10259 research outputs found
Sort by
Healthier Working Lives for over Fifties Working in Residential Care, 2022-2023
No full textThe collection consists of two data sets: ethnographic data and co-design data.
Ethnographic data: At the first point of contact, care home managers were approached via one researcher working for Scottish Care, who attended closed forum meetings and pitched the programme to wider audiences who had preestablished connections to Scottish Care. These conversations were later followed up with 1:1 calls with the research team to further explain the programme and answer any questions which the care home staff might have, as well as talking about the planned in-person ethnographic work. Through these personal conversations, the researchers were able to build rapport and trust with the managers prior to meeting up on site, and then continued to deepen these relationships during field visits. The researchers emphasised that they were there to listen and connect with the staff in their familiar working environments, and ensured that any promised actions (i.e. vouchers to thank staff for their time) would be followed up promptly.
The ‘deep hanging about’ approach was helpful for the fieldwork in multiple ways. Firstly, it often served as a conversation opener (i.e. being in a certain area in the home where staff would work, which made it easy to approach workers i.e. asking about the machines in the laundry room, the steep stairs leading to certain areas, etc). It also put the staff at ease when talking to us since they were in a familiar space. Some staff would spontaneously offer us tours of the home or take us around the gardens to show us some of the work they did with/for the residents, i.e. gardening, the social spaces and staff rooms where people would mingle, which in turn led to further conversations with new people as well as unique insights happening at short notice. In addition to notes, forty four interviews were undertaken. These are combined in data from each of the six homes.
CoDesign data from work undertaken in the same 6 residential homes: October 2022 to March 2023 workshops in the six care homes structured using the novel Ripple Framework to enable engagement in uncertain times. Total of 310 person engagement points; 6 homes x 7 participants x 5 activities = 210. Approximately 40 care workforce participants engaged over the two phases, representing diverse roles and experiences (domestic, key worker, carer, senior carer, manager, owner) as well as care sector leads (Scottish Care), and three start-up businesses.
Participants built confidence in voicing their experience, developed their creativity, and defined their own priorities for change at different levels – local workforce culture, organisational use of technology, and sector-wide training development, all with a view to maximising quality time staff are able to spend with residents, and raising the external validation of their profession (thereby satisfying value-driven motivation for the work).
Data collection centred on methods such as the Circle of Care; how this is defined and impacts on work cultures, and what ideas might be further developed to enhance retention, recruitment and wellbeing at work.It is generally accepted that being in good quality, safe work is beneficial for one's physical and mental wellbeing. If this is the case, being able to work healthily and happily for longer would be significant step toward meeting the UK's Healthy Ageing Challenge that people should be benefitting from five more healthy and independent years of life by 2035.
However, the work can be physically and emotionally demanding, and it remains poorly rewarded. The care sector is worth circa £15.9billion to the UK economy, with over 5,500 providers. Over 80% of workers are women, with 21% of BAME origin, and some 30% are aged 50 plus with many of this age group working in supervisory and managerial roles.
The composition of the care workforce also reflects inequalities, reinforced by Covid-19 with the lower paid, older and BAME workers have disproportionately experienced illness and deaths across 2020. At that time there were 120,000 vacancies many filled by agency workers (with increased risked of virus transmission).
The research team comprised the universities of Edinburgh and King’s College London along with a range of partners; Scottish Care, which represents 400 organisations in the private, not for profit and charities sector of residential provision, Legal & General, one of the UK's leading providers of retirement villages, Codebase the largest technology incubator in the UK, which offers mentorship for the deployment of ideas, and design consultants Creative Venue. The team worked closely with care staff and the research team to explore and co-design possible solutions to the health, recruitment and retention, and professional development challenges that care workers face daily.
Across four stages over 36 months, the project reviewed existing knowledge, engaged with care sector staff to consider their priorities for working and role development, and drew upon ideas and activities across the team as a whole to run co-design workshops, develop ideas for outputs and products, along with a final review of the process and application of outcomes. At every stage, the role of the team was one of listening, exploring, ensuring critical conversations can take place in safe and exploratory ways, with ideas considered and potentially taken forward. Our Knowledge Network, co-chaired by Sophie Bowlby (Academic, Third Sector Board Member) and Stephen Coleman (CodeBase), ensured engagement from workers, care providers, design, incubator, and technology groups.</p
Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations Survey: Public Perceptions of Climate Change and Low Carbon Lifestyles in the UK, Brazil, Sweden and China, Wave 3, 2022
No full textThis online survey was part of the visioning research conducted at the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations. The research project, of which this survey forms a crucial part of is titled 1.4. Public perceptions of climate change and transformative action over time. The aim of this project is to examine public perceptions of climate change in the context of the Centre’s core principles, diet, transport, material consumption, thermal comfort, by conducting multi-wave, multi-country (UK, Brazil, China, Sweden) surveys.
