Towards Brown Gold: Reimagining Off-grid Sanitation in Rapidly Urbanising Areas in Asia and Africa: Nanded, India, Santitation Data, 2021

This study uses qualitative research carried out by SOPPECOM and IDS to understand how marginalised communities in Nanded Waghala City Municipal Corporation (NWCMC) access sanitation services and how they respond to the challenges they face. This study was a part of the Brown Gold Project. The study was motivated by the gap between Nanded’s ODF status and the continued problems of poor sanitation faced by slum residents, migrants, women, and sanitation workers. The main aim was to explore the social and structural barriers that prevent safe sanitation and proper faecal sludge management in the city. The research team used multiple qualitative methods, including focus group discussions, key informant, site visits and observation and in-depth interviews with residents, migrants, sanitation workers, corporators, union leaders, Ambedkarite activists, civil society groups, and government officials. A city-wide consultation and information from 42 neighbourhoods where CLTS (Community-Led Total Sanitation) was implemented were also included. The study had two phases. Phase 1 documented the condition of sanitation infrastructure and community involvement in 42 neighbourhoods and helped identify areas for Phase 2. Phase 2 focused on four neighbourhoods—Lumbini Nagar, Maltekdi, Ganraj Nagar, and Bhoigalli—to understand how caste, class, gender, and migration influence sanitation access. Other neighbourhoods such as Ram Nagar, Bhimghat, Khadakpura, and Valmikinagar were also studied to understand local sanitation challenges and community responses. Along with interviews and FGDs, the team used observations, photo elicitation with migrant workers, and technical assessments of sewer networks and waste treatment plants. Participatory workshops with residents and sanitation workers were carried out to cross-check and refine the findings. The data collected highlights everyday experiences of marginalisation, gaps in sanitation systems, and different forms of community action—from coping strategies to organised protests. These insights help explain the difference between policy claims and ground realities and show the need for more inclusive and people-centred sanitation planning in growing cities.Once viewed as the 'the last taboo' in international development, sanitation is now considered pivotal for human wellbeing, productivity and health, and to realising all the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Currently, 4.5 billion people lack safely managed sanitation with about 700 million defecating in the open (WHO 2019) exposing them to various health hazards. Work and time burdens as a result of unmet or poor sanitation are disproportionate for these marginalised groups (especially women) who are not only users of inappropriate services, they are often the service providers of high-risk, poor quality sanitation facilities and infrastructure. BROWN GOLD focuses on marginality, sanitation and wastewater challenges in five growing towns in Ethiopia, Ghana, India and Nepal. While toilet coverage has increased in all these towns due to massive and capital intensive sanitation campaigns, they have neglected a portion of the population, in particular, poor residents, migrants, lower castes, landless slum-dwellers and scavengers who are still denied their basic rights to clean water and safely managed sanitation. They live in areas not connected to centralised systems and are unlikely to be in the foreseeable future. This has important social and health consequences for these communities linked to the invisible flows of dangerous pathogens and water quality contamination. We view these challenges as an opportunity to rethink and reimagine these off-grid areas that fall beyond central urban planning as a fertile ground for social and technological innovations that are people centred, sustainable, equitable and in line with the idea of the circular economy. Indeed, faecal sludge is rich in water, nutrients and organic compounds, but the potential of this 'brown gold' remains hidden in the sludge and thus largely untapped. We will explore ways to re-use shit with the view to ensure that these innovations help address the sanitation crisis, enhance local livelihoods and the local and regional economies and the well-being of the excluded and marginalised. The project asks: 1) How do local communities perceive, experience and live with off-grid sanitation challenges and how do these lead to processes of marginalisation? 2) Which kinds of socio- technical and institutional processes/ innovations are required to re-imagine shit as 'brown gold' in ways that are environmentally safe, economically viable and also tackle social exclusions? 3) How can these locally appropriate innovations be facilitated to be socio-culturally acceptable, and socially inclusive? What are the trade-offs? 4) What kinds of policy, business and regulatory frameworks enable/ disable the uptake, scaling up and sustenance of these innovations? These questions will be addressed by an interdisciplinary team bringing together social science, law, engineering, microbiology as well as creative arts. We will facilitate bottom up socio-technical processes and innovations co-produced between user communities, private entities, state agencies and civil society. We will employ an innovative mixed-methods approach, bringing together ethnographic, participatory, creative, quantitative and scientific data collection methods to examine whether innovations to consider shit as a resource or 'brown gold' can be a lens to reimagine the city. The project will generate evidence, knowledge and learning that will be useful to a range of academic and policy audience.In the long term, it is anticipated that the evidence generated through this project will inform the local, national and potentially global policy discourses and strategies on WASH in non-networked urban contexts, strengthen people centred, and bottom-up views on delivering WASH and urban planning programmes and augment opportunities for cross-learning across countries in water, health and sanitation sectors,</p

