The NatCen Blog

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Posted on 21 July 2020 by Ceri Davies, Director, NatCen Centre for Deliberative Research

Digital engagement with citizens on the environment

Covid-19 is taking social researchers into new territory. With face-to-face fieldwork paused, researchers have been left to explore how else (if at all) they can continue existing studies. The pandemic also poses a particularly tricky question of how findings from research designed for pre-Covid-19 society should be interpreted in what will be very different future realities.
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Tags: 25 Year Environmental Plan, Conservation 21, Covid-19, citizen engagement, deliberative research, fieldwork, online methods
Posted on 30 June 2020 by Guy Goodwin, Chief Executive

Someone’s knocking at the door

Most of the UK’s high-quality random probability social surveys use face-to-face interviewing. The Covid-19 lockdown meant an immediate pause to this work. When can, and should, interviewers return into the field to conduct social surveys and under what conditions? In this blog post, our Chief Executive Guy Goodwin addresses some of the key questions for both survey commissioners and research organisations.
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Tags: Covid-19, Covid-19 Infection Study, NatCen Opinion Panel, coronavirus, fieldwork, telephone surveys, web surveys
Posted on 17 June 2020 by Guy Goodwin, Chief Executive

Testing boundaries during the pandemic

Certainly, there is no question about the importance and relevance of some of our NatCen research right now, whether we’re finding out how older people are coping during the pandemic, helping with the volumes on the Covid-19 infection study or taking part in the partnership evaluating the contact tracing app pilot on the Isle of Wight.
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Tags: CATI, Computer-assisted telephone interviews, Covid-19, Covid-19 Infection Study, ELSA, English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, coronavirus, innovation
Posted on 05 June 2020 by Helen McCarthy, Senior Researcher

The view from the table: facilitating public dialogue about the environment

NatCen has been running a series of weekend workshops with the public to discuss their views on the environment. Today, World Environment Day offers a timely opportunity to reflect on the discussions we’ve led so far in London, Hull and Chesterfield.
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Tags: 25 Year Environmental Plan, citizen engagement, deliberative research, environment, plastic, workshop
Posted on 24 April 2020 by Curtis Jessop, Research Director

Linking survey and Twitter data

Are social media users representative of a wider population? Are the data biased towards the most vocal? And how do you ensure a sample only includes the target population?
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Tags: NatCen Panel, Twitter, data linkage, household surveys, social media
Posted on 17 April 2020 by Shivonne Gates, Senior Researcher

Ethnic diversity in social research: a persistent problem

It is well-documented that Britain’s increasing diversity is not reflected in its workforce. Among people of working age, 12.5% are from a BAME background, but only 10% of Britain’s workforce are BAME, and only 6% of top management positions are held by BAME people. Social research is sadly no different.
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Tags: BAME researchers, discrimination, equality, ethnicity, race, social research
Posted on 09 April 2020 by Gerry Nicolaas, Director, Methodology and Innovation Hub

Making our questionnaires fit for web: back to basics

Within the last five years, social survey data collection in the UK has changed significantly. Gone are the days when face-to-face interviewing was the obvious data-collection mode for academic and government-funded social surveys. Instead we see the growing use of online data collection, sometimes on its own but predominantly in combination with more traditional data-collection modes such as postal, telephone and face-to-face.
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Tags: Methodology and Innovation Hub, methodology, questionnaires, survey methodology, web surveys
Posted on 07 April 2020 by Joy Mhonda, Research Director

Community 2.0

I live in a part of London that ranks pretty high on the index of multiple deprivation, but what we lack in wealth, we make up for in community spirit. I am on first-name terms with many of my neighbours, and to those I have not had the pleasure to meet with formally, I offer an effusive 'hello'. I am not unique in this regard: NatCen’s report on local communities shows that 83% of the British population greet their neighbours at least once a week, with only 2% saying they never offer greetings.
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Tags: Covid-19, NHS, community, crisis, neighbourhoods, volunteering
Posted on 03 April 2020 by Molly Mayer, Researcher

Parents are less rushed today than twenty years ago, but are they finding things any easier?

For any parent reading this while supervising their child doing homework, or trying to make dinner while also doing a load of laundry and discussing the strengths and weaknesses of a particular Pokémon figure, it will come as no surprise that parents are busy. In 2015, 91% of parents with children under sixteen reported feeling rushed.
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Tags: Covid-19, Modern Family Index, UK Time Use Survey, childcare, parents, women's equality
Posted on 20 March 2020 by Ceri Davies, Director, NatCen Centre for Deliberative Research

Going digital with deliberation

In the face of measures to delay the spread of Covid-19, qualitative researchers must consider how to continue their research whilst we cannot meet in person. In this blog, Ceri Davies discusses the lessons we’ve learned from running the UK’s first online deliberative poll using videoconferencing software.
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Tags: deliberative polling, deliberative research, digital, methods, videoconference