This current survey forms the third wave of a survey that was run annually for 4 consecutive years, including tracking items and bespoke, flexible modules every year. The aim of this survey wave 3 was to map climate change beliefs and engagement with the 4 key areas (diet, transport, material consumption, thermal comfort) across the UK, Brazil, China and Sweden and zoom in on the cost of living crisis and peoples worries about the rising energy costs.
We also included elements of testing peoples perceptions of norm violators as well as testing perceived desirability of future visions of low carbon societies.
This sample collected data from 1 087 respondents in the UK, 1 087 in China, 1 087 in Sweden and 1 088 in Brazil adopting quota sampling representative of each country.The Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) will be a global hub for understanding the profound changes required to address climate change. At its core, is a fundamental question of enormous social significance: how can we as a society live differently - and better - in ways that meet the urgent need for rapid and far-reaching emission reductions?
While there is now strong international momentum on action to tackle climate change, it is clear that critical targets (such as keeping global temperature rise to well within 2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels) will be missed without fundamental transformations across all parts of society. CAST's aim is to advance society's understanding of how to transform lifestyles, organisations and social structures in order to achieve a low-carbon future, which is genuinely sustainable over the long-term.
Our Centre will focus on people as agents of transformation in four challenging areas of everyday life that impact directly on climate change but have proven stubbornly resistant to change: consumption of goods and physical products, food and diet, travel, and heating/cooling. We will work across multiple scales (individual, community, organisational, national and global) to identify and experiment with various routes to achieving lasting change in these challenging areas. In particular, we will test how far focussing on 'co-benefits' will accelerate the pace of change. Co-benefits are outcomes of value to individuals and society, over and above the benefits from reducing greenhouse gas emissions. These may include improved health and wellbeing, reduced waste, better air quality, greater social equality, security, and affordability, as well as increased ability to adapt and respond to future climate change. For example, low-carbon travel choices (such as cycling and car sharing) may bring health, social and financial benefits that are important for motivating behaviour and policy change. Likewise, aligning environmental and social with economic objectives is vital for behaviour and organisational change within businesses.
Our Research Themes recognise that transformative change requires: inspiring yet workable visions of the future (Theme 1); learning lessons from past and current societal shifts (Theme 2); experimenting with different models of social change (Theme 3); together with deep and sustained engagement with communities, business and governments, and a research culture that reflects our aims and promotes action (Theme 4).
Our Centre integrates academic knowledge from disciplines across the social and physical sciences with practical insights to generate widespread impact. Our team includes world-leading researchers with expertise in climate change behaviour, choices and governance. We will use a range of theories and research methods to fill key gaps in our understanding of transformation at different spatial and social scales, and show how to target interventions to impactful actions, groups and moments in time.
We partner with practitioners (e.g., Climate Outreach, Greener-UK, China Centre for Climate Change Communication), policy-makers (e.g., Welsh Government) and companies (e.g., Anglian Water) to develop and test new ways of engaging with the public, governments and businesses in the UK and internationally. We enhance citizens', organisations' and societal leaders' capacity to tackle climate change through various mechanisms, including secondments, citizens' panels, small-scale project funding, seminars, training, workshops, papers, blog posts and an interactive website. We will also experiment with transformations within academia itself, by trialling sustainable working practices (e.g., online workshops), being 'reflexive' (studying our own behaviour and its impacts on others), and making our outputs and data publically available.</p
Hand Movements During Obstacle Avoidance in Real and Natural Environments, 2021-2025
No full textThe data collected as part of this grant investigates human obstacle avoidance behaviour under a range of different conditions. The grant consists of four separate but connected projects that will be presented separately below.
1. Obstacle avoidance of physical, stereoscopic, and pictorial objects
(published: Giesel, M., Ruseva, D., & Hesse, C. (2025). Obstacle avoidance of physical, stereoscopic, and pictorial objects. Virtual Reality, 29(1), 1-17)
In this project, we investigated in 4 experiments (Experiment1: N= 27, Experiment 2: N=18, Experiment 3: N= 21, Experiment 4, N=21) the visual cues that are required to ensure natural hand movements in virtual settings. Participants were asked to reach towards a target position without colliding with obstacles of varying height that were placed in the movement path. Using a pre-test post-test design, we tested obstacle avoidance for 2D and 3D images of obstacles both before and after exposure to the physical obstacles. Consistent with previous findings, we found that participants initially underestimated the magnitude differences between the obstacles, but after exposure to the physical obstacles, avoidance performance for the 3D images became similar to performance for the physical obstacles. No such change was found for 2D images. Our findings highlight the importance of disparity cues for naturalistic motor actions in personal space.