Scottish Health Survey, 2023

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) series was established in 1995. Commissioned by the Scottish Government Health Directorates, the series provides regular information on aspects of the public's health and factors related to health which cannot be obtained from other sources. The SHeS series was designed to:estimate the prevalence of particular health conditions in Scotland;estimate the prevalence of certain risk factors associated with these health conditions and to document the pattern of related health behaviours;look at differences between regions and between subgroups of the population in the extent of their having these particular health conditions or risk factors, and to make comparisons with other national statistics for Scotland and England;monitor trends in the population's health over time;make a major contribution to monitoring progress towards health targets.Each survey in the series includes a set of core questions and measurements (height and weight and, if applicable, blood pressure, waist circumference, urine and saliva samples), plus modules of questions on specific health conditions that vary from year to year. Each year the core sample has also been augmented by an additional boosted sample for children. Since 2008 NHS Health Boards have also had the opportunity to boost the number of adult interviews carried out in their area. The Scottish Government Scottish Health Survey webpages contain further information about the series, including latest news and publications. Main Topics:The Scottish Health Survey 2023 (SHeS23) is the nineteenth survey in the series. For the Core sample, potential participants were contacted by letter and invited to take part in an in-home interview. A telephone contingency was retained for respondents unwilling to have the interviewer enter their home due to health concerns. This included similar content to earlier survey years, as well as interviews with or on behalf of children. For the child boost, participants were visited on the doorstep and up to 2 children per household were invited to take part in an in-home interview. This sample was linked to the Community Health Index (CHI) database. Topics covered included household composition, demographics (including ethnicity, religion, educational background and economic activity), general health including caring, mental health and wellbeing, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and asthma, physical activity, eating habits, fruit and veg consumption, smoking and drinking, dental health, COVID-19 and height and weight measurements. The study also includes combined datasets covering 2022/2023, 2019/2021/2022/2023 and 2021/2023. They contain information from the household questionnaires, main individual schedules and self-completions. The combined datasets have been provided to give a larger base for the analysis of variables. The individual year datasets should be used for the analysis of individual years, including comparisons between years.</p

