Private renters and savings: Are private renters ready to buy?
Private renters make up around a fifth of all households in England – around 4.5 million households in total – and this sector is traditionally viewed as a transition into home ownership. But how well...
View ArticleWith growing waiting times for GP appointments, are AandE services under...
While most people who go to A&E have an urgent medical problem, NHS data suggests that 15% of A&E use is not medically urgent. The issue of ‘over-use’ of emergency health services is an ongoing...
View ArticleCan social housing continue to support the homeless?
It has been 100 years since the Addison Act, the landmark bill which saw the large-scale national expansion of public housing just after World War I. A lot has changed over the last century, but the...
View ArticleHigher or lower? The country is divided on changing the voting age
The Labour Party’s attempt to amend the Parliamentary General Election Act of 2019 and extend the franchise just weeks before an election caused a resurgence of interest in whether 16 and 17 year olds...
View ArticleWhat is driving antibiotic over-prescription in the UK?
Public concern about drug-resistant infections is high, but what is driving the over-prescription of antibiotics? Are cautious GPs writing unnecessary prescriptions, or do they feel under pressure from...
View ArticleHow is life in Britain looking as we enter the 2020s?
Guy Goodwin considers some of the key long-term trends facing politicians and policymakers, ten years on from the 40th and last printed version of the compendium Social Trends.
View ArticleRevealing the differences between high and low salaries might just pay
From this year, new regulations require UK listed companies with more than 250 employees to disclose the ratio of their CEO's pay to the median, lower quartile and upper quartile pay of their UK...
View ArticleGoing digital with deliberation
In the face of measures to delay the spread of Covid-19, qualitative researchers must consider how to continue their research whilst we cannot meet in person. In this blog, Ceri Davies discusses the...
View ArticleParents are less rushed today than twenty years ago, but are they finding...
For any parent reading this while supervising their child doing homework, or trying to make dinner while also doing a load of laundry and discussing the strengths and weaknesses of a particular Pokémon...
View ArticleCommunity 2.0
I live in a part of London that ranks pretty high on the index of multiple deprivation, but what we lack in wealth, we make up for in community spirit. I am on first-name terms with many of my...
View ArticleMaking our questionnaires fit for web: back to basics
Within the last five years, social survey data collection in the UK has changed significantly. Gone are the days when face-to-face interviewing was the obvious data-collection mode for academic and...
View ArticleEthnic diversity in social research: a persistent problem
It is well-documented that Britain’s increasing diversity is not reflected in its workforce. Among people of working age, 12.5% are from a BAME background, but only 10% of Britain’s workforce are BAME,...
View ArticleLinking survey and Twitter data
Are social media users representative of a wider population? Are the data biased towards the most vocal? And how do you ensure a sample only includes the target population?
View ArticleThe view from the table: facilitating public dialogue about the environment
NatCen has been running a series of weekend workshops with the public to discuss their views on the environment. Today, World Environment Day offers a timely opportunity to reflect on the discussions...
View ArticleTesting boundaries during the pandemic
Certainly, there is no question about the importance and relevance of some of our NatCen research right now, whether we’re finding out how older people are coping during the pandemic, helping with the...
View ArticleSomeone’s knocking at the door
Most of the UK’s high-quality random probability social surveys use face-to-face interviewing. The Covid-19 lockdown meant an immediate pause to this work. When can, and should, interviewers return...
View ArticleDigital engagement with citizens on the environment
Covid-19 is taking social researchers into new territory. With face-to-face fieldwork paused, researchers have been left to explore how else (if at all) they can continue existing studies. The pandemic...
View ArticleNavigating the White research space: Experiences of BME researchers
As BME researchers early in our careers, Bethany Thompson and I regularly discussed challenges we faced in predominantly White workplaces. However, with limited experience in the workplace, we wondered...
View ArticleLongitudinal methods: innovation and development during Covid-19
The UK’s longitudinal social research studies have stepped forward during the Covid-19 crisis to offer a means of understanding the outbreak’s impact on work, family life, wellbeing and health-related...
View ArticleAn intersectional approach to equality, diversity and inclusion at NatCen
This blog post is a collaboration between the co-chairs of NatCen’s Equality and Diversity Group, Padmini Iyer and Shivonne Gates, and the co-chairs of the NatCen LGBT+ Staff Network, Amelia Benson and...
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