All associated data files and explanations can be found on OSF: https://osf.io/6tf9r
2. From Discomfort to Danger: Exploring how affective obstacle properties influence avoidance in stepping
(published: Chee, Z. J., Giesel, M., & Hesse, C. (2025). From Discomfort to Danger: Exploring how affective obstacle properties influence avoidance in stepping. Perception (in press).
In this project, we investigated in two experiments how visual uncertainty and perceived unpleasantness and danger affects obstacle avoidance strategies in stepping. In Experiment 1 (N=20), we found that lead minimum foot clearance (MFC) was initially higher under monocular vision but decreased to binocular levels over trials. While obstacle unpleasantness did not systematically affect MFC or crossing step length, perceived unpleasantness ratings correlated weakly with crossing step length. However, because dangerousness and painfulness ratings were not collected, it remained unclear whether unpleasantness directly influenced avoidance behaviour or served as a proxy for perceived risk. To address this, Experiment 2 (N=22) introduced obstacles covered with metal stud spikes or smooth surfaces, with additional ratings of dangerousness and painfulness. Results showed that MFC was higher for spiky than smooth obstacles. Crucially in this experiment, ratings of perceived dangerousness, not unpleasantness, correlated positively with crossing step length, after controlling for other perceptual ratings. These findings suggest that perceptual affective properties modulate avoidance parameters. However, the nature of those modulations is stimulus specific and highly depends on task demands.
All associated data files and explanations can be found on OSF: https://osf.io/mpk93/
3. Effects of light level, material appearance, and virtuality on hand movements
(in preparation for publication)
In this project, we investigated in four experiments, if and how visual uncertainty and assumptions about the consequences of actions (e.g., collision with an obstacle) shape motor behaviour. Within each experiment, visual uncertainty was varied by using three different light levels. Assumptions about the consequences of collisions with obstacles were manipulated by using obstacles differing in perceived fragility. Between experiments, we varied whether the obstacles were real or virtual objects by using a mirror setup. In Experiment 1 (N=22), the obstacles were real objects, in Experiment 2 (N=20), they were virtual objects, and in Experiments 3 (N=20) and 4 (N=20), real and virtual obstacles were presented simultaneously at the same location. In all experiments, participants moved their hands around an obstacle to pick up an object. We hypothesised that lower light levels would result in larger safety margins (i.e., distance between hand and obstacle), but the overall magnitude of the safety margins would be smaller for virtual obstacles than for real obstacles. Regarding perceived fragility, we assumed that safety margins would be larger for the more fragile obstacle but only if it was a real object. Consistent with our expectations, we found in all experiments that safety margins increased with decreasing light level. The effect of perceived fragility on safety margins was weaker and less consistent but was, contrary to our hypotheses, presented both for real and virtual obstacles. Overall, in these tasks, obstacle avoidance and grasping behaviour were very similar in real and virtual environments.
The trajectory data, explanations, and methods information for these experiments are available on Reshare in the folder entitled “DinnerExperiments.zip”
4. The role of 3D Information, feedback, light levels, and contrast in Virtual Obstacle Avoidance
(ongoing experiments)
In this project, we investigated if and how obstacle avoidance in virtual environments is influenced by 3D information, feedback, light levels, and contrast. In many VR applications, we do not perceive the movement of our actual hand but that of a virtual representation that is interacting with virtual objects of varying degrees of complexity (e.g., 2D or 3D representations). Frequently, some form of feedback (visual, auditory, and/or haptic) is used to signal contact with targets or collisions with obstacles. In four experiments, we investigated the effects of perceptual uncertainty (varying contrast) and visual feedback on obstacle avoidance movements when visual information about the moving hand is provided by a sparse virtual representation (see README for details). We varied the visual complexity of the obstacle between experiments: 2D image in Experiment 1 (N=22), and a virtual 3D objects in Experiment 2 to 4 (Experiment 2: N=24, Experiment 3: N= 24, Experiment 4: N=22). Experiments were conducted in a mirror setup (see README for details). We found that when the obstacle was a 2D image, the effects of perceptual uncertainty and feedback on safety margins were negligible. Adding the virtual 3D object in Experiment 2 resulted in behaviour similar to that observed in real environments highlighting again the importance of 3D information for natural movements. Data analysis from Experiments 3-4 is currently ongoing.
The trajectory data, explanations, and methods information for these experiments are available on Reshare in the folder entitled “VirtualHandObstacleAvoidance.zip”Besides their obvious value for entertainment, VR devices are becoming increasingly attractive for the systematic experimental investigation of human perception and behaviour because they promise the possibility of experimental control over environments that approach the complexity of natural settings. If we investigate behaviour or train certain real-world tasks (e.g., in sports or medical training) with the help of VR devices, we expect that the insights we gain or the skills we acquire transfer to real-world settings. Yet, it is currently still unclear if and to what degree behaviour in virtual and natural environments is comparable.
