This article discusses the challenges of moving towards student-centredness in East-Central Europe through the example of Hungary’s subject-focused academic culture and the (re-)design of a political science research methods course at the University of Szeged for Spring 2012. Although countries participating in the Bologna Process undersigned the importance of student-centredness, few countries have actually yet moved in this direction. In addition, we know very little about how these instructional methods work outside the Western democratic context. I show that research into teaching is an important means to improve the process of education and that there are specific problems in transferring student-centredness into post-Communist higher education settings. Finally, I argue that knowing one’s teaching context is vital for planning student-centred courses effectively, which would be greatly fostered by experiencing other teaching contexts through early-career teacher exchanges. The European Commission has recently affirmed its commitment to staff exchanges, but such opportunities are only likely to be beneficial if they go beyond the current 6-week long exchange scheme that the Erasmus programme offers.

‘Is political science out of step with the world?’ This question, raised by John E. Trent in a recent issue, is part of a recurring debate about the development of our discipline. In that article, and in a subsequent book with his colleague Michael Stein, John Trent blames adherents of the ‘scientific method’ for political science’s growing irrelevance. We challenge this claim by arguing that Trent falls back on outdated polarities between ‘objective and normative’, and ‘explanation and interpretation’, in order to justify his allegation. We argue for the need to review our methods continuously, rather than dig up a fruitless and biased division between qualitative and quantitative approaches.

In its rational, organisational, historical and discursive varieties, the new institutionalism research agenda is arguably the most successful paradigm in comparative politics and public policy analysis. However, neo-institutional practice applied to comparative policy analysis reveals four pitfalls, that is, ‘institutional determinism’, ‘drop in the box’, ‘second best residual explanations’ and ‘theoretical conjectures without foundational mechanisms’. We illustrate and examine the pitfalls and consider the conceptual and methodological implications for the comparative analysis of policies. In the conclusion, we present options for rescuing institutional analysis from bad practice.

Research on interest groups has evolved from a focus on small-N studies to larger-N studies in the past 15 years. While both European and American research has become more sophisticated and aware of methodological aspects, there is yet no specialized literature on methods regarding how to study interest groups. Only few studies discuss the methodological implications of interest group studies, as well as the transferability of methods employed in other areas of political science to this research area. The contributions in this symposium focus on major problems and topics in interest group research and elaborate methods to deal with them: (1) the identification of the relevant interest group population, (2) the analysis of interest group strategies such as access, (3) the identification of interest groups positions and frames, and (4) the measurement of interest group success and influence. The introduction outlines these research problems and describes how the contributions to this symposium address them. The aim of the symposium is to increase awareness of the intricacies of these research problems, outline suitable practices to handle them, and stimulate debate on these methodological aspects.

Indigenous communities have historically been some of the most researched communities around the globe. But much of this research has caused great harm to Indigenous peoples. In response to these harmful and abusive research practices, Indigenous leaders and scholars have envisioned new research principles, practices, methodologies, and policies that center Indigenous peoples, values, worldviews, governance and knowledge systems: Indigenous data sovereignty. This article examines the current state of third sector research relating to Indigenous peoples. We find that Indigenous communities are largely absent from third sector research and there are significant issues with how third sector research conceptualizes Indigenous peoples. We introduce Indigenous data sovereignty as a demand and framework of Indigenous communities aimed at supporting more equitable research practices and pathways to advance research with and for—and not on—Indigenous communities.

This article presents a new strategy for reviewing large, multidisciplinary academic literatures: a multi-method comprehensive review (MCR). We present this approach and demonstrate its use by the NGO Knowledge Collective, which aims to aggregate knowledge on NGOs in international development. We explain the process by which scholars can identify, analyze, and synthesize a population of hundreds or thousands of articles. MCRs facilitate cross-disciplinary synthesis, systematically identify gaps in a literature, and can create data for further scholarly use. The main drawback is the significant resources needed to manage the volume of text to review, although such obstacles may be mitigated through advances in “big data” methodologies over time.

