Review: Introduction to Social Policy Analysis: Illuminating Welfare

open accessThis is my review of Stephen Sinclair's introductory Social Policy textboo

Voluntary unemployment and left-dominated social policy academia

This article summarises the main arguments and research findings from my book - 'Rethinking Unemployment and the Work Ethic'. I argue that left-dominated social policy academia has failed to answer some important questions. I criticise social policy writing about unemployed benefit claimants and present evidence from my four empirical research projects, which all delivered findings consistent with the view that many unemployed people prefer living on benefits to undertaking jobs that would increase their income, but which they consider unattractive

Scrutinising the secret state: parliamentary oversight of the intelligence and security agencies

This article considers the growing parliamentary scrutiny of the intelligence and security agencies. It raises a number of questions about the role and effectiveness of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Parliament and parliamentarians

Are the social groups most likely to be unemployed also those most likely to prefer being employed? Evidence from the 2000 British Cohort Study and 2000/2008 National Child Development Study

This paper first argues for a new approach to researching the issue of unemployment and work attitudes, and then presents findings from an analysis of 2000 British Cohort Study and 2000/2008 National Child Development Study data. Existing social policy literature has shown that a large majority of unemployed people want jobs and actively seek them, but it has not examined choices between less enjoyable jobs and unemployment. Indeed, literature on whether or not unemployed people want employment has not discussed work attitude measurement at all, and has often used measures that do not offer respondents a choice between employment and unemployment and do not hold job quality constant. Furthermore, while the unemployed and employed are found to generally share the same values including a strong work ethic, there is little or no discussion of differences in values and preferences among groups that cut across the two categories. Nor is there recognition that the unemployed category contains disproportionately high numbers from certain social groups and hence inevitably exhibits these groups‟ cultural characteristics and preferences. We suggest that people generally, whether currently unemployed or not, are willing to undertake some kinds of work but not others, and that there is considerable diversity in attitudes towards various jobs and towards being unemployed. Therefore, our research focused on how all respondents answered the agree/disagree statement „Having almost any job is better than being unemployed‟. Of the groups most at risk of unemployment, single people were found to be significantly anti-employment, and those with low academic attainment significantly pro-employment, but there was little or no significance in men, the young, or working class people. Of the numerous living circumstances, lifestyle choice, attitude, and demographic variables included in the study, the following were not only found to have strong associations with agreeing with the statement in all three datasets, but also emerged as significant each time in the logistic regression analysis: those with authoritarian, politically right wing and traditional moral attitudes, the employed not unemployed, and people living in multiple occupancy households and mortgaged (not rented) accommodation. The employed/unemployed finding indicates that survey items offering a choice between employment (including unattractive jobs) and unemployment show unemployed people to be less pro-employment than measures that do not. This is important because how people exercise that choice is important to the debate about whether or not attaching more conditions to the receipt of unemployment benefits is justified

Powerful partnerships: enhancing the student experience through career long professional learning [Poster]

The School of Education (SofE) recognises the importance of promoting opportunities for students and staff to engage with each other. Higher Education (HE) has been transformed over the last twenty years and the change from teacher-centred pedagogy to a more student-centred approach has been widely adopted (O’Neill and McMahon, 2005). The SofE provides a rich and diverse curriculum of study across a range of degree programmes. We have established a staff and student partnership which has seen a refreshed focus on the student, where their voice is influential in what they learn. This has been the emphasis of many researchers in the past. Both Rogers (1983) and Burnard (1999) illustrate that this is essential in establishing and maintaining student-centred learning. This poster illustrates the benefits to a staff and student partnership as established at The University of Glasgow

The ‘choosiness’ of the unemployed: evidence on voluntary unemployment in the UK

In this article, Andrew Dunn presents research which finds that many unemployed people prefer living on benefits to undertaking jobs which would increase their income, but which they consider unattractive

Relative poverty, British social policy writing, and public experience

Relative poverty (which categorises as ‘poor’ those who fall seriously below normal nationwide material standards) is undoubtedly a useful and important concept in social science. However, this article argues that the widespread view that the word ‘poverty’ means ‘relative poverty’, which in mainstream social policy academic writing often extends into implying that those (including many poorer people) who do not define poverty this way are necessarily misguided, has led to an incomplete portrayal of the lived experience of poorer British people. The article examines published empirical work, before presenting findings from British Social Attitudes surveys and interviews with 40 unemployed Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants and 30 employed people. Both the existing and new findings exposed aspects of public attitudes and experience which resonate with noted unanswered academic criticisms of defining poverty as relative poverty, and which have tended to be glossed over or treated dismissively by social policy authors

What does laser speckle contrast imaging really measure?

No Abstract