One reason for differences between behaviour in natural and virtual environments is that currently available VR devices simulate environments that are perceptually less complex than their natural counterparts and lack many sources of information that we use to plan and execute our actions in the real world (e.g., missing or inappropriately implemented cues to depth). However, perceptual limitations of currently available VR devices may not be the only source of differences in behaviour. What has so far largely been neglected is how cognitive factors shape behaviour in VR. Particularly, the awareness of interacting with virtual objects can change expectations about the consequence of our actions. For example, while we have clear expectations regarding the immediate consequences of collisions with real objects (e.g., pain or injury and/or damage to the object), collisions with virtual objects usually do not have such direct consequences. Thus, even if VR was perceptually perfect, as long as people are cognisant of its virtual nature, the cognitive effects are likely to alter the way we act in VR (e.g., how cautiously we move). It is therefore essential to understand the exact nature of these cognitive effects.
Another feature of many VR applications that might affect our actions is that users often do not directly interact with real or virtual objects but instead use some device (e.g., a joystick) to manipulate them. In that case, the relation between biomechanical effort and resulting movement differs from their natural relation. This is crucial as we know that natural movements are shaped by biomechanical demands and the biomechanical constraints of our body.
What makes the systematic investigation of the influence of these factors difficult is that due to the limitations of currently available VR devices, it is impossible to disentangle their effects. For example, the effects of the reduced perceptual complexity on movements cannot be easily separated from those resulting from the knowledge of interacting with virtual objects.
Here, we propose a method that allows us to directly compare behaviour in natural and virtual environments independent of the limitations of currently available VR devices. We will simulate a virtual environment by using a powerful but in this kind of research underutilised tool: mirrors. Mirrors are simple and easy to use, yet they are visually the most complete and convincing virtual reality device available. Using mirrors to simulate VR has the advantage that the mirrored environment provides the same visual information as the corresponding natural environment. Therefore, we can investigate behaviour in virtual environments while being able to control the confounding effects of reduced perceptual complexity which is impossible with currently available VR devices. With this simulated virtual reality, we will systematically investigate the three features of VR influencing behaviour (i.e., reduction of perceptual complexity, virtuality of objects and virtuality of movements) using ecologically valid obstacle avoidance and grasping tasks. Our goal is to provide the scientific basis for implementations of VR that are useful for the investigation of human actions and advance knowledge on the interrelationship of perceptual, cognitive and visuomotor processes.</p
Labour Force Survey Five-Quarter Longitudinal Dataset, July 2023 - September, 2024
No full textAbstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.Background
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is a unique source of information using international definitions of employment and unemployment and economic inactivity, together with a wide range of related topics such as occupation, training, hours of work and personal characteristics of household members aged 16 years and over. It is used to inform social, economic and employment policy. The LFS was first conducted biennially from 1973-1983. Between 1984 and 1991 the survey was carried out annually and consisted of a quarterly survey conducted throughout the year and a 'boost' survey in the spring quarter (data were then collected seasonally). From 1992 quarterly data were made available, with a quarterly sample size approximately equivalent to that of the previous annual data. The survey then became known as the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS). From December 1994, data gathering for Northern Ireland moved to a full quarterly cycle to match the rest of the country, so the QLFS then covered the whole of the UK (though some additional annual Northern Ireland LFS datasets are also held at the UK Data Archive). Further information on the background to the QLFS may be found in the documentation.
Longitudinal data
The LFS retains each sample household for five consecutive quarters, with a fifth of the sample replaced each quarter. The main survey was designed to produce cross-sectional data, but the data on each individual have now been linked together to provide longitudinal information. The longitudinal data comprise two types of linked datasets, created using the weighting method to adjust for non-response bias. The two-quarter datasets link data from two consecutive waves, while the five-quarter datasets link across a whole year (for example January 2010 to March 2011 inclusive) and contain data from all five waves. A full series of longitudinal data has been produced, going back to winter 1992. Linking together records to create a longitudinal dimension can, for example, provide information on gross flows over time between different labour force categories (employed, unemployed and economically inactive). This will provide detail about people who have moved between the categories. Also, longitudinal information is useful in monitoring the effects of government policies and can be used to follow the subsequent activities and circumstances of people affected by specific policy initiatives, and to compare them with other groups in the population. There are however methodological problems which could distort the data resulting from this longitudinal linking. The ONS continues to research these issues and advises that the presentation of results should be carefully considered, and warnings should be included with outputs where necessary.