Building a Modern Scotland: Scotland's New Towns, 1947-2017

The project undertook semi-structured one to one oral history interviews with former and current residents of 4 Scottish new towns (Cumbernauld, Glenrothes, Livingston, Irvine) as a means of exploring personal and social experience across the life course. The interviews were conducted by Dr Valerie Wright (with one exception) between 2021 and 2023, some in person and some (owing to Covid restrictions) using Zoom or other online applications. 36 respondents were recruited in Glenrothes (15), Cumbernauld (14), Livingston (4) and Irvine (3) via local publicity and a process of snowballing. Participants were drawn from three generations of new town residents: first generation (so-called pioneers) aged roughly in their 70s and 80s; second generation (children of pioneers) aged roughly in their 50s and 60s, and the third or younger generation now roughly in their 40s. The interviews aimed to reveal residents’ experiences of new town life and the new town built environment over the long term, and whether these aligned with the visions of planners, the government, and the new town development corporations. In general we wanted to know how residents took the opportunities offered by new town life to break with the conventions of their old neighbourhoods and expectations of gender? Was it easier to pursue new interests and to make new social relationships? Were and are the new towns places where diversity thrived? How did expectations and experiences change across the period in question as the towns themselves grew and the economy that supported them shrank? Information about the project was circulated to each participant along with the informed consent materials which were discussed with the interviewer prior to the interview commencing. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed in full. Respondents are identified by their given names only unless they requested anonymisation. Any identifying names of other individuals named in the interviews have been redacted from the transcripts. The interview schedule represented a comprehensive topic guide covering details of moving to the new town, settling in, social relationships, sense of community, home and work life and family relationships. Topics covered with the second and third generations tended to focus on education, work, social relationships and views on how/if the new town had changed. The resulting narratives provided retrospective perspectives across a timespan of 50 years and three generations that were analysed around four themes: community, homes, family, and work and education. In turn these revealed details of personal development, intra-familial relations, family and friendship networks, everyday and cultural practices and opportunities and constraints. By accessing life-story narratives we gained rich qualitative material which is less amenable to quantification and more valuable in terms of the kinds of memory stories people construct around the meanings of new town life and its relationship with the built environment. Nonetheless the oral history material was rich in stories about family life offering insights into the shifts experienced across the UK in this area (divorce, lone-parent families, alcohol abuse etc), regarding opportunities for social contact not determined by sectarian or gendered structures and institutions, the importance of housing and more especially a single family home, and declining opportunities for work in the new towns as the original employers closed in the context of economic slump. The interviews were analysed alongside archival materials including official new town development corporation records (minutes, policy papers, ephemera including advertisements and newspaper cuttings) dealing with all aspects of new town planning and development), and records of local organisations. The key findings can be summarised thus: The pioneers - ie those who moved to the new towns as they were being built - saw themselves as aspirational and keen to make a new life for themselves and their families away from their former communities in urban settlements. They were attracted by the opportunity to rent a modern home, to move to a small town surrounded by countryside and to find work. Many encouraged their extended family to follow them. Many subsequently moved within the new town to a 'better' area and when the opportunity arose, purchased their home. The second generation, the children of the pioneers, presented happy memories in the main of growing up in a new town, attending a modern school, having relative freedom within the town owing to safe routes to school and leisure and enjoying a large friendship group within their community. Whilst many did eventually leave for work, a good number remained local to the new town. The third generation are the group who, in comparison with their parents and grandparents, saw less in the new town that encouraged their aspirations. By the 70s and 80s this generation was experiencing the effects of economic decline, the reduction of employment opportunities in the new towns, and they sometimes struggled to identify with a place that had offered their parents and grandparents new opportunities. Almost all respondents regarded the new towns as changed, usually for the worse, owing to changes in housing tenure (increased private housing and buy to let) and changes in governance (wind up of the development corporations and incorporation of the new towns in local authorities) which, according to residents meant that the new towns lost out in respect of funding and provision of amenity.This project asks: how can an examination of the conception, design, and subsequent histories of Scotland’s post-war new towns shed new light on questions of identity and place since 1945? By taking a novel long-term, interdisciplinary approach, we seek to explore what these towns can tell us about wider social, urban and architectural histories, and to propose new ways of looking at post-war urban history. The project is timely, for four reasons. It builds on recent work by social historians on questions of identity and community in twentieth-century Britain, by spatialising these topics in new ways. It brings new perspectives to post-war architectural history, a subject which continues to attract much attention, by attending to the relationship between design and people. In its interest in the links between identity and place, it explores topics which are central to contemporary social and political debates. Finally, it addresses (often critical) popular perceptions of the new towns at a crucial juncture in their history, and at a time when new towns, ‘garden cities’ and urban expansion are again being discussed. We want this research not only to reshape historical understanding, but also to contribute to contemporary debates about the value of the post-war new town</p

