Starting from 1957, with the seminal book of Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum's ‘Measurement of Meaning', the semantic differential rapidly developed as a complex and subtle research instrument used for measuring social sentiments and attitudes with profound consequences for the social sciences...

Comparing self-assessed indicators of subjective outcomes such as health, work disability, political efficacy, job satisfaction, etc. across countries or socio-economic groups is often hampered by the fact that different groups use systematically different response scales. Anchoring vignettes...

This paper addresses the problem of how to measure the benefits of policy-oriented social science research. It argues that social science research promotes economic efficiency in three different ways—it fosters efficiency in the public sector both directly and through effects on the general...

This paper addresses two questions: The first is "What are the benefits of social science research?"; the second is "How should they be measured?" The response to the first is that, as with research in the physical sciences, the benefits should be identified in terms of changes in economic...

Qualitative and quantitative methods in social science research have long been separate spheres with little overlap. However, recent innovations have highlighted the complementarity of qualitative and quantitative approaches. The Accra Food and Nutrition Security Study was designed to...