayers don’t get a Form 1099-K.

What’s not taxable? Taxpayers shouldn’t receive a Form 1099-K for personal payments, including money received as a gift and for repayment of shared expenses. That money isn’t taxable. To prevent getting an inaccurate Form 1099-K, note those payments as “personal,” if possible.

Good recordkeeping is key. Be sure to keep good records because it helps when it’s time to file a tax return. It’s a good idea to keep business and personal transactions separate to make it easier to figure out what a taxpayer owes.

For details on what to do if a taxpayer gets a Form 1099-K in error or the information on their form is incorrect, visit IRS.gov/1099k  or find frequently asked questions at Form 1099-K FAQs .

Direct File pilot program provides a new option this year for some

The IRS launched the Direct File pilot program during the 2024 tax season. The pilot will give eligible taxpayers an option to prepare and electronically file their 2023 tax returns, for free, directly with the IRS.

The Direct File pilot program will be offered to eligible taxpayers in 12 pilot states who have relatively simple tax returns reporting only certain types of income and claiming limited credits and deductions. The 12 states currently participating in the Direct File pilot program are Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington state and Wyoming. Taxpayers can check their eligibility at directfile.irs.gov .

The Direct File pilot is currently in the internal testing phase and will be more widely available in mid-March. Taxpayers can get the latest news about the pilot at Direct File pilot news and sign up to be notified when Direct File is open to new users.

Finally, for comprehensive information on all these and other changes for tax year 2023, taxpayers and tax professionals are encouraged to read the Publication 17, Your Federal Income Tax (For Individuals) , taxpayer guide, as well as visit other topics of taxpayer interest on IRS.gov.

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