Improving Voice Identification Procedures Experimental Data, 2019-2024

The Improving Voice Identification Procedures (IVIP) project consisted of three stands: Strand 1 - Parameters, Strand 2 - Voice Distinctiveness and Strand 3 - Social Stereotypes. All data has been archived in this collection. Strand 1: Parameters - Motivation and aims This strand of the project examined aspects of voice identification procedure which were yet to be fully tested within the Home Office approach, such as the length of voice samples, number of foil voices, witness instructions, and parade type. A series of experiments was conducted to identify optimal parameters to increase both the chances that guilty suspects are selected, and that innocent suspects are not selected. Strand 1: Parameters - Key findings Experiments (1 and 2) testing 15s, 30s, and 60s voice samples showed 15s can be used without adversely affecting witness identification performance. Experiments (1 and 2) investigating parade size found no meaningful difference in performance for six- versus nine-person parades. A study considered the impacts of reflecting on a voice after exposure to it (Experiment 3), and shorter (~5 minutes) versus longer (~1 day) retention intervals. No meaningful difference in identification performance was found between reflection/no-reflection conditions, nor shorter/longer retention intervals. A study testing different warning strengths in witness instructions (Experiments 4 and 5) showed stronger warnings improve accuracy in target-absent parades, but at the expense of target-present accuracy. Analysis of data comparing serial and sequential parade formats both online (Experiments 4, 5 and 6) and in the lab (Experiment 6) did not reveal differences in performance across parade types or testing contexts. Experiment 7 addressed the effect of target-foil similarity and the opportunity to relisten to parade voices. Preliminary analyses suggest no difference in performance according to target-foil similarity, but higher accuracy on target-present parades when listening to parade voices once. Strand 2: Voice Distinctiveness - Motivation and aims Voice parade experiments tend to show that certain target speakers are more readily identifiable than others. This strand of the project considered what makes some speakers more distinctive-sounding than others, and whether speakers judged to be more distinctive-sounding are also more memorable. Experiments were conducted to explore correlates of judgements of voice similarity and phonetic features in combination with accent. Further experiments investigated whether the distinctiveness of a voice depends on its position in a population distribution of voices according to long-term f0, a phonetic feature known to be perceptually important for speaker identity, and the relationship between this factor and voice memorability. Strand 2: Voice Distinctiveness - Key findings Varying patterns of correlation were found between listener-judged voice similarity and pitch, formants and articulation rate, within and between different accent groups, with pitch and formants playing important roles (Experiment 1). An experiment exploring the effect of sample duration (3s vs 10s) on listener-judged voice similarity found similar correlations across sample durations (Experiment 2). Further experiments (3, 4, and 5) have examined the role of pitch in listeners’ judgement of voice distinctiveness. Using pitch-manipulated stimuli, the study highlighted that listeners hear the same pairs of speakers as more different in the mid-range than when heard low or high (Experiment 4). Further experimentation showed this was because listeners are more sensitive to pitch differences in the mid-range (Experiment 5). A further experiment (Experiment 6) found that the benefit of mid-pitch on perceived distinctiveness did not extend to memorability, but instead found that voices that are distinctive for reasons other than pitch were more memorable for listeners. Strand 3: Social Stereotypes - Motivation and aims Strand 3 examined the extent to which social perceptions, judgements, attitudes and stereotypes related to voice(s) can motivate witness decision-making during voice parades. Three experiments assessed the relationship between certain aspects of voice and stereotypes about traits and particular criminal and non-criminal behaviours. Developing an understanding of the link between voice stereotypes and voice identification has the potential to reduce the likelihood of an innocent person being selected from a line-up because that person happens to have the most ‘guilty’ sounding voice. Strand 3: Social Stereotypes - Key findings Experiment 1 showed that listeners consistently rated Standard Southern British English (SSBE) highest for all status traits (concerning education, wealth, intelligence) while Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow rated highest on the solidarity traits (friendliness, trustworthiness, honesty). Belfast and Glasgow also rated well on ‘honourable’ behaviours and low on ‘morally bad’ behaviours. SSBE speakers were thought least likely to commit criminal behaviours and Liverpool speakers most likely. Experiment 2 showed that low-pitched voices were rated lower for solidarity-based traits, whereas high-pitched voices were rated lower for status-based traits. Slower articulation rates resulted in lower ratings for status and solidarity traits and morally good behaviours, but higher ratings for criminal behaviours. Experiment 3 examined whether stereotyping in voice judgements could contribute to (mis)identification of those speakers in voice parades. It found voices most frequently selected from parades were rated more negatively regarding social and behavioural traits (including criminality).In certain crimes, the voice of a perpetrator is heard by a victim or witness, but no recording of the incriminating speech is available. A robber may have been masked, or have attacked from behind, for instance; or contact may only have been over the telephone. If the witness has received sufficient exposure to the perpetrator's voice, earwitness evidence may be collected through a voice parade. A voice parade is conducted using a similar format to a visual identity parade, but using voices rather than faces: the witness is asked whether he or she can pick out the voice of the speaker heard at the crime scene from a line-up of recorded speech samples which includes the suspect's voice along with a number of 'foil' voices. In England and Wales, the current guidelines on how a voice parade should be conducted (published in 2003) were developed as an extension of the police procedure for visual identification parades. However, since the original voice parade guidelines were developed, psychological research has emphasised that although face and voice processing exhibit many parallels, there are also marked differences, and further research is needed to ensure that the details of the voice identification procedure are set up in a way that optimises earwitness performance. The practical and resource requirements of the current procedure are time-consuming and expensive, and the willingness of police forces to engage with the procedure is very variable such that in practice very few parades are undertaken. The IVIP project has four main strands, with the overall aim of improving understanding of earwitness behaviour and improving the interaction of the criminal justice system with the use of earwitness evidence. The first strand will examine aspects of voice identification which are yet to be fully tested within the current procedure (e.g. length of samples, number of foil voices, witness instructions, parade type), with a view to modifying the procedure to optimise earwitness performance. The second strand will investigate from a phonetic perspective why it is that certain speakers are more distinctive-sounding than others and whether speakers judged to be more distinctive are also more memorable. The third strand will entail a study of the degree to which social perceptions, judgements, attitudes and stereotypes related to voice(s) can motivate witness decision-making during voice parades. The final strand of the project will assess and evaluate the extent of police and legal practitioners' awareness and experience of voice parades, beliefs about earwitness memory, attitudes to conducting voice parades and how earwitness evidence is received in court. The IVIP project will achieve significant impact in the criminal justice system, benefitting police and legal practitioners, the judiciary, forensic practitioners and, ultimately, the general public. In addition, its findings will make an important broader contribution to scholarship in phonetics, sociolinguistics, psychology and criminology. Crimes involving the witnessing of a voice are widespread, yet at present this evidence is rarely being adequately capitalised on in the United Kingdom and other countries. Improvements in the understanding of earwitness behaviour and in techniques for collecting earwitness evidence efficiently are essential in addressing these kinds of crimes. This project will offer advances in the implementation of voice parades and improvements in the legal interaction with earwitness evidence which will lead to improved outcomes in the justice system.</p