With the growth of third sector research, the field needs more dedicated discussion on how we study the third sector, not only the decisions in research design or data collection process but also the general research approaches and the way we analyze the data. In this introduction to the special issue of Voluntas Volume I, we discuss how the sector can foster a more inclusive and diverse research community for people, topics, and methods. We also discuss the implications of methodological pluralism, an organizing principle of a research community that fosters respect, appreciation, and empathy between its members. We conclude by calling for more empathetic, transparent, and accountable research.

This editorial examines the empirical foundations of Chinese management research through an analysis of data sources and research designs in all empirical papers published in Management and Organization Review (MOR) over the past five years. Our review shows that 53.2% of studies rely on archival or secondary data, with 37% of quantitative studies focusing on publicly listed firms. While established datasets provide consistency and comparability, their prevalence may limit opportunities to explore China’s diverse organizational ecosystem. We identify three promising avenues for advancing the field: (1) expanding empirical attention to include a wider variety of organizational forms, (2) leveraging emerging computational methods, digital trace data, and AI-enabled technologies, and (3) recognizing the development of novel datasets as valuable scholarly contributions in their own right. We also examine how recent regulatory developments are creating new considerations for research design while reinforcing the value of collaborative approaches between international and Chinese scholars. We contend that by embracing methodological pluralism and adapting to evolving data landscapes, management scholars can generate additional novel insights that illuminate the complexity and distinctiveness of Chinese organizational life.

Qualitative data and analysis can enrich our understanding of key questions in behavioural public policy. In this perspective, I make the case for incorporating qualitative approaches better and more often into our research. I offer practical ideas on how to do this, and a call for action from researchers, reviewers, editors, policy makers and our Higher Education and funding institutions.

Assembling datasets is crucial for advancing social science research, but researchers who construct datasets often face difficult decisions with little guidance. Once public, these datasets are sometimes used without proper consideration of their creators’ choices and how these affect the validity of inferences. To support both data creators and data users, we discuss the strengths, limitations, and implications of various data collection methodologies and strategies, showing how seemingly trivial methodological differences can significantly impact conclusions. The lessons we distill build on the process of constructing three cross-national datasets on education systems. Despite their common focus, these datasets differ in the dimensions they measure, as well as their definitions of key concepts, coding thresholds and other assumptions, types of coders, and sources. From these lessons, we develop and propose general guidelines for dataset creators and users aimed at enhancing transparency, replicability, and valid inferences in the social sciences.

Thematic series were introduced to BJPsych Open by the current Editor-in-Chief to address key topics in psychiatry and mental health, specifically considering the impact on the global burden of diseases with associated treatments, outcomes, policy and research priorities. The increasing submission to BJPsych Open of articles about the psychosocial and mental health impacts of terrorism and collective violence naturally led to this thematic series. This paper introduces the journal’s series of published papers about terrorism and collective violence. While we identify the topics covered by the series and hope to generate conversation, this paper does not report a systematic review of the series. The thematic series consists of 13 articles; 9 were open submissions and 4 were commissioned. They include this review, an editorial concerning research methods and 11 papers reporting how people have responded to terrorist and violent incidents in 4 countries. Including this review, one paper was published in 2020, three in 2022, two in 2023, five in 2024 and two in 2025. The commissioned papers were added to broaden coverage of the Utøya attack on young people in Norway, and the shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019. Our intention was to enable the papers on these two incidents to sit alongside papers already submitted about them and the Manchester Arena bombing as well as articles about attacks in Germany. We begin by introducing the papers and comment in the discussion on a series of topics that we have selected as prominent in the series.

This bibliography collects sources on the independence and accountability of judges serving on international tribunals and domestic apex courts by focusing on selection, terms of service, and discipline and removal. It includes books, book chapters, and articles, primarily in English, with reference to some French-, German-, and Spanish-language materials. The ensuing text also discusses some logistical difficulties in compiling a bibliography on such a large topic, describes the contours of the subject matter, and concludes with some thoughts on the direction of the scholarship and the possible use of AI in international research such as this.