Tories offer the dream of home ownership – but do Britons want it anymore?
The Conservative Party has pledged to extend the Right-to-Buy scheme to housing association tenants in England, offering discounts worth tens of thousands of pounds depending on length of tenancy and...
View ArticleMindfulness and WRAP: Exploring alternative treatments for recurrent depression
As was widely reported following the recent release of an article by Lancet there is currently considerable interest in the use of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) in treating recurrent...
View ArticleFeeding the alma mater: alumni increasingly likely to support their former...
The Ross-CASE survey measures philanthropic support of higher education and further education institutions. The latest report from 2013/14 found that alumni are increasingly likely to donate to their...
View ArticleChallenges for the next government
This really is one of the most interesting and unpredictable general elections we’ve seen for decades. Based on data from British Social Attitudes and its sister study Scottish Social Attitudes, we...
View Article#GE2015: A test for the opinion polls
Today’s election will not only be a contest for the politicians. It will also be a test for the opinion polls.
View ArticleNatCen Insights: Queen's Speech 2015
The first Queen’s speech of the new Conservative Government was delivered at the State Opening of Parliament today, announcing a wide range of new legislation in 21 new Bills. Here we have a look at...
View ArticleCalling the election result (correctly!)
John Curtice (Research Consultant to NatCen) has lead the team that analyses election 'Exit polls' for the BBC for many years. He is also President of the British Polling Council, which is currently...
View ArticleWe care about dementia, but we often don’t know what causes it
Dementia costs the UK twice as much as cancer every year. With 850,000 people currently suffering from the condition, the Alzheimer’s Society has said this will increase to more than 1m by 2025 and...
View ArticleThe inquiry into polling must be bold to protect trust in statistics and...
As the first session of the British Polling Council’s (BPC) inquiry kicks off, the whole research industry must improve its communications skills.
View ArticleUnderstanding family finances
Today saw the publication of the Family Resources Survey (FRS) for 2013/14; how do we go about collecting this important data about family finances?
View Article10 years of data – Growing up in Scotland
Growing Up in Scotland turned 10 this year. We explore why it is such a valuable resource for policy makers and society.
View ArticleNatCen Insights: Summer Budget
Today Chancellor George Osborne delivers his seventh budget statement to the House of Commons. We draw on NatCen data to shed light on how the public are likely to react to today’s Budget statement.
View ArticleThink your child is a healthy weight? 1 in 4 of you could be wrong
This National Childhood Obesity Week, various organisations are aiming to raise awareness of the dangers of being too heavy in childhood. But what if, as a parent, you don’t realise your child is...
View ArticlePeer mentoring: how to best replicate ‘what works’?
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) recently published a new batch of evaluation reports on peer tutoring, with some challenging findings: two separate peer tutoring programmes did not show a...
View ArticleTen years of trends in tenure
Yesterday, the latest report from the English Housing Survey was published. This blog looks at what has changed over the past 10 years.
View ArticleResearch Into Practice
The ‘best’ ways of teaching research methods in the social sciences is hotly debated. What sorts of skills do students need in the outside world? How well do different approaches to the teaching and...
View ArticleImproving access to research
Increasingly, dissemination and improved accessibility are playing more of a central role to our research. Diarmid Campbell-Jack discusses.
View ArticleWhat do British people really think about immigration?
This is the third in a series of blogs using the European Social Survey (ESS), a high quality survey across a number of European countries, to look at how the UK compares with the continent on some of...
View ArticleWhat Scotland Thinks remastered
Over the next few weeks we will be re-aligning the much loved What Scotland Thinks website. Ever popular during the Scottish independence referendum, we’re developing the remit of the site to bring the...
View ArticleIs the true cost of diabetes even more than we think?
Over the past decade, the number of people living with diabetes has increased by over 1 million people, according to new research released this week. But what about the people who don’t know they have...
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