1In issue number 41 (December 1993) of the BMS, we published a full list of the tables of contents of issues 1 to 40, along with an alphabetic index of all authors and research centers present in those issues, and an alphabetic index of all research articles published during that period. In our previous issue, n. 80 (October 2003), we promised to do the same for issues 41 to 80. At the end of this article, you will find the list of tables of contents, the author/centre index and the article-title index.
2The Editorial Board of the BMS also decided that an analysis of that material was in order; after all, we are supposedly specialists in the original application of methods of analysis in sociological research, so there is no reason not to apply such methods to our own work. Therefore, using the English-language abstracts for each of the research and ongoing research articles published in the BMS from issue number 41 to issue 80 (October 2003), we constructed a data file with each entry (article) identified by the series of key words which appeared with the article in the BMS. That data file was then analyzed using a correspondence analysis method and co-word analysis method.
3Philippe Cibois, one of the founders of the BMS, used his TriDeux factorial correspondence analysis program (Cibois, 1984 & 1995) to produce the following diagram of the research and ongoing research articles published by the BMS over the past ten years. The first or horizontal axis extends from the left, with Chi-square, Interviewing, Sampling, etc., to the right where we find Validity, Comparative, Collection, etc. This seems to be a "methods" axis going from more formal methods to more abstract methodological considerations.
4The second or vertical axis moves up from Text, Language, Poverty, Well-Being, etc., to Careers, Time, Profession, Errors, etc. It appears to go from more social considerations and approaches toward more professional considerations.
5Not surprisingly, we find Sociology in the center with a closely packed collection of specific methods of analysis grouped around it. Although there are outliers, the collection of key words is organized in a relatively concentric manner around the origin of the graph with density increasing toward the center.
6With this general overview, we decided to look more closely at particular associations or classes of key words to see if we could clarify the dense concentration around the origin of the factorial diagram. For that purpose, we used the same data to analyze the similarity of co-occurrence of key words in the abstracts of BMS articles from 1993 to 2003.
Figure 1: TriDeux factorial correspondence analysis of the research and ongoing research articles published by the BMS over the past ten years
7(under preparation/en préparation)
8Mathilde de Saint Léger (1997) developed a new Windows-based program of text analysis (Calliope) based on Leximappe-Lexinet, a method of classification using co-occurrence of key words as a measure of similitude, a method which has been presented previously in the BMS (Van Meter, Turner & Bizard, 1995; Van Meter & Turner, 1997). As with Leximappe-Lexinet, the two-dimensional strategic diagram produced by Calliope has a horizontal axis of "centrality" (strength of external ties) and a vertical axis of "density" (strength of internal ties). This divides the diagram into four quadrants with the first quadrant (central and dense) often referred to as "mainstream science", the second quadrant (dense but not central) as "ivory tower" science, the third quadrant (non-dense, non-central) as "chaos" or "unstructured science", and the fourth quadrant (central but not dense) as "bandwagon science".
Figure 2: The strategic diagram of the research and ongoing research articles published by the BMS over the past ten years
9Rather characteristically for a social science journal published in France and publishing in French (besides English), the terms Social Science and France figure in quadrant one below and both are central (see the external ties in the strategic diagrams on the left) and dense (see the strength of the internal ties in the diagrams on the right). Note that the strength of these ties is relative to an initial threshold of 50. Below 50, ties are drawn as dashed lines and not as continuous lines of varying thickness (proportional to strength).
10The Social Science class shows the importance of the ISA Research Committee on Logic and Methodology (RC33) and its October 2000 conference in Cologne (BMS, 2000; Van Meter, 2003). Not only was the Cologne conference reviewed extensively in the BMS, it was also the source of several articles published in the BMS. This central sociological methodology class, which appears to be thematic, is complemented by a more geographic but international class centered around the term France and including Germany, Great Britain and The Netherlands, all countries where RC33 is well-represented and producing sociological methodology articles published in the BMS. It is interesting to note that a specific type of sociological methodology is also associated with these four countries: social network analysis. Indeed, these four countries are active in that field and several have hosted one of the international "Sunbelt" social network conferences.
Figure 3: The cluster France
Figure 4: The cluster Social Science
11On the border between the first and the fourth quadrant, we find CAPI (Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing) with ties to, and situated between, the Sensitive Question class and the Measurement Error class. Its internal ties map out most of the domain of modern questionnaire interviewing.
Figure 5: The cluster CAPI (Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing)
12Qualitative Data Analysis and Measurement Error are clearly in the fourth quadrant and, therefore, have weaker external ties. Although they do have certain strong internal ties (particularly relative to their weak external ties), compared to CAPI, France and Social Science, they are not strong classes.
Figure 6: The cluster Qualitative Data Analysis
Figure 7: The cluster Measurement Error
13The Sociology class has weak internal ties with Internet and stronger internal ties with Evaluation. Sociology's internal ties are weak with Social Science and with France. It clearly merits its position of dense but not central.
14Social Mobility is in the third non-dense, non-central quadrant. Its internal ties are with Context Effect and Multilevel Analysis, and, more weakly, with Sociological Methodology. Its weak external ties are with France and Qualitative Data Analysis.
15Structural Equation Model (SEM) shares the third quadrant with Social Mobility but has no ties with it. SEM has a weak external tie with measurement error and medium-strength internal ties with Lisrel, Cluster Analysis and Comparison Method.
16In the second Ivory Tower quadrant (dense but not central), Contingency Table has no external ties but strong internal ties with Data Analysis and Measure of Information.
17Similarly, Validity has no external ties (a rather delicate remark to this subject matter) and only internal ties with construct validity (very strong ties) and much weaker ties with survey methodology.
18Again in the second quadrant, Linear Model has no external ties but very strong internal ties which form a solid triangle with Logit Model and Categorical Dependent Variable.
19Tabular Analysis, which has no external ties, forms a solid (strong internal ties) group with Linear Regression and Logistic Regression and Qualitative Data.