LFS Documentation
The documentation available from the Archive to accompany LFS datasets largely consists of the latest version of each user guide volume alongside the appropriate questionnaire for the year concerned. However, volumes are updated periodically by ONS, so users are advised to check the latest documents on the ONS Labour Force Survey - User Guidance pages before commencing analysis. This is especially important for users of older QLFS studies, where information and guidance in the user guide documents may have changed over time.Occupation data for 2021 and 2022 data filesThe ONS has identified an issue with the collection of some occupational data in 2021 and 2022 data files in a number of their surveys. While they estimate any impacts will be small overall, this will affect the accuracy of the breakdowns of some detailed (four-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)) occupations, and data derived from them. Further information can be found in the ONS article published on 11 July 2023: Revision of miscoded occupational data in the ONS Labour Force Survey, UK: January 2021 to September 2022.2022 WeightingThe population totals used for the latest LFS estimates use projected growth rates from Real Time Information (RTI) data for UK, EU and non-EU populations based on 2021 patterns. The total population used for the LFS therefore does not take into account any changes in migration, birth rates, death rates, and so on since June 2021, and hence levels estimates may be under- or over-estimating the true values and should be used with caution. Estimates of rates will, however, be robust.Main Topics:The five-quarter longitudinal datasets include a subset of the most commonly used variables from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS), covering the main areas of the survey
A Rapid Impact Survey to Monitor the Nature and Prevalence of Economic Abuse in the UK: Aggregate Data, 2024
No full textThis research was made possible through the generous support of the VISION consortium, which is funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership (MR/V049879/1), an initiative funded by UK Research and Innovation Councils, the Department of Health and Social Care (England) and the UK devolved administrations, and leading health research charities.
This dataset was generated as part of Counting the Cost: The Scale and Impact of Economic Abuse in the UK, a landmark study conducted by Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA). The motivation for the study was to address the urgent need for robust evidence on the prevalence, forms, and impacts of economic abuse, a hidden but widespread form of domestic abuse recently recognised in UK law. Economic abuse undermines victim-survivors’ ability to acquire, use, and maintain financial resources, leaving many trapped in unsafe relationships and long-term instability.
The study aimed to quantify the scale of economic abuse among women in the UK, explore the tactics used by perpetrators, and assess the impacts on victim-survivors’ financial security, health, and safety. It also sought to highlight disparities in experiences across different demographic groups, including younger women, disabled women, Black, Asian and other ethnically minoritised women, migrant women, and women with children. By doing so, the research intended to inform public understanding, policy development, and service provision.
Data were collected through a nationally representative online survey of 2,849 adult women in the UK, conducted between 25 October and 1 November 2024. The survey explored experiences of economic abuse by a partner or ex-partner in the preceding 12 months, including behaviours of restriction (e.g. blocking access to bank accounts), exploitation (e.g. coerced debt, theft of money), and sabotage (e.g. damaging property, interfering with employment). Booster samples were included to ensure sufficient representation of women from Black, Asian, and other ethnically minoritised backgrounds. The dataset is weighted to reflect the offline population proportions of women aged 18+ by age, region, social grade, education, working status, and ethnicity.
Key findings include:
1. One in seven UK women (4.1 million) experienced economic abuse in the past year.
2. Marginalised groups were disproportionately affected: nearly one in four disabled women, two in five women aged 18–24, and one in four women in London reported abuse.
3. Black, Asian and other ethnically minoritised women were more than twice as likely as White women to experience economic abuse.
4. The impacts were severe: 72% of victim-survivors reported harm, with many left in debt, homeless, or unable to flee.
5. Awareness of economic abuse increased help-seeking, with nearly six in ten women who recognised the term reaching out for support compared to four in ten who did not.
This dataset provides a unique and nationally representative evidence base on economic abuse in the UK. It captures both the prevalence and diversity of abusive behaviours, as well as their disproportionate impact on marginalised groups. It is intended to support further research, policy development, and interventions aimed at ending economic abuse and ensuring victim-survivors can achieve safety and economic independence(This dataset was funded through the wider project MR/V049879/1 via their 'VISION Small Projects Fund').
Description of wider project:
Violence causes harms to health. The harms to mental health can be more long-lasting than the immediate harms to physical health and have consequences that reverberate through a person's life impacting on their functioning in society. Reducing such 'upstream' determinants of poor mental health would significantly improve the health of the population. This would reduce health inequalities since being a victim of violence is more prevalent among those who are already disadvantaged.
The Consortium would investigate the effectiveness of interventions to reduce violence and, thus, reduce health inequalities. Within the field of violence, we have special interest in domestic and sexual violence because these are significant causes of inequalities in mental health, which have been relatively neglected in the scientific and statistical evidence base. We address how to mainstream these issues across multiple sectors rather than seeing them as only of specialised concern.
