Government Social Research
The following websites have been identified as being useful to social researchers. If you would like to suggest a website for this page please contact the GSR web team.
Directgov - gateway site to public service information, can be browsed by topic (education, employment, health etc) or by audience (parents, over 50s, disabled etc). It also retains some features from its predecessor UKonline site, such as an A-Z of central government and an A-Z of local government.
Government Economic Service - the largest employer of professional economists in the UK with nearly 600 people working in 30 government departments and agencies
Government Operational Research Service - website with careers etc information plus a Members' area to facilitate and improve communications across the government operational research service. Members area is password protected.
Government Statistical Service - the UK's largest employer of statisticians, with over 1000 professionals in more than 30 departments and agencies, making a valued input to every major government activity.
Statnet - an Intranet designed to facilitate and improve communications across the government statistical service. It can be accessed by anyone connected to the Government Secure Intranet (GSi), or via the internet using a password.
Cabinet
Office - supports the Government's delivery and reform programme
Department for Communities and Local
Government - responsible for policy on housing, planning, devolution,
regional and local government and the fire service.
Department for Constitutional Affairs - responsible in government for upholding justice, rights and democracy.
Department for Culture, Media and Sport aims to improve the quality of life for all through cultural and sporting activities and through the strengthening of our tourism, creative and leisure industries
Department for Education and Skills - aims to give children an excellent start in education, enable young people to equip themselves with life and work skills, and encourage adults to achieve their full potential through learning
Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - works for the essentials
of life - water, food, air, land, people, animals and plants
Department of
Health - provides health and social care policy, guidance and publications
Department for International Development - works to promote sustainable development and eliminate world poverty
Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry - works with businesses, employees and consumers to drive up UK productivity and competitiveness to deliver prosperity for all
Department for Work and Pensions - responsible for the Government's welfare reform agenda. Its aim is to promote opportunity and independence for all. It delivers support and advice through a modern network of services to people of working age, employers, pensioners, families and children and disabled people.
Employment Market Analysis and Research - DTI website
Food Standards Agency - aims to maintain efficient, orderly and clean financial markets and help retail consumers achieve a fair deal
Home Office - responsible for internal affairs in England and Wales.
HM Revenue and Customs - here to ensure that everyone understands and receives what they are entitled to and understands and pays what they owe, so that everyone contributes to the UK's needs
Legal
Services Commission - responsible for the development and administration
of the Community Legal Service and the Criminal Defence Service in England
and Wales
Northern
Ireland Statistics and Research Agency - Northern Ireland's official
statistics organisation.
Office for National Statistics - UK's home of official statistics, reflecting Britain's economy, population and society at national and local level.
Scottish Executive - the devolved government for Scotland
Welsh Assembly Government - the devolved government for Wales
For a full list of departmental websites, see Directgov.
GCN Engage - The Government Communication Network have launched a programme to help reposition communications, so that the public are involved at the beginning of policy development.
Prime Minister's Strategy Unit - provides the Prime Minister and Government departments with a capacity to analyse major policy issues and design strategic solutions. Home of GSRU.
The Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences - represents the social sciences of the United Kingdom and is composed of 278 Academicians and 43 Learned Societies.
Institute for Employment Studies - embraces all aspects of public employment policy and HR practice. Research is widely disseminated as reports, articles and papers. Website includes news, research reports, events.
Laria (Local Authorities Research & Intelligence Association) - Longview is a new (2006) independent think tank, committed to promoting longitudinal research in the UK, to improving its quality and to supporting those undertaking longitudinal studies.
Market Research Society (MRS) - the professional body for individuals employed in market research or with an interest in it.
Market Research Portal - gives free access to various industry information including research findings, articles written by industry professionals (including market research in general, qualitative research, quantitative research, survey methods, statistics and various others), career and job related information, book lists, up-to-date news etc...
Research Methods Programme, Methods Papers and Working Papers
Social Research Association (SRA) - plays a unique role as an organisation open to social research practitioners and trainees from all sectors, as well as others with an interest in social research.
