Implementation and second-year impacts for New Deal 25 Plus customers in the UK Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) demonstration

This report presents findings on the implementation and effectiveness of Britain's Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) demonstration programme for New Deal 25 Plus customers (ND25 Plus) two years after entering the programme. The effectiveness of this programme is being evaluated using a random assignment research design. Over 16,000 people were randomly assigned onto the programme, making this study one of the largest randomised social policy trials ever undertaken in Britain. The analysis relies heavily on data from two waves of a longitudinal customer survey administered at 12 and 24 months respectively, following each individual's date of random assignment (when they entered the study). The survey respondents (around 6,000) are a representative sub-sample of the full sample of ND25 Plus customers enrolled in the study. The analysis also used data on employment, earnings and benefits receipt from administrative records for the entire sample. To provide a richer understanding of the Jobcentre Plus offices' experience of implementing ERA and customers experiences of ERA, the analysis also uses qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with ERA staff and customers

Back to the Future: The Uses of Television in the Digital Age

This article considers some of the present-day issues, challenges and possibilities facing television broadcasting via a critical examination of the recently published Goldsmiths report on the future of public service television in the twenty-first century. Focusing mainly on UK terrestrial broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5), the article summarises and expands on the report's key findings and recommendations, particularly in relation to questions concerning digitalisation, content, diversity, quality, marketisation, funding and national and regional heritage. The article argues that, despite the rise of the Internet and the proliferation of digital platforms, television viewing remains a common source of information and entertainment and is characterised by meaningful continuities. Additionally, the article outlines the vitally important role played by David Puttnam, chair of the Goldsmiths inquiry, in defending public service television through his active engagement with relevant parliamentary committees and as a widely respected media professional. Finally, the article reflects on the continuing relevance of the 1962 Pilkington Report on Broadcasting, which was similarly commissioned in order to evaluate the purposes of television. In so doing, the article suggests that Pilkington's criticisms of creeping commercialism and the ensuing regulatory proposals still represent a cogent engagement with the idea of public service broadcasting as a primary facilitator of deliberative democracy

Simultaneous Analysis of All SNPs in Genome-Wide and Re-Sequencing Association Studies

Testing one SNP at a time does not fully realise the potential of genome-wide association studies to identify multiple causal variants, which is a plausible scenario for many complex diseases. We show that simultaneous analysis of the entire set of SNPs from a genome-wide study to identify the subset that best predicts disease outcome is now feasible, thanks to developments in stochastic search methods. We used a Bayesian-inspired penalised maximum likelihood approach in which every SNP can be considered for additive, dominant, and recessive contributions to disease risk. Posterior mode estimates were obtained for regression coefficients that were each assigned a prior with a sharp mode at zero. A non-zero coefficient estimate was interpreted as corresponding to a significant SNP. We investigated two prior distributions and show that the normal-exponential-gamma prior leads to improved SNP selection in comparison with single-SNP tests. We also derived an explicit approximation for type-I error that avoids the need to use permutation procedures. As well as genome-wide analyses, our method is well-suited to fine mapping with very dense SNP sets obtained from re-sequencing and/or imputation. It can accommodate quantitative as well as case-control phenotypes, covariate adjustment, and can be extended to search for interactions. Here, we demonstrate the power and empirical type-I error of our approach using simulated case-control data sets of up to 500 K SNPs, a real genome-wide data set of 300 K SNPs, and a sequence-based dataset, each of which can be analysed in a few hours on a desktop workstation

Social media and social class

Background: This paper explores the relationship between social class and social media use, and draws upon the work of Bourdieu examining class in terms of social, economic and cultural capital. The paper starts from a prior finding that those who predominantly only use social media formed a higher proportion of internet users from lower socio-economic groups. Data: Drawing on data from two nationally representative UK surveys the paper makes use of the Ofcom Media Literacy survey (n ≈ 1800 per annum) and the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Taking Part survey (n ≈ 10,000 per annum). Methods: Following Yates, et al. (2015a), five types of internet behaviour and eight types of internet user are identified utilising a principal components analysis and k-means clustering. These internet user types are then examined against measures of social, economic and cultural capital. Data on forms of cultural consumption and digital media use are examined using multiple correspondence analysis. Findings: The paper concludes that forms of digital media use are in correspondence with other social, cultural and economic aspects of social class status and contemporary social systems of distinction

