Government Social Research
Welcome to the February GSR bulletin.
Please use the links below to navigate to sections of interest to you.
Visit the Homepage and Research news pages for more recent items.
Elections covering Northern Ireland (March), Scotland and Wales, and the Local Authorities (May).
Being Head of Profession
Jessica Cox - team leader of the Performance Analysis team in the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit - has died following a long illness.
GSRU welcomes Kate Bilton who has joined on a 2-year loan from the Scottish Executive. Kate will be working on a survey of all government analysts (social researchers, economists, operational researchers, statisticians and scientists) to inform a forthcoming conference for the departmental heads of profession across government. She will also be helping update and devleop the GSR professional guidance.
DTI launches Postgraduate Employment Research Scholarships to encourage robust quantitative research on employment relations, management practices, employee attitudes and perceptions and equality and discrimination at work.
DTI announce new seminar programme
The first seminar "Job quality in Europe and the UK" is on the
8th March ".
Details: emar@dti.gov.uk
GSRU
courses (GSi only)
External events
Home Office publish:
Scottish Executive publish:
Department for Communities and Local Government publish:
Welsh Assembly Government Research:
Department of Transport publish:
2 March 2007: Deadline call for papers for BHPS-2007 Conference 5-7 July 2007 at University of Essex.
GSRU have published Ethics in social research: the view of research participants - a study conducted by NatCen and funded by GSRU, the Department of Transport, HM Revenue and Customs, the Scottish Executive, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. This study explored the perceptions and experiences of ethical issues amongst participants in qualitative and quantitative research studies, and looks at participants' understanding of ethics as they relate to research; their information needs; and their experience of the process. It highlights the centrality of the interview experience and the relationship with the interviewer and can help inform future good research practice for all social researchers.
UK Centre for Evidence Based Policy and Practice publishes The practice of research reviewing 2. Ten case studies of reviews (Working Paper 25)
Concerns about methodology used in real-world experiments on transport and transport safety - article by T. P. Hutchinson, Centre for Automotive Safety Research, University of Adelaide
Cohort models debated - article in The Scientist about the merits for research of forming a new 500,000-person cohort versus a cheaper, faster model that combines existing cohort studies.
Mathematica publish semimonthly update
Contents include:
Millennium
Cohort Study (MCS) latest news
UK
Data Archive publish data from the first wave of the Longitudinal Study
of Young People in England (LSYPE), also known as Next Steps
Institute
for Social and Economic Research (ISER) publish Latest findings eBulletin
Mathematica publish semimonthly update
Contents include:
Social Policy Virtual Library - online gateway from University of Bath to a variety of www databases, data archives, national and international statistical offices and other data providers of interest to social policy researchers. They are classified by geographical area.
Visit the Bulletin Archive to view the contents
of previous Bulletins.
Copy deadline for next Bulletin is noon 12 March 2007