Multiple institutions are relevant to preventing violence. They include not only health services, but also criminal law enforcement (most violence is a crime), civil law (e.g. domestic protection orders), specialised services (Third Sector organisations that help victim/survivors of violence), and governmental bodies concerned with law, policy and data quality. The connections between violence and ill health are complicated since they are mediated by many of these institutions. Identifying these connections would aid the development of more effective interventions while a complex systems analysis captures the adaptive behaviour between these systems.
The data needed to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of interventions is currently weak. This is partly because each specialised academic discipline and profession has a different way of measuring violence, which makes cooperation across these differences difficult. Not only do we need harmonised core metrics for the evaluation of interventions and cross-sector cost-benefit comparisons, we also need to adapt and extend our metrics to capture newly identified forms of abuse such as that facilitated by technology. The Consortium aims to improve the measurement framework and data availability to aid the evaluation of interventions. This is premised on cooperation between academics and practitioners. The project seeks to identify profiles of persons and incidents exposed to violence and link data from multiple services and surveys. We would assist services to make their own data more useable and more available. This involves care and attention to issues of data protection and the development of bespoke agreements on data sharing that respect communities that generate data.
We would unlock the potential in multiple data sources rather than collect new data. These datasets include major national surveys such as the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, and the Crime Survey for England and Wales, and also administrative data sets from professions and practitioners, including the police, solicitors, health and specialised services. These datasets will be linked in a new integrated dataset and provide an evidence base upon which a cost-benefit framework and risk assessment tools can be developed.
With the linked data and new tools, we would assess key interventions. These are interventions at the level of institutions and systems. Our focus is the prevention of violence in the population rather than the treatment of trauma in individuals. The Consortium seeks to mainstream evidence of the significance of violence for health in policy making. We would engage with decision-makers concerned with the commissioning of services and policy makers concerned with priorities for public expenditure, as well as wider publics.
The aim is to reduce the harm to health, especially mental health, by identifying the most effective and cost-effective interventions to reduce violence in the population.</p
Longer-Term Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Children’s Speech and Language Development: A Reflexive Thematic Analysis of Teacher Perspectives, 2024
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted education for children worldwide. Existing research focuses on the shorter-term effects of the Pandemic, with limited research exploring the longer-term effects of COVID, especially with regards to how it has affected children’s speech and language development. The closure of child-care settings as well as social isolation from peers meant that children who should have been developing their language and communication skills were unable to do so in the usual way.
The aim of this study was to explore longer-term effects of pandemic related changes on children’s speech and language development. Teaching staff are well-placed to offer insights into the current speech and language issues children who were infants and toddlers during the COVID-19 pandemic may now be experiencing.
Purposive sampling recruited nine members of teaching staff working with children in Early Years, who would have been infants aged between 1-2 years at the start of the pandemic. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions and analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis.
Three themes emerged; Longer-Term Impacts, Changes Due to the Pandemic, and Methods to Counteract COVID’s Effects. The closure of pre-educational settings, social isolation and a lack of health visitor checks has led to a significant increase in the number of children experiencing speech and language development difficulties, which teachers are supporting with play-based learning and specialist interventions.
Although onward data sharing was not included in the original consent process, retrospective consent for onward sharing was subsequently sought from participants
UK Voices: New Methods for Understanding the Impact of Social Change on Individual Lives, 2024
No full textThis data consists of 12 semi-strutured, participant led, qualitative biographical interviews, conducted during the scoping phase of the ESRC UK Voices Pilot Project. The aim of the interviews was to test a Topic Guide for producing a large-scale qualitative general purpose data set that provides insights into people's experiences and life in the UK. It is linked to an additional dataset of 38 interviews, conducted during the larger pilot.
UK Voices developed a methodology for building a general-use qualitative interview dataset to provide insights into how the UK population experiences and navigates accelerated social changes, including climate change, political polarisation, and inequality.
The project is piloted methods for large-scale qualitative data collection and analysis to enhance the UK’s social science research infrastructure. Funded by ESRC and running from October 2024 to June 2025, the project was organised into two main work packages. The data in this deposit was collected during work package 1, which first tested qualitative interview techniques for gathering in-depth data from a broad sample of the population, refining methods for large-scale qualitative research. This built on existing projects, such as the American Voices Project, to develop a methodology tailored to the UK context.
The second work package explored the use of generative AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools to streamline the analysis of the extensive qualitative data collected. By leveraging these tools to assist in identifying and analysing key sections of text, this phase addressed some of the challenges regarding scaling qualitative research, which is often limited to small numbers of participants. The project ultimately aimed to create a flexible research platform that merges qualitative methods with innovative software tools, enabling more efficient analysis and broader exploration of critical social issues. The findings from this pilot have been shared with the wider social science community through reports, workshops, and conferences, laying the groundwork for future large-scale and cross-national qualitative research.The UK Voices Pilot Project explored how large-scale qualitative data could be collected and analysed to deepen our understanding of how people in the UK are experiencing and responding to rapid social change. It sought to evaluate both the feasibility of developing a representative qualitative resource and the potential of using Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs), to support qualitative data analysis. The project was structured around two interconnected work packages.