Future Organisms Interview Collection (UK), 2022-2024

Motivation and aims for the study Synthetic genomics is an emerging international research field that promises to bring new types of organism into the world, potentially challenging fundamental relationships between humans and other species. Future Organisms involved social scientific investigation of synthetic genomics across three countries that have invested significantly in the field: the UK, the USA and Japan. The main objectives were to: 1. Advance the theory and practice of responsible research and innovation (RRI) through a study of synthetic genomics 2. Explore the narratives and expectations driving national investments into synthetic genomics 3. Investigate the significance of the organism being engineered in synthetic genomics research projects 4. Create spaces that allow commitments in synthetic genomics to be reflected upon, debated and, where necessary, challenged 5. Build international capacity for social scientific engagement with synthetic genomics and other emerging fields Key topics covered in this research included: Synthetic genomics and the role of social scientific engagement Recent developments in DNA synthesis technologies are making it possible for scientists to build long stretches of genetic material, including whole chromosomes and even complete genomes. These capacities are proliferating globally, along with financial support for large and ambitious genome construction projects. Decisions about what to build, however, are being made by a small group of scientists and engineers who are re-designing organisms in ways that could profoundly change how humans relate to other species. Currently there is little social scientific analysis or scrutiny of this work, despite its potential epistemic and social ramifications. Social scientific engagement helps to complete this gap. As a part of this, the project aimed to contribute to work on RRI by reflecting on and articulating roles that social sciences can play in synthetic genomics. This is a pressing issue since research funding initiatives around the world are drawing social scientists into closer proximity to STEM research, but often asymmetrically, positioning the social sciences as service providers Multispecies approaches to responsibility Synthetic genomics foregrounds the organism being engineered and so provides a compelling call to respond to these critiques by drawing multispecies studies into conversation with RRI. This project therefore explored how human ‘response-abilities’ (Haraway 2016) to other creatures are shaped in synthetic genomics. Together, we will attend to how creatures manifest in the field to ask how multispecies interdependencies could enrich RRI theory and practice. Policy narratives and national agendas The literature underpinning the concept of RRI emphasises the importance of political and economic forces in shaping the trajectories of science. However, much STS work conducted under the aegis of RRI involves an individual (often early career) social scientist being tasked to ‘deliver’ RRI for a single scientific research project, limiting the extent to which they can engage with large-scale international initiatives such as synthetic genomics. This project therefore offered an analysis of synthetic genomics across multiple sites and scales – from individuals and laboratories to national and international institutions – to interrogate the narratives and expectations at play. Key findings: Our study of the emergence of the field of synthetic genomics shows that it is defined in local ways, depending on context. Synthetic genomics has not yet formed a distinctive community, despite the expectations of many scientists involved in the ‘GP-write project’ at the start of our research. However, the ideas have travelled and have had impacts in contexts where national agendas are most attuned to them, often tying into efforts to drive the bioeconomy. We see a contrast between large, highly-capitalised laboratories, which draw on dominant metaphors of controlling living systems, and smaller laboratories, where we see different ways of thinking about engineering biology that extend beyond control. The desire for ethics/social science capacity exists in the field, but there are difficulties in realising this. These findings are the product of the entire project and do not derive solely from the interviews referred to in this data collection.The aim of this project is two-fold: to carry out a social scientific investigation into synthetic genomics and to develop new approaches to responsible research and innovation through this investigation. Synthetic genomics is an emerging scientific field that makes it possible for scientists to design and build larger stretches of DNA than ever before, at the scale of chromosomes and even whole genomes. It could potentially bring new types of organism into the world. Synthetic genomics is attracting funding and building momentum internationally. However, decisions about the direction of the field are being made by small groups of scientists and engineers. Although some are aware that these decisions deserve broader reflection and scrutiny, the field lacks mechanisms to ensure it incorporates diverse perspectives. We aim to address this problem by conducting the first social scientific analysis of synthetic genomics explicitly designed to open up discussion and debate about the field. Responsible research and innovation (RRI) is an approach to governing new scientific and technological fields that has gained traction in recent years. However, RRI is currently not well equipped to engage with large-scale, international, collaborative scientific work such as that undertaken in synthetic genomics. When RRI is implemented it often involves an individual social scientist being tasked to 'deliver' RRI for a single scientific research project, limiting the extent to which they can engage with broader governance structures. In contrast, independent social scientific research conducted on emerging science and technology often remains detached from its object of study, offering little opportunity to shape its development. By developing an approach to synthetic genomics that is engaged but autonomous, our project will extend and enrich RRI by offering an alternative model for social scientific engagement with emerging scientific fields. Our cross-national investigation of synthetic genomics will encompass the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan - three countries that are investing heavily in the field. We will analyse scientific literature and policy documents, and - taking advantage of our geographic distribution - conduct a multi-sited ethnography of the major sites in which synthetic genomics is being developed and interview key actors in our three countries. Our research is organised into three workstreams: Countries, Creatures and Capacities. The Countries workstream examines national and international policy and funding strategies for synthetic genomics and the narratives and expectations embedded within them. The Creatures workstream explores the ways in which synthetic genomics alters human relationships with other organisms by positioning humans as designers of other species. The Capacities workstream explores the role of social scientists within the field. We will build on our existing connections with scientists, engineers, policy makers, artists, designers, and other stakeholders to 'open-up' debate about the trajectories and futures of the field by convening a series of experimental workshops. Our final workshop will bring together social scientists from our three countries working in synthetic genomics and related fields to share our experiences, explore new approaches to RRI, and build connections for future work.</p

