Risky behaviour and social activities

The aim of the study was to explore whether risky behaviour is reinforced or counterbalanced by various types of social and individual activities and the impacts on educational outcomes at age 16. The analysis is based on four waves of the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England together with National Pupil Database data. The data did not allow identification of the type of ‘structured and supervised’ positive activities promoted by policy to reduce risky behaviour and therefore could not (and was not intended to) test the effectiveness of this policy focus.Andreas Cebulla and Wojtek Tomaszewsk

Lone parents and employment: an exploration of findings from the Families and Children Study 2006-08 (Working paper no 93)

"In order to better understand some of the key issues for all mothers in combining paid work and parenting DWP and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) developed in 2006 a series of questions for use on the Families and Children Study (FACS)... The findings presented in this working paper refer to the FACS data for lone mothers only and it is the first time that the Choices and Constraints set has been analysed longitudinally. One reason for conducting this analysis was to contribute to the wider evidence on lone mothers’ decisions regarding employment. However, given that this question set will be used in future research projects, including the LPO evaluation, the analysis was also commissioned to inform how longitudinal data emerging from LPO might best be explored. For this reason this working paper also contains technical detail describing the analysis process itself." - Page 1

Lone parents and employment : an exploration of findings from the Families and children study 2006-08

"This working paper presents findings from longitudinal analysis of c.800 lone mothers who responded to the Families and Children Study (FACS) between 2006 and 2008. The analysis utilises data from the Choices and Constraints question set which was designed to capture the complexities of decision-making for parents around work and caring in order to better understand their decisions, motivations and barriers with regard to employment. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was undertaken to explore the relationship between some of the background characteristics of lone mothers who took part in FACS and how these interact with their attitudes, perceptions and intentions, which in turn impact on their employment outcomes. This analysis includes substantial technical detail as it was undertaken in order to explore the value of applying SEM to the Choices and Constraints question set. It was commissioned as part of the Lone Parent Obligations evaluation programme." -- Back cover

An alternative measure of social wellbeing: analysing the key conceptual and statistical components of quality of life

Statisticians, policy makers and social researchers widely accept that there is a need to consider a more nuanced range of measures of quality of life that move beyond the economic domain and that take into account key aspects of an individual’s life circumstances. Using data from an Australian household survey, a composite Wellbeing Index was created that covered objective circumstances, with known associations to wellbeing, evaluated from the individual’s subjective viewpoint. The robustness of the measure comes from the fact that while covering a broad range of key dimensions, the index only includes the items deemed important components of wellbeing by a majority of respondents. The index was then used to explore the extent to which wellbeing is associated with other dimensions of quality of life that have currency in the contemporary literature. The study contributes to the contemporary debate on social wellbeing and adds new Australian evidence to a body of research that has been mainly based on European and American data

Exiting unsheltered homelessness and sustaining housing: a human agency perspective

An emerging body of evidence has demonstrated the extent to which social programs and housing initiatives have successfully helped people exit chronic and unsheltered homelessness. Contemporary research shows that people with both health and social problems are able to exit homelessness and sustain housing over several years. Although the existing evidence is robust and often based on studies employing rigorous experimental designs, clients of programs are presented as passive service recipients whose exits from homelessness are attributed to outside intervention. Drawing on a multisite Australian study with people who had exited chronic and unsheltered homelessness, this article adopts a theoretical framework of human agency to demonstrate how people exiting homelessness play active roles in shaping the outcomes they achieve. Extending the existing evidence base, we show how they explain their outcomes in terms of imagined future trajectories and an evaluation of their options to achieve change