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Project report: Exploring citizens' responses to science in public policy through natural language processing and conjoint experiments
Get PDFUnder what conditions is science viewed as authoritative and trustworthy in policymaking? Our evidence suggests public willingness to en-gage with scientific content. On a nationally repre-sentative scale, polarisation around science ap-pears to be driven less by anti-science sentiment and more by the perception that other forms of knowledge should also matter. Public participation in the production of science and clearer local relevance of research may mitigate ‘epistemic inequalities’ between experts and citizens
Maximum likelihood estimation of dynamic factor models using general cross sectional covariance
Get PDFThe existing literature on large dynamic factor models invariably assumes that the cross sectional covariance
matrix is diagonal. This is due to the curse of dimensionality which means that many parameters
need to be estimated for large data sets. This paper introduces a novel maximum likelihood approach
which relaxes this diagonal assumption. All of the parameters are concentrated out so the parameters are
jointly estimated with the factors. Importantly, the cross sectional covariance matrix is concentrated out
so does not need to be explicitly estimated. The approach uses a neat simplification of the log-likelihood
which makes estimation for large dimensional data feasible. Implementation of the general covariance
approach is by numerical optimisation of the concentrated log-likelihood with respect to the factors. A
diagonal version of the general covariance approach is also introduced, mainly for comparative reasons.
Out of sample tests using Monte Carlo simulations shows the new general approach performs well, with
smaller prediction errors overall compared to a range of existing diagonal approaches. Understandably,
the general approach does particularly well for high cross sectional covariance. This is most apparent for
low numbers of factors. This paper opens up the literature to new ways of estimating dynamic factor
models and improvements in inference and forecasting for big data
Developing a data repository to support interdisciplinary research into childhood stunting: a UKRI GCRF Action Against Stunting Hub protocol paper
Get PDFIntroduction: As a topic of inquiry in its own right, data management for interdisciplinary research projects is in its infancy. Key issues include the inability of researchers to effectively query diverse data outputs and to identify potentially important synergies between discipline-specific data. Equally problematic, few semantic ontologies exist to better support data organisation and discovery. Finally, while interdisciplinary research is widely regarded as beneficial to unpacking complex problems, non-researchers such as policy-makers and planners often struggle to use and interrogate the related datasets. To address these issues, the following article details the design and development of the UKRI GCRF Action Against Stunting Hub (AASH)’s All-Hub Data Repository (AHDR).
Methods and analysis: The AHDR is a single application, single authentication web-based platform comprising a data warehouse to store data from across the AASH’s three study countries and to support data querying. Four novel components of the AHDR are described in the following article: (1) a unique data discovery tool; (2) a metadata catalogue that provides researchers with an interface to explore the AASH’s data outputs and engage with a new semantic ontology related to child stunting; (3) an interdisciplinary aid to support a directed approach to identifying synergies and interactions between AASH data and (4) a decision support tool that will support non-researchers in engaging with the wider evidence-based outputs of the AASH.
Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval for this study was granted by institutional ethics committees in the UK, India, Indonesia and Senegal. Results will be disseminated via publications in peer-reviewed journals; presentations at international conferences and community-level public engagement events; key stakeholder meetings; and in public repositories with appropriate Creative Commons licences allowing for the widest possible use
Proximity and impact of university-industry collaborations. A topic detection analysis of impact reports
Get PDFThe probability to initiate university-industry collaborations (UICs), their intensity and quality, are influenced by the proximity between the collaboration partners. However, little is known about the relationship between collaborators’ proximity and impact of UICs. Building on an original database of 415 UICs in the United Kingdom, we analyse the association between collaborators’ proximity and the extent to which UICs generate economic, social and knowledge impact. We find that geographical and institutional proximity are substitutes in relation to economic impact, cognitive and institutional proximity are substitutes in relation to knowledge impact, and social impact is associated with cognitive and institutional distance
‘Playing a game you didn’t fully understand, by their rules’: The aspiration to locate bereaved people ‘at the heart’ of the coroner service
Get PDFThis report is one of a series of Research Findings papers produced by the Voicing Loss project, which examined the role of bereaved people in coroners’ investigations and inquests. Voicing Loss was conducted by the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, in partnership with the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. The project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant reference ES/V002732/1), and ran from May 2021 to May 2024
Principles for Practice No. 2 - Humanity at the heart of the coronial process: quality of interactions at inquest hearings
Get PDFThis good practice document is based on findings of the Voicing Loss project on the role of bereaved people in the coronial process. The project involved interviews with 89 people who had experience of the coroner service following the death of someone they were close to, as well as interviews with coronial professionals and witnesses. This document is intended for professionals and practitioners in the coronial sector. It aims to support compassionate, inclusive and sensitive interactions with bereaved people at inquest hearings, including pre-inquest review and final hearings. The three principles of compassion, inclusion and sensitivity are equally relevant to in-person and remote interactions
