Thirteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Grouping of academic disciplines reveals a hard/soft dimension that orders disciplines (Biglan, 1973): natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Subsequent research has confirmed that this dimension reflects how scientific or empirical disciplines are, one indicator being the prevalence of graphs in journal articles. The scientific status of disciplines also varies within the broad categories, although the ordering is inconsistent across studies and recent decades have witnessed strong challenges to empiricism in some social sciences. The present study examines the prevalence of data graphs and tables in introductory textbooks from four social sciences: psychology, sociology, politics, and anthropology. Graphs were much more common in psychology and sociology than in politics and anthropology, suggesting that initial exposure to the empirical status of the social sciences varies markedly. Moreover, students have different opportunities to develop competencies in the interpretation of graphs, a major communication tool in science. The prevalence of tables was much lower with a different pattern of results. The findings support other research on variation among social science disciplines in their commitment to an empirical or scientific approach, with implications for epistemology, teaching, and interdisciplinary studies.