Bringing democracy back home: Community localism and the domestication of political space

Strategies of localism have constituted the community as a metaphor for democracy and empowerment as part of a wider reordering of state institutions and state power. In conflating the smallest scale with increased participation, however, community localism provides a framework through which the power of sociospatial positioning might be made vulnerable to resistance and change. This paper identifies four spatial practices through which marginalised communities apply the technology of localism to challenge the limitations of their positioning and imprint promises of empowerment and democracy on space. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler, the paper theorises these practices as the incursion into the public realm of regulatory norms related to domestic and private spaces, rendering political space familiar and malleable, and suggesting that power and decision making can be brought within reach. It is argued that these spatial practices of community rehearse a more fundamental transformation of the political ordering of space than that authorised by the state strategies of localism. © 2014 Pion and its Licensors

A Bayesian method for evaluating and discovering disease loci associations

Background: A genome-wide association study (GWAS) typically involves examining representative SNPs in individuals from some population. A GWAS data set can concern a million SNPs and may soon concern billions. Researchers investigate the association of each SNP individually with a disease, and it is becoming increasingly commonplace to also analyze multi-SNP associations. Techniques for handling so many hypotheses include the Bonferroni correction and recently developed Bayesian methods. These methods can encounter problems. Most importantly, they are not applicable to a complex multi-locus hypothesis which has several competing hypotheses rather than only a null hypothesis. A method that computes the posterior probability of complex hypotheses is a pressing need. Methodology/Findings: We introduce the Bayesian network posterior probability (BNPP) method which addresses the difficulties. The method represents the relationship between a disease and SNPs using a directed acyclic graph (DAG) model, and computes the likelihood of such models using a Bayesian network scoring criterion. The posterior probability of a hypothesis is computed based on the likelihoods of all competing hypotheses. The BNPP can not only be used to evaluate a hypothesis that has previously been discovered or suspected, but also to discover new disease loci associations. The results of experiments using simulated and real data sets are presented. Our results concerning simulated data sets indicate that the BNPP exhibits both better evaluation and discovery performance than does a p-value based method. For the real data sets, previous findings in the literature are confirmed and additional findings are found. Conclusions/Significance: We conclude that the BNPP resolves a pressing problem by providing a way to compute the posterior probability of complex multi-locus hypotheses. A researcher can use the BNPP to determine the expected utility of investigating a hypothesis further. Furthermore, we conclude that the BNPP is a promising method for discovering disease loci associations. © 2011 Jiang et al

The participation paradigm in audience research

As today's media simultaneously converge and diverge, fusing and hybridizing across digital services and platforms, some researchers argue that audiences are dead-long live the user! But for others, it is the complex interweaving of continuities and changes that demands attention, especially now that audiencing has become a vital mode of engaging with all dimensions of daily life. This article asks how we should research audiences in a digital networked age. I argue that, while many avenues are being actively pursued, many researchers are concentrating on the notion of participation, asking, on the one hand, what modes of participation are afforded to people by the particular media and communication infrastructures which mediate social, cultural or political spheres of life? And, on the other hand, how do people engage with, accede to, negotiate or contest this as they explore and invent new ways of connecting with each other through and around media? The features of this emerging participation paradigm of audience research are examined in this article

AWclust: point-and-click software for non-parametric population structure analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Population structure analysis is important to genetic association studies and evolutionary investigations. Parametric approaches, e.g. STRUCTURE and L-POP, usually assume Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) and linkage equilibrium among loci in sample population individuals. However, the assumptions may not hold and allele frequency estimation may not be accurate in some data sets. The improved version of STRUCTURE (version 2.1) can incorporate linkage information among loci but is still sensitive to high background linkage disequilibrium. Nowadays, large-scale single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are becoming popular in genetic studies. Therefore, it is imperative to have software that makes full use of these genetic data to generate inference even when model assumptions do not hold or allele frequency estimation suffers from high variation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have developed point-and-click software for non-parametric population structure analysis distributed as an R package. The software takes advantage of the large number of SNPs available to categorize individuals into ethnically similar clusters and it does not require assumptions about population models. Nor does it estimate allele frequencies. Moreover, this software can also infer the optimal number of populations.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our software tool employs non-parametric approaches to assign individuals to clusters using SNPs. It provides efficient computation and an intuitive way for researchers to explore ethnic relationships among individuals. It can be complementary to parametric approaches in population structure analysis.</p