Government Social Research
24 August 2006 - Mathematica publish semi-monthly update
Contents include:
Interpreter services to ease language barriers in health care; Disease management: has implementation outpaced evidence?; Cash and counseling reduces Nursing Home use; Teacher training: new report examines passport to teaching.
23 August 2006 - Department of Health publish evaluation of Your Health, Your Care, Your Say
Your Health, Your Care, Your Say was one of the largest and most ambitious public engagement exercises ever mounted in the UK. The aims were complex and ambitious: to ensure that the public (especially the ‘seldom heard’) were actively involved in deliberative debates on contentious issues including ‘trading off ’ public investment in different types of health and social care services, alongside creating a high public profile to encourage wide public involvement (including through open access questionnaires) and professional stakeholder involvement.
This report summarises the results of an evaluation study which examines the whole process but which focuses on the ‘listening exercise’ - the local, regional and national deliberative events that enabled members of the public to discuss a range of topics (based on information provided and a carefully structured process). The evaluation study aimed to come to conclusions about the extent to which the methodology chosen and the delivery of YHYCYS met the objectives set, and draw out learning for future public engagement activity.
22 August 2006 - Department for Transport publish The Rail Group Evidence and Research Strategy 2006
This strategy summarises research activities within the Rail Group. It outlines the evidence needs that are being met and those which need addressing.
21 August 2006 - Defra publish Influencing behaviours.
Social Researchers within Defra’s Central Analytical Directorate have published key outputs from the 2005-06 cross-cutting research programme on Pro-Environmental Behaviour Change. Seven separate studies were commissioned as part of this programme, each with a remit to explore a unique aspect of both the theory and practice of influencing behaviours within an environmental context.
Research included a detailed review of both theoretical and applied literature relating to pro-environmental behaviour change and six small-scale research projects that encouraged innovative thinking in relation to the practical application of behavioural theory in the environmental policy context.
The findings have also been incorporated into ten practical guides for policy-makers and practitioners and key messages from all projects have been summarised into a one-page A3 ‘poster’. All the outputs are now available.
For further information please contact Tony Pike (tony.pike@defra.gsi.gov.uk) or Arianna Haberis (arianna.haberis@defra.gsi.gov.uk).
17 August 2006 - Objections to UK funding proposal - article in The Scientist
Reports that the Royal Society has said that the Government's plan for new funding system for research lacks peer review and that it needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with better proposals for reforming a system that allocates money to universities for scientific research.
The current Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) uses panels of experts to assess the quality of each university department's research and allocate funds from the UK's four higher education funding bodies. But it is widely viewed as a burdensome and costly system.
In its place, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has proposed using simpler models that rely on quantitative measures, such as the level of outside funding a department gets, to distribute funds.
The article reports a letter to DfES from Royal Society President, Martin Rees, which says that the proposed income-based metric models are not appropriate. Quantitative data could be used to underpin the work of peer review panels.
The government consultation on the RAE will continue until October.
17 August 2006 - Scottish Executive monthly announcement of research includes:
10 August 2006 - Department for Work and Pensions publish nine sector specific reports
Encourages employers to tackle age discrimination practices and recognise the benefits of older workers. The Age Partnership Group (APG) sector specific research reports look at the challenges faced by nine sectors of the economy relating to the recruitment, training and retention of older workers and will be used for the Age Positive campaign ahead of the introduction of the Age Discrimination Legislation on 1 October this year.
The research found that eight sectors use length of experience to fix starting salaries or as a criterion in selection for recruitment and retention; seven sectors use age or length of service as the basis for redundancy decisions; five sectors provide age information on candidates to short-listing and interviewing staff; four sectors set maximum or contractual retirement ages and for two of these sectors the contractual retirement age is often below 65. The reports also examine what employers are doing to remove compulsory retirement ages and adopt flexible approaches, as set out in the Pensions White Paper, as well as looking at how the age legislation affects young people in the workforce.
8 August 2006 - Mathematica publish semi-monthly update
Contents include:
Summer Enrichment Program improves reading skills; Price and income elasticity in demand for health care and services reviewed; School food environments, students' diets, and obesity; Infant care for parents making the transition from welfare to work.
3 August 2006 - Mathematica publish semi-monthly update
Contents include:
Cost to find, hire, train and fire; Food Stamp participation estimates; First physician quality measures unveiled for public comment; State financing of services for children with serious emotional disturbances.
1 August 2006 - DWP publish Employer attitudes to personal accounts: report of a qualitative study (Research report no. 371)
Presents findings of a qualitative study to explore employers' attitudes and reactions to the idea of automatically enrolling people into personal accounts. It involved face to face, depth, interviews with seventy-five private sector employers. In addition, eight depth interviews were carried out with individuals who employ others to provide a service in a non business context e.g. people who employ a nanny or a gardener. This study was commissioned as part of a programme to gather evidence to inform the Government's proposals on personal accounts as set out in the White Paper on pension reform, Security in retirement: towards a new pensions system, published May 2006.
Welsh Assembly Government publish the results of its first ever Assembly Government wide Stakeholder Survey
The aim of the survey was to provide information that would help officials in the Assembly Government further improve the way they involve and engage with their stakeholders in delivering improved public services. Ipsos MORI were commissioned by the Office of the Chief Social Research Officer to undertake the survey.
Department for Transport publishes Evidence base Review on Attitudes to Climate Change and Transport
The overall objectives were to improve the evidence base for policy decisions
concerning:
1) How climate change knowledge and awareness relates to transport decision-making,
attitudes and behaviours amongst the public;
2) The nature and impact of interventions aimed at altering attitudes and
behaviours in relation to climate change issues;
3) The identification of research methods (including measures and data sources)
pertinent to these issues;
4) The identification of evidence gaps worthy of further research.
JRF Call: The Dynamics of Poverty and Place
A new call for proposals has recently been published by the JRF Housing and Neighbourhoods Committee, for a project entitled ‘The Dynamics of Poverty and Place’. The project aims to better understand the nuances of people's lives in terms of how individual households experience poverty and how these experiences interact with the neighbourhoods where they live. It is not intended to replicate existing policy programme evaluations but to bring alive the reality of people's experience of poverty and living in (or leaving) disadvantaged or affluent places. It seeks to hear people's own views about their situation and day to day lives. Further details can be found on our website:
Deadline: 7 September 2006 at 12pm.