Government Social Research
24 July 2004 - The Prime Minister announced the creation of a Women and Work Commission to examine the problem of the gender pay gap and other issues affecting women's employment.
The Commission will be chaired by Baroness Prosser, who is currently Chair of the Women's National Commission, the official, independent, advisory body giving the views of women to the Government.
The Commission will report to the Prime Minister by Autumn 2005 on
The ESRC Strategic Resources Board has appointed Professor Peter Elias, University of Warwick to a new post, Strategic Advisor (Data Resources) for three years from October 2004.
Professor Elias will have responsibility for the development of a National Data Strategy to support social science research. This will involve planning for the development of new data sources and the maintenance of existing resources, working closely with government departments, other research councils and the research foundations to coordinate these developments and assisting with the task of identifying the scope for co-funding arrangements. His brief will enable him to commission fact-finding and scoping studies which will help identify the data resources needs for future research and to explore the opportunities for improved access to existing resources. He will be a member of the UK Data Forum , a new high-level committee which will coordinate strategic decision making by those bodies which fund the development and maintenance of data resources.
More details on the ESRC website
Report on page 2 of Social Science Bulletin, Issue 7, July 2004
Expresses concern that the ethical approach for research within the Research Governance Framework for Health and Social Care may be extended, unsuitably, to all research involving human subjects, without due weight being given to existing professional standards of social science research. Views are sought by Ian Forbes (ian.forbes@nottingham.ac.uk)
The ESRC Research Methods Festival ran from 1-3 July 2004.
The web-site now holds a full set of overheads and summaries of papers. There are also some photos from the Festival.
DfT have published a feasibility study to examine how a new system of charging for road use could help make better use of our road capacity.
A particular focus of the research was to look at the degree of public acceptance which is critical to the feasibility of road pricing. The report looks at what we know about current attitudes and perceptions to road pricing. The report can be viewed on the DfT website