OntoAgency 2.0, 2022-2025

OntoAgency is a relational agency-based ontology to understand power relationships. It can be used to trace chains of decision-making, control, ownership and data sharing in design, operation, and policymaking. The ontology if fully compatible with existing BIM, SRI, BRICK and SAREF ontologies and can be retrieved in OWL or RDF formats to be used with the aforementioned ontologies or as stand-alone inside Protégé.The project Smart(ening up the modern) home: Redesigning power dynamics through domestic space digitalization (SMARTUP) explores how digitalization impacts domestic space. It examines what happens to home when it becomes smart/er, explores what &quot;smartness&quot; of and at home means, and addresses the consequences of home smartening. Home has long been defined by dichotomies such as outside and inside, public and private, work and care, masculine and feminine, human and non-human. The digital transformation of home reworks these dichotomies as well as their corollary power dynamics, especially since smartening up has intensified in the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. SMARTUP investigates how home has been transformed by digitalization, and with what consequences in relation to 1) the understanding of (smart) home, 2) the ways (smart) home as a dwelling has become to be imagined, planned and designed, and 3) its everyday forms as practised and experienced. These three foci are to be researched within an interdisciplinary trans-European consortium bringing together insights from across social sciences, design studies and (post)humanities. SMARTUP will produce a unique, interdisciplinary approach to the transformations brought about by the proliferation of digital technologies in contemporary homes, which promises to extensively add to the theory building on, and scholarly reconceptualization of &quot;home&quot;. In collaboration with practitioners (of smart home design &amp; production), and civic and cultural institutions, SMARTUP will identify the multiple impacts of digital transformation on home and its wider societal and cultural implications, thus closing a gap in knowledge about the consequences of the process of smartening-up of home pertaining to different academic disciplines. Overall, the project will identify societal and conceptual challenges posed by intensification of smartening up of home as well as offer practical and theoretical ways to solve them.</p

Consensus in Social Judgments of Faces Across World Regions is Driven by Effects of Distinctiveness on Perceptions of Prosociality, Rather Than Effects of Masculinity, 2023-2025