Work Package 1 (WP1) focused on testing a biographical interview protocol and exploring how such an approach could be scaled nationally. During a two-stage process, the first led by LSE and the second by National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), the team conducted 51 interviews across a diverse sample. The flexible biographical approach, beginning with the question “Can you tell me your life story?”, proved successful in eliciting detailed, reflective narratives. However, the pilot also revealed challenges relating to recruitment and response rates, particularly during the panel-based phase led by NatCen. These findings are crucial for informing future sampling strategies, interviewer training, and fieldwork planning. Despite recruitment difficulties, the interviews produced rich data relevant to a wide range of different social science research questions. This demonstrates that this form of data collection is both meaningful and achievable at scale with appropriate design and resourcing.
Work Package 2 (WP2) focused on developing and evaluating an interface designed to support researchers working with large corpora of qualitative interview data. The tool, QualQuest, was iteratively developed and tested using two datasets: 12 UK Voices scoping interviews and 73 transcripts from the Welfare at a Social Distance (WASD) Project. Early attempts to integrate LLM-based summarisation were found to be unreliable. A Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture was subsequently adopted, enabling the more accurate retrieval of thematically relevant direct quotations in response to natural language queries. Structured testing showed that the final version performed well in terms of recall but less so in terms of precision QualQuest proved especially useful in helping researchers identify relevant transcripts and thematic content quickly, though false positives remained an area for future refinement.
Outreach and Knowledge Exchange Activities included convening regular meetings with an international advisory board (IAB), which has now evolved into a global network of researchers working on large-scale qualitative data projects. We also presented our work at academic events and held workshops with researchers from a range of fields and with non-academic stakeholders, including hosting an expert symposium on AI and Qualitative Research in Collaboration with the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures. This showed that there was enthusiasm for the large-scale collection of biographical qualitative interviews while providing opportunities for critical reflection on data collection and analysis methods.
The UK Voices Pilot met its core objectives by demonstrating the feasibility of collecting and analysing large-scale qualitative data and producing valuable findings on both methodological design and using automation to retrieve relevant data for large qualitative corpora. While it should be noted that a pilot project of this size does not represent a perfect simulation of a much larger and more complex project, the work done lays a strong foundation for future investment in national qualitative infrastructure, including the potential for a large, repeated cross-sectional panel of biographical interviews supported by automated data retrieval tools.</p
International Passenger Survey, 2024
No full textAbstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The International Passenger Survey (IPS) aims to collect data on both credits and debits for the travel account of the Balance of Payments, provide detailed visit information on overseas visitors to the United Kingdom (UK) for tourism policy, and collect data on international migration.The International Passenger Survey, 2024 has undergone transformation from July 2024 through data collection changes and methodological developments. Information regarding these changes can be found in the 'Improving our Travel and Tourism Statistics Articles' under the study Resources section. The articles provide further information on these changes and the key data considerations to be aware of. As a result the estimates that have been published as official statistics in development, indicating further development and quality assurance is required before they can be published as official statistics.Main Topics:Each of the three data files covers different topics, as it follows:'Airmiles': quarter; flow; serial; UK port or route; direct leg overseas port; final overseas port; distance from UK port to first port; from first to second port; from UK port to second port.'Qreg': year; quarter; month; flow; serial; towns stayed in overnight; details of type of accommodation; number of nights spent in towns; expenditure in towns; regional stay weight; regional visit weight; regional expenditure weight; various validation checks.'Custom': year; quarter; month; flow; serial; nationality; country of visit/residence; UK counties; date visit began; purpose of visit; intended length of stay; number of people; package tour and cost; expenditure pre-, post- and during visit; flight prefix and suffix; first carrier air or shipping line; direct leg overseas port; final overseas port; long- or short-haul; type of vehicle; number travelling in vehicle; fare type and cost; class of travel; business trip; type of flight; flight origin or destination; gender; age group; UK port or route; quality of response; date of interview; money transfer, net and total expenditure; type of transport; arrivals (number of adults); departures (type of travelling group, number of adults and children); weighting variables; various validation checks.Data are no longer collected for the 'Alcohol' data file, so this file is not available from 2024 onwards.</div
Scottish Election Study, 2024
