Social Sciences

Children growing up in the West today cannot imagine a world without mobile phones. They use high-tech gadgets without thinking much about them. An international research project will now examine what these skills mean for the society.

“We call them ‘power users of technology’ – I haven’t found a good Norwegian expression for it yet,” says Barbara Wasson, Professor at the Department for Information Science and Media Studies and researcher at InterMedia.

The project is an ini

There is no such thing as a ‘bog standard comprehensives’ when it comes to deciding which students are entered for GCSE examinations such as French, Geography or History, according to a new Economic and Social Research Council-funded study published today.

Researchers from Staffordshire University and the University of Durham found that there were big variations between and within schools in the extent to which students are entered for different GCSE subjects. Those differences h

A new research tool developed by an interdisciplinary team of psychologists and economists could help social scientists more accurately evaluate how well individuals and society are faring. The method offers a new way to characterize the daily life experience of individuals, aimed at providing a measure that could be used in assessing social interventions, including clinical trials. Its developers are working on a way to use the method in calculating a “National Well-Being Account,” to provide a

Princeton researchers develop method to better measure people’s quality of life

A new research method that quantifies people’s quality of life — beyond how much money they make — could lead to a national index of well-being, similar to key measures of economic health. The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM), developed by Princeton researchers and colleagues from three universities, creates an “enjoyment scale” by requiring people to record the previous day’s activities

Obesity is likely to affect individuals in low-income areas where fresh fruits and vegetables may not be as plentiful, according to a new University of Houston study.

The finding is suggested in a study on the availability and quality of produce in high-income versus low-income urban neighborhoods. The study was made possible by a two year, $110,000 grant from the American Heart Association Heartland Affiliate. “Obesity disproportionately burdens low-income, ethnic minority popul

The University of Surrey was pleased to host the seminar ‘The Older Workforce: an untapped resource’ yesterday evening. The seminar, supported by the Centre for Research into the Older Workforce (CROW) at UniS and The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), examined both business and individual attitudes to older workers.

In all industrialised countries the population is ageing and we have more people retired than ever before, while the workforce is shrinking. This