United Kingdom Evaluation Society (UKES) - concerned with promoting and improving the theory, practice understanding and utilisation of evaluation and its contribution to public knowledge.
Brief review of trends in political change: freedom and conflict (378KB) - 2004 summary of trends in freedom and conflict of the past several decades; changes in governance, freedom, armed conflict, refugees and terrorism.
Brief review of world basic demographic trends (708KB) - 2004 summary of the main demographic trends of the past several decades; changes in population size, population size, population growth, infant mortality rates, age distributions.
Brief review of world socio-demographic trends (784KB) - 2004 summary of the main socio- demographic trends of the past several decades; changes in urbanization, education and ethnolinguistic fractionalization.
BUBL - link to Social Sciences area of BUBL link catalogue of internet resources
Canadian Social Research Links - personal website of Gilles Seguin which includes information about and links to: Caledon Institute of Social Policy - National Council of Welfare - Centre for the Study of Living Standards - Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - Canadian Council on Social Development - Canadian Institute for Advanced Research - Canadian Policy Research Networks - Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy - Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) - and others.
Central Office of Information (COI) Common Good Research Website - a programme focusing on key target audiences for government communications campaigns. It is a resource for all Government Departments and their Executive Agencies, but other public sector, voluntary or private sector organisations may be eligible to register on request.
Danish National Institute for Social Research - website covers research and commissioned projects in the area of welfare state policies. The aim is to generate new knowledge of relevance to society. The Institute is a sector research institution under the Ministry of Social Affairs. Its primary focus is therefore on matters concerning the Ministry, but it also deals with wider issues such as, employment, integration and labour market conditions, economic and family-related issues, and other national and international social conditions and development trends of significance to the living conditions of the population [website].
Directory of Open Access Journals - covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. Aims to cover all subjects including agriculture and food sciences, health sciences, social sciences, and languages. 1767 journals in the directory, with 440 journals searchable at article level; 77,763 articles are included in the DOAJ service ( (20 September 2005).
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Research Methods programme - runs a number of events and support a range of training courses for social researchers. Government social researchers are welcome to attend these events. The website contains details of seminars and conferences and information on training courses.
Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University - "one of the leading centres for applied educational research and evaluation in the UK and a powerful voice in international debates about the future of education and research." [website]. Site includes links to Research groups, Research projects, and Research papers, Staff research interests, seminars.
Euroguide - subject gateway to websites which contain information about the European Union, designed to help you find your way to authoritative sources of European Union information on the web. Initially, the guide offers access by 60 subject categories, which have been chosen to represent the terms generally used, rather than 'Eurojargon'.>
Eurostat - aims to provide the European Union with a high-quality statistical information service. Site includes areas for special topics, themes, statistics of the week, essential product.
Evidence-Based Program Database - compilation by the Center for Learning Excellence (CLEX) at Ohio State University of quality government, academic, and non-profit lists of evidence-based programs that appear on the World Wide Web and/or in print form. While these existing resources are of excellent quality, they have not been available in a centralized, user-friendly searchable database. Further, the content of all of these lists changes annually, making it very difficult for practitioners to remain knowledgeable of available evidence-based programs and select from them wisely.
Exploring
Online Methods in a Virtual Training Environment
Guidance on ethnic research - Guidance Note: How to Apply the MRS Code of Conduct in Ethnic Research has been published by MRS to promote best practice for conducting research among ethnic minority communities.
Internet Public Library - a public service organization and learning/teaching environment at the University of Michigan School of Information. Among other activities, it provides library services to Internet users, including finding, evaluating, selecting, organizing, describing, and creating information resources; and direct assistance to individuals.
Intute: Social Sciences - reborn version of SOSIG - the Social Science Information Gateway. FREE guide to the best of the web for social science.
Mainstreaming Equality - designed to help researchers and policy makers take account of equalities issues in their work. It provides links to research, statistics and other resources that can enable policy makers and researchers to gain an insight into the needs of different equality groups and a Mainstreaming Equality toolkit to help researchers mainstream equality issues across their practice.
