Frontiers in Social Science features new research in the flagship journals of the Social Science Research Council’s founding disciplinary associations. Every month we publish a new selection of articles from the most recent issues of these journals, marking the rapid advance of the frontiers of social and behavioral science.
Newly uncovered archival sources in China, Taiwan, and the United States reveal the role played by US WWII wartime procurement efforts in contributing to local export monopolies and economic inequality in postwar China.
US war mobilization efforts in the early 1940s helped create demand for a vast assortment of raw materials not produced in the domestic United States. These demands led to the formation of a new foreign aid regime that sought to procure strategic materials in exchange for loans, cash, and industrial and military goods. This essay, which draws on archival sources collected in China, Taiwan, and the United States, examines the power and legacy of US overseas procurement programs by focusing on the case of China and the US effort to acquire hog bristles. Hog bristles, which were used for the production of a vast assortment of brushes, were one of China’s largest wartime exports. The US wartime demand for bristles helped empower a small number of Chinese firms that controlled local production. One of these firms used wartime controls to dominate the industry by 1945, and the head of the firm, Gu Gengyu, was later deemed the “hog-bristle king.” This essay explores the long-term legacies of US wartime procurement programs, revealing how they helped empower a new and powerful class of transnational businessmen with strong ties to the government, as well as deep connections to US markets.
A task force sponsored by the American Psychological Association, the British Psychological Society, and the German Psychological Society produced a template for preregistering quantitative research as a means to increase the transparency and robustness of scientific findings.
Recent years have seen dramatic changes in research practices in psychological science. In particular, preregistration of study plans before conducting a study has been identified as an important tool to help increase the transparency of science and to improve the robustness of psychological research findings. This article presents the Psychological Research Preregistration-Quantitative (PRP-QUANT) Template produced by a Joint Psychological Societies Preregistration Task Force consisting of the American Psychological Association (APA), the British Psychological Society (BPS), and the German Psychological Society (DGPs), supported by the Center for Open Science (COS) and the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID). The goal of the Task Force was to provide the psychological community with a consensus template for the preregistration of quantitative research in psychology, one with wide coverage and the ability, if necessary, to adapt to specific journals, disciplines, and researcher needs. This article covers the structure and use of the PRP-QUANT template, while outlining and discussing the benefits of its use for researchers, authors, funders, and other relevant stakeholders. We hope that by introducing this template and by demonstrating the support of preregistration by major academic psychological societies, we will facilitate an increase in preregistration practices and also the further advancement of transparency and knowledge-sharing in the psychological sciences.