Social judgments of faces influence important social outcomes. Although many researchers have argued that facial masculinity plays a key role in perceptions of prosociality and dominance, whether these effects are consistent among people from different world regions is highly contentious. Consequently, we investigated possible relationships between masculinity and face ratings made by 11,484 participants from eleven world regions (Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Central America and Mexico, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Scandinavia, South America, United Kingdom, United States and Canada, Western Europe). Surprisingly, masculinity did not significantly predict perceived prosociality or dominance in any regions. By contrast, facial distinctiveness (i.e., atypicality) was significantly and negatively correlated with prosocial perceptions in all regions. Collectively, our results suggest that consensus in social judgments of faces among people from different world regions is driven by the effects of distinctiveness on prosocial perceptions (i.e., an “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype), rather than the effects of masculinity. This research was supported by ESRC grant ES/X000249/1 awarded to BCJ and University of Strathclyde Global Research Awards to KL and JD. For the purpose of Open Access, the authors have applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.I will combine analyses of a large open-access face-rating dataset and a face-image database (i.e., secondary data analyses) to establish whether face-shape characteristics predict social judgments of faces consistently across world regions. A large body of work has demonstrated that social judgments of faces (i.e., the stereotypic perceptions we form about other people based on their facial appearance) influence important social outcomes. For example, people prefer to date, mate with, hire, and vote for individuals perceived as being particularly attractive. Moreover, untrustworthy-looking court defendants are more likely to receive death sentences. Consequently, a large interdisciplinary literature has developed investigating the factors that shape social judgments of faces. An unresolved issue in this literature is the extent to which the effects of face-shape characteristics on social judgments of faces are consistent across different world regions. Findings from studies of this issue have been mixed (e.g., Perrett et al., 1998 Nature; Scott et al., 2014 PNAS) and the methods they used to assess social judgments of faces have recently been strongly criticised. I recently led a Registered Report that was published in Nature Human Behaviour (Jones et al., 2021, 62 citations in Google Scholar) and assessed over eleven thousand participants' social judgments of faces in eleven world regions (Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Central America and Mexico, Eastern Europe, The Middle East, United States and Canada, Scandinavia, South America, United Kingdom, and Western Europe) using methods that specifically addressed limitations of methods used in previous work. Using Principal Component Analyses (PCA), this study found that social judgments of faces were underpinned by trustworthiness and dominance dimensions and that this pattern of results was highly consistent across world regions. Crucially, however, Jones et al. (2021) did not investigate relationships between these dimensions and face-shape characteristics. The analyses reported in Jones et al. (2021) are analyses of a dataset produced by a project I led (with Lisa DeBruine and Jessica Flake) that was the first project to be conducted by the Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA; https://psysciacc.org). The PSA is a distributed network of researchers from across the world who conduct large-scale democratically selected studies. The dataset from Jones et al. (2021) is referred to within the PSA network as the PSA001 dataset (reflecting the fact it was the first dataset to be produced by the PSA) and both the PSA001 dataset and the face stimuli used to collect these data are publicly available. Consequently, I propose to carry out preregistered secondary analyses of these data to assess whether face-shape characteristics predict social judgments of faces consistently across world regions.</p

