TEXT ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AS A CONCEPT by SHAMSUN NAHAR Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF SOCIAL WORK THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON December 2014 Copyright © by Shamsun Nahar 2014 All Rights Reserved ii Acknowledgements Encouragement and support are the two key ingredients for a successful endeavor. Throughout the masters program in Social Work at the University of Texas at Arlington, a number of individuals have encouraged and supported me to conquer different adverse circumstances. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to those whose guidance, advice, well wish, sacrifice, and prayer made this thesis possible. Of course, at first I would like to thank Dr. Vijayan Pillai not only for his service as my committee chair but also for being the best mentor to guide me to work for fulfilling my dream. He was very compassionate to me to overcome all obstacles in completing this thesis. Without his continuous supervision, dedication, and patience, completing my thesis would be quite difficult. I am very fortunate to have Dr. Pillai as my Professor who taught me Research and Evaluation Methods in Social Work and guided me to experience research skill. As a researcher, my future work will be greatly influenced by his wisdom and scholarship. I would also like to express my gratitude to my other two committee members of thesis: Dr. Eusebius Small and Dr. Randall Basham. A hard worker and enthusiastic scholar, Dr. Eusebius small made me interested to think about the pros and cons of policy in social service and social justice and raise the voice for iii disadvantaged population. I very much appreciate the kindness of Dr. Randall Basham in all of the steps. I also thank all of the mentors who taught me the courses throughout the masters program that developed my skill and knowledge that I needed to successfully complete my thesis. I owe to my husband and friend Md. Abdus Salam for his continuous support throughout my academic career. Without his love, help, and encouragement, it was nearly impossible to see myself in this level. He always had great confidence in me and made me believe that I can overcome the toughest impediments applying my wisdom, courage, and hard work. My deep and heartfelt appreciation is due to my beloved parents, Momotaz Begum and Md. Abdur Razzaque, for their out of the box dream about me even living in a poor patriarchal society where women are generally considered as powerless human being. I would like to pay my tribute to my late grandmother Asiya Khatun who influenced me to work for disadvantaged people. I would like to thank my mother-in-law, Jahanara Begum and father-in-law Md. Abdus Sobhan for their supports in all my steps. I would also like to thank my two brothers for their encouragement along the way, who have been always a great inspiration for me. I would like to thank all of my friends whose supports and inspirations mean a lot to me. November 19, 2014 iv Abstract TEXT ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AS A CONCEPT Shamsun Nahar, MSW The University of Texas at Arlington, 2014 Supervising Professor: Vijayan K Pillai Theory of social development is composed of an amalgam of several interrelated and independent theories, such as representational, explanatory, and normative theories. The objective of this study is to contribute to the representational theories of social development by examining the contextual variations that characterize the discourse of development in published scholarly journals. Applying the text analysis method in all abstracts (N=707) of the journal of Social Development Issues (SDI), which is one of the prominent international journals where social development is analyzed from international and interdisciplinary perspectives, this study explores the associated terms of social development, their frequency, and terms which are or are not con-centered to the terms of “social” or “development”. The top five most frequent concepts are “social”, “development”, “work”, “community”, and “woman” which have frequencies of 2170, 1680, 490, 475, and 398 respectively. The terms strongly v associated with “social” and “development” are “policy”, “support”, “analyze”, “child”, “concept”, “approach”, “culture”, “context”, “political”, “conflict”, and “impact”. All the associated terms closely related to social development focus on various types of interventions, for example, psychological, feminist, communitarian, ecological, individualist-enterprise, and institutional. Results of this study manifest a remarkable diversity of the terms in social development that can help future researchers create conceptual images of social development theory and a scale to measure social development in a particular place. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ iii Abstract ................................................................................................................... v List of Illustrations …………………………………………………………….....ix Chapter 1 Introduction and Overview ...…………………………………………..1 Definition of Social Development ……………………………………………..4 Characteristics of Social Development .……………………………………......9 United Nations and Social Development ..……………………………………13 Chapter 2 Present Study …………………………………………………………16 Significance of the Study …...………………………………………………...18 Chapter 3 Methodology …………………………………………………………20 Data Collection & Synthesizing ………………………………………………20 Text Analysis Procedure …………………………………………………...…22 Data Analysis ...……………………………………………………………….24 Chapter 4 Discussion ……………………………………………………………28 Study Implication ….........................................................................................30 Study Limitation ...…………………………………………………………...32 Future Study .…………………………………………………………………33 Conclusion …...………………………………………………………………34 Appendix A Collected Data ……..………………………………………………36 References ……..…….…………………………………………………………382 vii Biographical Information ………………………………………………………388 viii List of Illustrations Figure 3-1 Tabular Representation of Data Collection ………..……...................21 Figure 3-2 Graphical Representation of Most Frequent Terms ………………....24 Figure 3-3 Tabular Representation of Frequency Level for Selected Terms.........25 Figure 3-4 Graphical Representation of Strongly Associated Terms with “Social” and “Development”……….…………….............…………………...27 ix Chapter 1 Introduction and Overview Over the last 50 years the concept of social development has emerged as a distinctive field of practice and academic enquiry, but it still lacks precise definition. The concept of social development is used to represent different issues. Although social development was originally formulated through local community projects, it now characterises practice at the regional and national levels as well, and its approach has also been adopted by international organizations. Scholars working in different academic fields have applied the term in different ways. Actually, the concept of social development is closely discussed with developmental studies by the scholars of sociology, social work, and social policy (Midgley, 2014). The concept of development has been traditionally associated with economic development, but more recently it has evolved to encompass both social and economic development. In this integrated perspective, economic development is initially viewed as an engine for social development with several positive effects on economic progress at later stages. Although the concept of social development is inclusive of economic development, it differs from it in the sense that it emphasizes societal development at all levels of economic, political, social, and cultural aspects (Gore, 1973). In order to solve social problems, planned 1 comprehensive social change like social development is not enough, rather economic and cultural efforts at national and international levels are needed (Barker, 2003). Economic development stimulates economic growth promoting the efficiency of the factors of production. Social development focuses on the progressive changes in utilizing social resources to increase individual satisfaction and well being. Social change is an intrinsic characteristic of development. However, social change also brings about new issues and social problems. It has been observed that currently mental health is a significant issue along with food security in the developed countries. Analyzing new problems without considering changing social development concepts may lead to inaccurate understanding and assumptions. The concept of social development provides a useful framework to critically understand and manage social problems. In this regard, the International Consortium for Social Development (ICSD) is an organization dedicated to responding to pressing human concerns from an international and interdisciplinary perspective. It uses social development approach to “expand capacity of individuals and communities; promote world peace and social justice; improve access to adequate health care and education; overcome discrimination against women and minorities; and also create sustainable income and economic structures” (ICSD, 2012, para. 3). 2 Variations in the conceptualization of social development have occurred owing to dissimilarities in issues arising from differences in geographical and chronological contexts. A large proportion of new