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Contents
Executive Summary
Overview Report
Main Report
Bibliographic History
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Review of Visualization in the Social Sciences: Overview Report
Conclusion
Our review has taught us many things about visualization in the social sciences
and we hope that its results will also be of more general interest and will
change more widely held views. Firstly, there is no central core to this
research and it is thus very difficult to define key research groups and
centres, hence the need for organisations such as ACOCG, and interdisciplinary
meetings within the social sciences. Consequently, most of the research is
conducted largely in ignorance of much other work which either has already been
done or which is currently being undertaken. Secondly, visualization research
in the social sciences is dominated by subjects with the closest links to the
natural sciences or/and with a tradition in graphical output. A pattern of
diffusion from science to social science is clear. Thirdly the World Wide Web
is quickly becoming the dominant form of research dissemination as paper
journals fail to evolve, charging exorbitant prices even for the production of
simple two dimensional colour illustrations. We can expect all these trends to
continue as there is no single discipline likely to dominate visualization in
the future and so provide a core set of methodologies.
Our original specification asked for key research groups to be identified, but
as we have stated above these are very difficult to define, given the diffuse
nature of work in visualization in the social sciences. If we were to identify
specific groups these would include: project ARGUS from Leicester, the SigGraph
ACM, the University College Research on visualization in planning in London,
the MIT Urban Studies and Planning Department, Alan Maceachren's centre in Penn
State, and the work on visualization sociological networks in Germany. But
overall it would be unfair to many other groups not to list them and to list
all groups would not produce a key list!
Visualization in the social sciences continues to grow as a research
activity beyond the original spurt of activity following the 1987 report.
However this growth is relatively uncoordinated. The activity does not fall
easily within the remit of any particular discipline and the publication of
results in the traditional form is very problematic. This review has attempted
to illustrate the wealth of work currently being conducted into visualization
in the social sciences. It has provided a reference to the historical
background through the creation of a very large bibliography of past papers and
a long list of current web sites providing examples of different techniques and
access to many different methods. Without greater coordination the future of
visualization in the social sciences is likely to be much like the past, but
more diffuse and more ephemeral. This coordination is likely to arise only from
direct funding for exemplar projects and centres from the research funding
councils.
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