Using corpus linguistics to investigate agency and benign neglect in organisational language policy and planning: the United Nations as a case study
Get PDFThis article responds to recent calls to investigate the role of agents and the connections between layers of agency in the development and implementation of language policy and planning (LPP). Using a corpus linguistic and discursive approach to language policy, we identify interventions made in plenary sessions by Secretary-Generals (SGs) and Member States (MSs) at the United Nations when discussing language issues over a period of 46 years (1970-2016). The article identifies which SGs and MSs prioritise language issues and the change agents and/or (un)successful brokers in matters of policy and planning. Analysis reveals that language issues were discussed infrequently over the period studied, suggesting benign neglect in matters of multilingualism in general: the silent majority were agentive in largely maintaining the status quo. However, in exploring power in discourse and power over discourse we were able to determine which interventions resulted in minor changes to policy over time and who were the powerful agents in this respect. The study points to the importance of using corpus-assisted methods in explorations of diachronic (/historical) and synchronic studies of agency in LPP. It is proposed that future research should explore networks of agents (interconnections within and between layers), using CL to investigate longitudinal trajectories of decision-making and policy change over time. Moreover, CL can usefully complement other approaches, e.g. interviews and ethnographic approaches, to further explore the dialectic relationship between agency and structure
Fluctuations des émotions éprouvées par des apprenants débutants dans cinq cours de Français Langue Etrangère: Une étude de cas multiples
Get PDFCette étude de cas multiples vise à identifier les fluctuations des émotions de sept apprenants débutants dans cinq cours successifs de Français langue étrangère (FLE) en contexte universitaire. L’enseignant a utilisé méthode d’apprentissage des langues axée sur l’engagement émotionnel des interlocuteurs (enseignant et apprenants) pendant les interactions orales. Les apprenants, par le truchement d’un questionnaire portant sur trois émotions (l’enjoyment, l’anxiété et l’ennui), déclarent ce qu’ils ont ressenti juste après les cours. L’originalité de la présente étude réside dans l’approche longitudinale sur une période courte, la combinaison de données quantitatives et qualitatives d’un petit groupe d’apprenants débutants, auxquelles s’ajoutent des observations directes en classe et un entretien semi-directif avec le professeur, qui permettent de mieux comprendre les causes des fluctuations.
Abstract: This multiple case study focuses on the fluctuations of seven beginner learners’ emotions in five successive French as a foreign language classes over a three-week period. The teacher used a language learning method based on the emotional commitment of the interlocutors (teacher and learners) during oral interactions. The learners of different ages and cultures provided quantitative and qualitative data through a questionnaire about the enjoyment, anxiety and boredom that they had experienced right after class. The originality of this study lies in the longitudinal approach over a short period, the combination of quantitative and qualitative data from a small group of learners, complemented by direct observations in class and by a semi-structured interview with the teacher that allow a better understanding of the causes of the fluctuations
Constructions of racial savagery in early twentieth-century U.S. narratives of white civilization
Get PDFThis article examines the constructions of Black ‘degeneracy’ through
which white Americans rationalized Jim Crow terror. Ruminations on
African Americans’ supposed downward trajectory, I argue, drew
relational meaning from a range of colonial discourses. Claims that
African Americans were deteriorating outside the bonds of enslavement were articulated within wider transnational imperialist discourses circulating in this period that imagined that world’s savage peoples were destined to recede in the march of civilization. Here, I examine white Americans’ narratives of African American degeneration through two other imagined hemispheric encounters between white civilization and savagery. In the article’s first half, I consider images of Haiti employed in cultural and political texts to signify the durability of innate Black savagery and the apocalyptic potential of Black freedom. In the second half, I consider discourses of Black degeneration in freedom alongside the genocidal construction of the 'vanishing Indian.' I focus on two memorial projects: the 1931 Monument to the Faithful Slave erected in Harpers Ferry and the never completed National American Indian Memorial, for which ground was broken in 1913 at Fort Wadsworth
Religious lives and transnational (im)mobilities: migrant religiosity in ‘austerity’ Britain
No full textThe extensive scholarship on migration and religion has demonstrated the multifaceted role of religion and spirituality in migrants’ transnational lives: from influencing their initial decision to migrate, to its role in migration journeys, to enabling a sense of community and belonging for migrants in new contexts. Within such work, the politics and poetics of religious practice have emerged as central foci, including research that has highlighted the importance of religion in processes of place-making in urban contexts as well as the role of religious institutions within wider structural contexts shaped by neoliberal policies, the “roll-back” of the state and increasingly hostile migration regimes. Challenging a widespread “secular” bias across the social sciences—including geography—such work has contributed to disrupt tendencies to separate the “secular” and the “sacred.” This chapter provides a critical engagement with these debates, drawing out some of the key ways in which the relationships between transnational migration and religion have been conceptualized in relation to structural, institutional and everyday contexts. In so doing, it considers how these insights might explore the entanglements of spiritual and material realms, by drawing on some examples of our empirical research on the relationship between Pentecostal churches and the lives of migrant entrepreneurs in the UK
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