MRS Ethnic Research Network newsletter - free quarterly e-newsletter which aims to gather and disseminate information on ethnic research. Subscribe
MRS Standards online - The Code/Guidelines section of the website contains a wealth of guidance, frequently asked questions and additional supporting material to help those working in research.
National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) - aims to provide a strategic focal point for identification, development and delivery of an integrated national research and training programme aimed at promoting a step change in the quality and range of methodological skills and techniques used by the UK social science community.
Phil Bradley Information on search engines, searching the internet, keeping up to date on internet events, free articles on internet searching plus practical articles and presentations on key Internet topics, e.g. "Which search engine when?"
Policy Hub - launched in March 2002, it aims to improve the way public policy is shaped and delivered. It provides many examples of initiatives, projects, tools and case studies that support better policy making and delivery and provides extensive guidance on the role of research and evidence in the evaluation of policy. Users can register for a free monthly e-bulletin to keep abreast of new initiatives and developments.
Policy Press - specialist university press, publishing social and public policy related books, journals, reports and guides for the academic, practitioner and policy making communities.
Policypointers - an online facility created to enable those involved in government, academe and the media to gain rapid access to the research and conclusions of think tanks around the world.
The
Research Companion
Research Unit for Research Utilisation (RURU) - conducts research on research use and provides a research resource for all interested in using research to improve public policy and services. Also provides training in areas relating to the use of research in policy and practice.
Resources for Methods in Evaluation and Social Research - offers free resources for methods in social research, including links to free on line manuals, guides on social research methods such as evaluation, surveys, interviews, observation. Also links to guides on statistical methods and how to present data.
SiG-Net - developed for the Government Chief Scientific Adviser's Committee (CSAC). Provides brief outlines and links to science news in government; links to a wide variety of government science websites ; links to sites outside government which are of interest to scientists and non-specialists. SiG-Net is currently available on the government secure intranet (GSI) and is being evaluated to decide whether it should be launched on the internet in 2004.
Social Care Online - database launched June 2005 by the Social Care Institute for Excellence, which effectively replaces both CareData and the eLibrary for Social Care and introduces better searching, navigation and accessibility. It has just over 80,000 records which are indexed in-house. Sources scanned for inclusion include over 400 journals, plus grey literature such as newsletters from voluntary organisations etc. Emphasis of the database is still on social care in England and the UK generally, with the focus on good practice, legislation and responses to legislation. Where free fulltext of publications is available, links are included and in other cases, links to publisher details are provided for journals which must be subscribed or purchased as pay per view. Most records date from to 1983 to present.
There is a thesaurus which you can either browse by topic or search and which can also be downloaded as a pdf. There are basic, intermediate and advanced searching features and the thesaurus uses 'topic' trees. There are useful help pages for advanced searching.
From the Social Care Online homepage you can also navigate to other Social Care resources for details of journals, websites, other databases and libraries in the field of social care.
Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) - see Intute - FREE online catalogue of thousands of high quality Internet resources, selected and described by a librarian or academic, making this the Internet equivalent of an academic research library for the social sciences.. It offers users the chance to read descriptions of resources available and to access those resources directly.
Society Today - from ESRC, replaces both Regard and former ESRC corporate website. Incorporates the information on completed research (formerly on the Regard website) and additional content from major resources and investments, plain English summaries, overview fact sheets, and ESRC publications and new funding opportunities. Also included are high quality materials from the broader social sciences community. Offers advanced searching, alerting and personalisation functionalities to disseminate the results of social science research.
Strategy Survival Guide - a collection of best practice material for people involved in strategy work in government, produced by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit.
Sustainable Development Research Network offers a free e-newsletter. Subscribe
TSO Bookshop - bibliographic source for UK Government publications (including out of print), as well as other publications available in UK.
UK Public Libraries on the Web - aims to present the most complete and up to date picture of public library internet activity in the United Kingdom.
Using Surveys for Consultation - MRS and LARIA have produced guidelines for local authority staff intending to use survey techniques to seek the views of the public on an issue of local concern.
A list of key websites for social research and public policy purposes, and a brief description of each of them, is available on Policy Hub