CCSR Seminars

Throughout the term, CCSR has a regular seminar series. Seminars are held from 4pm - 5.30pm Room 1.70 on the first floor of the Humanities Bridgeford Street building (upstairs from CCSR).

All are welcome and no booking is necessary. Queries to 0161-275-4721.

A poster showing all the seminars in this series is available as a Word file and PDF. CCSR also runs an informal lunchtime seminar series.

If you wish to receive email announcements of upcoming seminars, join our mailing list. Outlook, iCal or other calendaring users can have an automatic entry in their diary by subscribing to our feed of seminar dates

2nd October 2007
Income effects and educational progress: methodological puzzles, statistical problems and substantive findings. — Professor Ian Plewis, CCSR (Slides).

9th October 2007
Migrant doctors in the NHS: Looking ahead through a rear view mirror — Professor Aneez Esmail, Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, University of Manchester.

16th October 2007
Understanding children's kinship. — Professor Jennifer Mason, Co-Director, Morgan Centre and Director, ESRC Real Life Methods Node, University of Manchester.
(Slides).

In this paper I will explore children's experiences of kin relationships, drawing on data from a study called Children Creating Kinship conducted between 2004-2007. The study explored relationships and affinities between children and those whom they saw as their relatives or kinsfolk, especially those outside of the parent-child range. It used a range of qualitative methods, including 'creative interviews', photo elicitation based on pictures taken by the children, and the 'circles map' method of charting relationship configurations.
The paper has both a substantive and a methodological focus. The substantive focus will be on our findings about children's experiences of contact and communication with kin, and what this tells us about what children's kinship is like and how it operates. Methodologically the paper will engage with whether and how contact and communication can or should be 'measured', and more broadly with how we can research and explain relational practices/experiences such as kinship.

23rd October 2007
"Virtuous Citizenship", Religion, citizenship and ethnicity in the African Diaspora in London. — Dr. Mattia Fumanti, The University of Keele, Staffordshire

The paper examines the way in which Ghanaian Methodists in London construct a complex discourse in which ethnicity and citizenship appear irreconcilable and yet are inextricably linked. In fact Ghanaian Methodists, besides their church of worship, are for the great part organised through highly encapsulated fellowships. These are characterised by the exclusive usage of language, a specific style of worship and the mutual assistance of its members through welfare practices.

30th October 2007
School assignment, school choice and social mobility. — Professor Simon Burgess, The Centre For Market And Public Organisation, University of Bristol.

We estimate the chances of poor and non-poor children getting places in good schools, analysing the relationship between poverty, location and school assignment. Our dataset allows us to measure location and distance very precisely. The simple unconditional difference in probabilities of attending a good school is substantial. We run an analysis that controls completely for location, exploiting within-street variation and controlling for other personal characteristics. Children from poor families are significantly less likely to go to good schools. We show that the lower chance of poor children attending a good school is essentially unaffected by the degree of choice.

6th November 2007
Happy places, happy houses, happy people? A multi-level model of happiness. — Dr. Mark Tranmer and Dr. D.Ballas, CCSR and Dept of Geography, University of Sheffield.

Attempting to determine the factors that make individuals happy has long represented a great research challenge. There have been numerous studies of happiness and well-being issues across academic disciplines and from different perspectives . This paper attempts to build on this type of work by highlighting the multi-level dimension in attaining happiness and well-being.

Multi-level modelling techniques can be used to examine the variation in happiness at different levels simultaneously: between districts or regions and how much it varies between individuals within districts, regions and households. This paper presents a multi-level modelling approach to the analysis of happiness and well-being.

13th November 2007
Sleepwalking to segregation: people, places and identity. — Dr. Bethan Thomas, Department of Geography, University of Sheffield.(slides)

Recent debates on identity in Britain have focused on ethnicity and religion. However, our identities encompass much more than that. Exploring the myriad of different identities that make up the social landscape of early twenty first century Britain shows a very segregated country. Further investigation of the mixing that occurs in each neighbourhood in Britain reveals a startling lack of social integration. Mapping this mixing reveals that of the possible combinations that could occur, very few in fact do so.

20th November 2007
The gulf between conceptualisation and measurement in social research: why is it so difficult to bridge? — Professor Martin Bulmer, Director Question Bank, University of Surrey.

This paper will consider the gulf which can separate proponents of measurement in social research from those who are more sceptical about the value of such measurement, by examining particularly the role of conceptualisation. Some classical sociological objections to the standardisation implicit in social survey research will be considered. Routes to the formulation and testing of conceptual schemes will be outlined, and ways of reconciling irreconcilable standpoints will be examined.

27th November 2007
Statistical inference on non-independent units: 'Galton's Problem' and a century of progress — Professor Paul Voss, Wisconsin University, USA.

4th December 2007
The development and assessment of a quality of life measure in the context of ageing — Professor Dick Wiggins, Institute of Education, University of London. (Slides).

This paper describes the conceptual development of a self-enumerated scale of quality of life (CASP-19) and presents an empirical evaluation of its structure using a combination of exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic approaches across three different survey settings for older people living in England and Wales in the new millennium. All evaluations are conducted using MPlus which allows the analyst to evaluate the properties of the scale for a set of multivariate categorical items which are subject to item non-response. CASP-19 is a subjective measure of well-being derived from an explicit theory of human need spanning four life domains: control, autonomy, self-realisation and pleasure. Put formally, CASP-19 is a self-reported summative index consisting of 19 Likert scale items. The three survey settings include a postal survey of 263 people in early old age followed up from childhood when the respondents were first interviewed in the 1930's, the first wave (2002) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA_1) and the eleventh wave of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS_11) also conducted in 2002. These nationally representative surveys consisted of 9300 and 6471 respondents aged 55 years and older. The Boyd-Orr sample provides an exploratory context for the evaluation and ELSA_1 together with BHPS_11 provide the opportunity for confirmatory analyses of three measurement models. There is some support for the use of CASP-19 as a stand alone summative index. However, the analysis reveals that a shortened 12-item scale which combines the life domains 'control and autonomy' in a second order measurement model is the recommended model for analysts.

 

Details, slides and papers from the previous series' are still available: Spring 2007, Autumn 2006, Spring 2006, Autumn 2005, Spring 2005, Autumn 2004, Spring 2004, Autumn 2003 or the current series.