Country-Level Improvements in Nurturing Care and Child Development, 2010-2019

Using data from UNICEF’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), we examined changes in nurturing care provision and child development outcomes over time in 31 low- and middle-income countries between 2010 and 2019. The sample included 220 759 children aged 3–4 years. Nurturing care was measured as the sum of 10 indicators spanning early learning, caregiving, safety, health, nutrition, and household conditions, and child development was assessed using the Early Childhood Development Index (ECDI). Country-level means were calculated using survey weights, with missing child-level data addressed through multiple imputation. We documented country-level changes in nurturing care and child development between survey waves and assessed whether changes in child development were associated with concurrent changes in nurturing care, adjusting for changes in the Human Development Index and time between surveys. Across a mean interval of 6.06 years, 21 of 31 countries showed improvements in nurturing care, with average provision increasing from 5.53 to 5.74 of 10 indicators, and annual changes ranging from −0.06 to 0.19 indicators per year.The 2017 Lancet Series, Advancing Early Childhood Development: From Science to Scale, estimated that 43% of children under 5 years in LMICs (250m children), were at risk of not reaching their potential because they had stunted linear growth or lived in extreme poverty. The proportion of children at risk increases appreciably when additional risk factors are considered, especially low maternal schooling and child maltreatment. Living in poor and unstimulating conditions affects young children's learning and development. Children exposed to poverty and adversity explore and learn less than children not exposed to these stresses; they learn less at school and achieve fewer school grades; earn less as adults; have more social problems, and poorer physical and mental health. We will study barriers and accelerators to learning in LMIC ECE programmes, at home and in communities, as well as associations between early learning and indicators of child development and school performance. We will estimate their longer-term effects on education and earnings in adulthood. We will use descriptive and statistical analyses of secondary data collected through representative country surveys and research studies. As an established group of multi-disciplinary and multi-country experts and collaborators, we build on prior success in sourcing and analysing data from 91 LMICs by including early education and expanding to 137 countries. Global data, presented along the continuum of the early years, breaks down the false dichotomy between ECD and ECE, between care and education, and between learning at home and in formal programmes, and supports multi-sectoral actions along different stages of the life-course. We will expand our global analyses of threats to ECD by examining gender, location and wealth, services and family supports for young children, and policies that create facilitating environments for families and children. We will, for the first time, link indicators of the structural quality of ECE (eg teacher-child ratios) to contexts and child outcomes in LMICs. Process quality (eg teacher- and caregiver-child interactions), on which there is as yet no global data, will be studied through case studies in 5 countries, one in each of five regions of the world. We will source data on government, development assistance and household expenditures on pre-primary education; extract further country micro-data on contexts in which young children develop and learn; update nationally representative data on young children, services and policies to the most recent survey dates available, and develop new composite indicators of barriers and accelerators of young children's learning and development. Through partnerships with regional networks of ECD-ECE government and stakeholder teams, the project will help to build research capacity in ECD-ECE, and increase the use of data for decision-making, action and monitoring in 20 countries. We will use the results to provide evidence-based support to engage international human rights law, especially the right to education and the rights of the child, in advancing progress towards achieving the SDG goals of universal access by 2030. This research will address the gap in the evidence base for a unified approach to ECD and ECE. The findings will support the development of the right to education by providing a holistic approach to guide early development and educational interventions. It will demonstrate the strength of interdisciplinary work in cross-fertilizing data analysis and legal research in building strong foundations for translation into policy and regulatory change. Given the evidence on the critical roles of ECD-ECE on learning and wellbeing in the short, medium and longer term, the project has important implications for development and welfare in countries on the DAC list. This large-scale global approach is critical to support and guide policy and investments.</p

Labour Force Survey Five-Quarter Longitudinal Dataset, October 2024 - December, 2025

Abstract 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:&nbsp;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

Situations and Relationships Affecting Adolescent Stress and Loneliness: Quantitative Longitudinal Social Network Survey, Qualitative Interview and Participatory Workshops, 2023-2025

This collection contains data from a methods development study which uncovers how stress and loneliness in schools varies across different spatial and social situations. Walking interviews and participatory staff-student workshops informed the development of a longitudinal survey in participating schools. Methods and variables used in the survey varied between schools. One school dataset contains greater detail on student evaluations of each situation, the other school dataset has greater detail on social networks and relationships, and longitudinal follow up. The survey also contains demographics and standardised measures of stress (PSS), loneliness (UCLA), depression and anxiety (GAD2). Network data access is restricted and available only upon request.Most mental health survey research asks questions about how individual young people feel in general, asking people if they feel stressed or lonely 'all of the time', 'most of the time' or 'none of the time', but without asking what the different times are like, or what other people are doing at the times where they feel stressed or lonely. We think that research spends too much time looking at individual young people, and too much time asking general questions about mental health. Instead, we should look at the important situations in young people's lives, we should look at different social interactions that take place in those situations, and we should think about the connections between people. Looking at connections between people is thinking about a system of people, so we call our approach the SOCial SITuational Systems or SOCITS approach. SOCITS will help to understand the reasons for things like loneliness, stress and mental health. And change how we improve mental health. Instead of only looking at what goes on inside people's heads, SOCITS will looking at the social situations and places around individuals that affect mental health. In the project, we will train young people to be researchers, so they can interview secondary school students to find out about the situations in their school and how they might affect stress, loneliness, mental health, and holding negative attitudes about other people with mental illness. We will take what we find out from these interviews, and have a group discussion with young people, teachers, and mental health researchers to find out what the group thinks are the reasons for poor mental health. We will use the final decisions of the group do two things: design a survey to find out what actually happens in schools, and build a computer program to create an artificial school that we can use to study what would happen if we changed some of the situations in school. After this, we will test out the survey we designed to see what young people think about filling out the survey, and we will come up with plans on how to analyse the surveys. We will also do studies with the computer programme artificial school, and compare the artificial school to what we know about the real school from the survey information. By the end of the study, we hope that we will have added some new ways to do mental health research that can help improve how adolescents feel, help prevent poor mental health, and improve the quality of life for people with mental illness.</p