Shoot first, ask questions later: Ethnographic research in an online computer gaming community

For researchers investigating online communities, the existence of the internet has made the activities and opinions of community members visible in a public domain. FPS gaming culture is a highly literate culture - members communicate and represent themselves in textual forms online, and the culture makes use of a wide variety of communication and publishing technologies. While a significant amount of insider knowledge is required to understand and interpret such online content, a large body of material is available to researchers online, and sometimes provides more reliable and enlightening information than that generated by more traditional research methods. While the abundance of data available online in some ways makes research far easier, it also creates new dilemmas and challenges for researchers. What extra knowledge is required of the researcher? How can one ensure that one's interpretations of member statements are made with an understanding of meaning within that culture? What responsibilities does the researcher have in their representation of the culture under examination? What ethical issues must be considered?

Occupational therapy and clinical research in mental health rehabilitation

Practitioners working in Australian mental health services are faced with the challenge of providing appropriate evidence-based interventions that lead to measurable improvement and good outcomes. Current government policy is committed to the development of strategic mental health research. One focus has been on under-researched practice areas, which include the development of psychosocial rehabilitation systems and models that facilitate recovery. To meet this challenge, an Australian rehabilitation service formed a collaborative partnership with a university. The purposes of the collaboration were to implement new forms of service delivery based on consumer need and evidence and to design research projects to evaluate components of the rehabilitation programme. This article examines the process of developing the collaboration and provides examples of how research projects have been used to inform practice and improve the effectiveness of service delivery. Challenges to the sustainability of this kind of collaboration are considered.

Research in leadership, self, and identity: A sample of the present and a glimpse of the future

Researchers in leadership effectiveness are paying increasing attention to the role of follower self-concept and identity as a mediator and moderator of the effectiveness of leadership. In this introductory article, we provide a short outline of this rapidly growing field of research, briefly introduce the articles presented in this special issue on leadership, self, and identity, and highlight key themes for future research that we feel emerge from these studies. These themes include greater attention to the dynamic interplay between leaders and followers, the incorporation of theories of fairness, and the role of leader self-concept. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Postcolonialism and the politics of qualitative research in international business

This paper offers a re-configuration of international business research by subjecting it to a postcolonial critique. This critique sees international business research as exhibiting continuities with the colonial project in the way it appropriates the Other. Qualitative research in international business often reproduces a neopositivist separation of theory and method, which can marginalize discussion of the important ontological, epistemological and political issues inherent in any research process

Efficiency effects of agricultural economics research in the United States

Allocations of research funds across programs are often made for efficiency reasons. Social science research is shown to have small, lagged but significant effects on U.S. agricultural efficiency when public agricultural R&D and extension are simultaneously taken into account. Farm management and marketing research variables are used to explain variations in estimates of allocative and technical efficiency using a Bayesian approach that incorporates stylized facts concerning lagged research impacts in a way that is less restrictive than popular polynomial distributed lags. Results are reported in terms of means and standard deviations of estimated probability distributions of parameters and long-run total multipliers. Extension is estimated to have a greater impact on both allocative and technical efficiency than either R&D or social science research.

Career research in a post-modern era

In recent years, career theory and practice has been challenged to revise and reinvigorate itself in order to remain relevant in the post- modern world. The most fundamental challenge is to produce an identity for career practice that is congruent with the post-modern world. Career research is facing a similar challenge as it has been dominated by methodologies that emanate out of the positivist worldview of the modern era and has been mainly quantitative in nature. In their recent research, the authors have been examining methodologies that accommodate the tenets of the post-modern world – post-modernism, constructivism and career psychology. This article overviews post- modern considerations by exploring the possibilities offered by the Systems Theory Framework of career development and the 'My System of Career Influence' reflection activity as research tools. Examples of recent research are briefly described.