The Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) at the National Institutes of Health has announced a collaboration with the New England Research Institutes to create a free resource called e-Source. The web-based interactive anthology will provide psychologists, economists, anthropologists, sociologists and other scientists with the latest research methods and tools to address emerging challenges in public health, such as the obesity epidemic and the rise of chronic diseases such as heart disease.
As behavioural and social scientists hail from widely varying disciplines from political science to social work research, there was a need for a central resource for current, high quality behavioural and social science research methods. With contributions from international experts, this anthology seeks to provide authoritative answers to methodological questions and sets quality standards for the research community.
The goal of the programme is to demonstrate the potential of behavioural and social science research, focusing on applying research findings to public health activities and the potential to enhance biomedical research. It also claims to be a useful training resource for biological scientists, providing them with a basic foundation for collaborations with behavioural and social scientists.
The Web-based interactive collection consists of 20 interactive chapters with new features including a discussion forum and enhanced note-taking capabilities. The twenty chapters cover a range of topics, but are accessible to all users, including those with limited familiarity of concepts such as how to conduct a qualitative analysis. The concepts are supported with interactive exercises and a full set of references linked to abstracts in Pubmed, a library of citations for scientific journals.