No full textAbstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. The wider 2021-2025 Scottish Election Study (SES) project was carried out as a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, University of Essex, and Royal Holloway, University of London. Professor Ailsa Henderson served as Principal Investigator, with Professors Rob Johns, Christopher Carman, and Christopher Hanretty serving as Co-Investigators. Dr Fraser McMillan and Dr Jac Larner served as Research Associates. The wider 2021-2025 Scottish Election Study project, including all survey data collection, is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Henderson, McMillan, Larner, Johns and Carman designed the 2024 survey instrument.The 2024 data were collected as a two-wave panel in collaboration with YouGov. The surveys were fielded as online self-completion questionnaires via quota sampling. Further information is available on the Scottish Election Study website.Main Topics:The main topics of the Scottish Election Study, 2024 were Scottish voting behaviour and public attitudes to politics at the time of the 2024 UK General Election
Dataset on Build To Rent Developments, Developers, Financiers and Property Managers in Manchester, 2012-2020
No full textThis database was built by Richard Goulding, Adam Leaver and Jonathan Silver. It is a complete dataset of all build-to-rent developments in the central/core region of Greater Manchester. It draws on a number of different sources - planning documents, land registry data, property industry journals and other publicly available housing data. it contains data on the following variables: Planning Date Planning Reference Name of development Area Post-code Total Resi Units Tenure Model Tenure Change Status Owner Funder Deliverer Significant Institutional owners Manager Other companies Total Resi Units For sale For rent Total market Social rent Affordable rent Shared ownership Other intermediate Total affordable Est. affordable if 20% Other (student/hotel) Total units (all) Offsite s106 housing contributions Other s106 contributions Source Offshore Involvement Non-UK actors Country Role of non-UK actos Public Loan (value) Type of public loan Public Land Public Land Registry Reference Gross Development value Cost of Development Profit Local plan benchmark land value 2009 Est. EUV+ Benchmark Land Value Residual Land Value Est. Profit on Cost Est. Profit on GDV Plot size (acres) Est. Benchmark Land Cost per Acre Est. Residual Land Cost per Acre Starting Price for 1 bed Starting price for 2 bed Source Average Rental 1-bed Average Rental 2-bed Average Rental 3-bed Evidence of marketed abroad Source Est. Council tax *(based on 1-bed) NotesThe sight of skyscrapers on Manchester's skyline contrasts with the boarded-up shops of towns nearby. This raises questions about the ability of Manchester's city-regional model to create inclusive, accountable, sustainable growth and thus its suitability as a blueprint for urban regeneration within the Northern Powerhouse area.
This project will investigate whether the ideas which underpin the Manchester model of regional development and the Northern Powerhouse actually work. Those ideas claim that the growth of flat building in city centres creates 'agglomeration' benefits - that is, that a growing concentration of skilled people, finance and technology in the same city creates productivity improvements which spill out into surrounding areas. We will do this through an in-depth financial and spatial analysis of investment in Manchester's 'Build To Rent' (BTR) sector - a special property class common in Manchester that is built specifically for renters.
We will consider whether Manchester's 'property-led regeneration' model of attracting private investment into BTR to boost growth might in fact have the opposite effect. Competition for land may push up rents and create opportunities for financial extraction for large global companies, taking money away from local economies. It may also encourage speculation which encourages companies to take on more debt, introducing new risks in a market downturn. It may also add to the costs of infrastructure development, creating inefficiencies. And it may pull in investment, technology and skills from surrounding towns into central areas in ways that harm those towns. We refer to these problems as problems of the 'centripetal city'. This metaphor is designed to capture the vortex-like motion whereby skills and other resources are pulled to the centre of Manchester, the benefits of which are funnelled to global investors. This contrasts with the 'centrifugal' metaphor that underpins property-led, agglomerative regeneration strategies - that productivity gains in the city centre are thrown out into the regions.
In terms of methods, we bring together expertise in accounting and economic geography to investigate the financial and spatial relations and outcomes of BTR construction, from the way it is marketed, to the way it is constructed to its financial and spatial effects.
Our project will be broken down into four themes. Our first theme will examine how Manchester sells itself as a city and its BTR property assets to global investors, because the visions and commitments set out in those deals shapes the process of urban regeneration in Greater Manchester. We will also examine the role of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) in the marketing of those assets.
Our second theme will use detailed accounting analysis to examine how those assets are constructed, which companies are involved in their construction and the way money flows through those organisations. This will tell us about the extent of extraction in BTR. It will also tell us about the balance of on- and off-shore companies in this sector, thus providing a transparency and accountability aspect. We will also examine how financially stable BTR companies and their housing assets are, providing an economic sustainability lens for our BTR research.
Our third theme will examine the effects of Manchester's regeneration model at different spatial scales. This will draw out whether centrifugal or centripetal forces (or some combination of the two) are at work in Greater Manchester. We will use a variety of socio-economic indicators (business mortality rate, shop footfall, inward migration etc) to examine the presence or otherwise of centripetal forces.
Our fourth theme is our impact theme. This theme will draw on our findings to develop engagement strategies which aim to build civil society resistance to extractive forms of development which undermine inclusive, accountable and sustainable development.</p