Task-based learning approaches for supporting the development of social science researchers’ critical data skills

Conducting social science research is a complex process, and social science students face a number of learning challenges in order to develop their skills. Moreover, new sources and types of data including so-called big data are providing new opportunities for research, but also pose methodological challenges. In this article, we explore a task-based learning approach for teaching social science research methods. We draw on evidence from two case study learning tasks: (i) the collection and analysis of Twitter data; and (ii) designing and conducting a face-to-face and online survey. The students were guided to co-lead the tasks, apply their knowledge and then to critically reflect. The pedagogical framework of task-based learning provides opportunities to embed learning in new ways by integrating knowledge, practice and critical reflection. Task-based learning can create a dynamic learning environment and can empower students to develop their identities as researchers.     

Social policy and embedded evaluation: Assessing the impact of a food insecurity project in the United Kingdom

Social policy making needs to involve robust evaluation to assess its impact. In this article, a social policy intervention focused on tackling food insecurity amongst vulnerable people is examined and the benefits and challenges of using an embedded approach to evaluation are considered. Food insecurity is defined as not always having the economic, social, and physical resources to ensure a sufficient supply of nutritionally appropriate food. Evidence suggests that food insecurity in the United Kingdom is increasing in the context of long-term poverty, austerity, insecure employment, rising living costs, low pay, and cuts to welfare and public services. An embedded evaluation was conducted involving interviews with the intervention participants and observations of a series of cooking and food budgeting classes. The findings suggest that the classes had a positive impact on many of the participants, who felt more confident about cooking and valued the shared experience. However, given the acute problems facing many of the participants including long-term poverty, policies aimed at tackling food insecurity need to go beyond cooking and food budgeting skills. The embedded evaluation approach contributed towards the overall impact of the intervention by providing insights that led to changes as part of an iterative process during the intervention rather than in the form of a final report after its completion. An embedded evaluation-based approach can be resource intensive, and the role of the evaluators can present challenges, but it can help to bridge the gap between intervention design, delivery, and social change.     

English in contemporary Sweden: Perceptions,policies, and narrated practices

This paper compares trends in Sweden's language planning and language policies, and particularly the rationale underlying recent government legislation, to actual language use at the ‘grass roots’ of society, in order to investigate the extent to which academic and official rationales are confirmed by observed language practices. The passing of the Swedish Language Act of 2009 followed debates in academia and the media which not infrequently characterised English as a major threat to the survival of Swedish. However, despite the strong belief in the utility of English widely held in Sweden, the Swedish language is the preferred language of Swedes as well as immigrants in most domains. These results reveal a contradiction between the arguments put forward by a number of academics, educators and journalists concerning the ‘threat’ of English, and the language practices of ordinary folk in their daily lives.     

The pattern of mortality change in Latin America

Using 69 new life tables recently made by Arriaga for Latin American countries by stable-population methods, the authors examine the mortality trends for more countries and more periods of history than have previously been available for analysis. For the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the new tables yield a substantially lower life-expectancy than that shown by previously published life tables; for recent decades the difference is smaller, though in the same direction. As a consequence, the new tables show a speed of mortality decline in Latin America greater than the speed hitherto assumed. When the trend is analyzed in terms of economic development, it appears that the decline was extremely slow in the more backward Latin American countries until around 1930, whereas in the more advanced countries of the region, a more rapid decline had set in before that. After 1930, however, in both groups of countries the pace of decline was faster than ever, and it was virtually the same for both groups, suggesting that after that date public health measures were exerting a strong influence independently of local economic development. This result is confirmed by comparison with the past history of now developed countries; the mortality decline in Latin America after 1930 was much faster than it was historically at the same level in the industrial countries. As compared with other underdeveloped countries today, the unprecedented decline of mortality in Latin America is typical. In most underdeveloped countries, whether in Latin America or elsewhere, mortality change seems increasingly independent of economic improvement and more dependent on the importation of preventive medicine and public health from the industrial countries.     

Keeping a close watch– the rise of self-surveillance and the threat of digital exposure

Digital technologies have given rise to increased occurrences of self-surveillance and forms of 'virtual vigilantism'. This has progressed from key moments such as the video recording of the Rodney King incident, to recording human rights abuses, to citizen grassroots surveillance. From this has emerged the phenomenon known as citizen journalism where recent urban crises have been recorded on mobile phones by the individuals involved. Also on the increase are forms of mob vigilantism, or 'participatory panopticon'; examples here include phone images spread over the Internet as severe forms of 'community punishment'. I argue that these unmediated forms of bottom-up surveillance – sousveillance – show the early signs of a new type of civil responsibility that stands unregulated and without restraint. This paper addresses the issues of increased individualised self-surveillance and asks whether this is the consequence of a personalised resistance to an ever increasing surveillance society.     

The pattern of puerto rican fertility

The vital statistics of Puerto Rico for the period 1943–8 reveal a continuation of high crude birth rates and age-specific fertility rates. A careful examination of the figures does not suggest that there is as yet any decline in fertility, though with increasing urbanization such a decline may be expected to take place in the not too distant future.     

Declining birth rates and growing populations

Excitement over declining fertility in the Third World needs caution for several reasons. First, it is now too late to solve the world's population problem. Second, the common belief that the birth decline is widespread and is affecting virtually all developing nations goes beyond the data. Third, the notion that birth rates are declining with great speed is not true when the rate is measured against either urbanization or mortality decline. Fourth, a sample of countries indicates that the decline is now slowing rather than accelerating. Fifth, the idea that the declines are due mainly to family planning, and can therefore be assured of continuance in the future, seems unwarranted.Revised version of a paper given at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, September 7, 1982.     

Differential fertility in Puerto Rico

In spite of high overall fertility Puerto Rico exhibits fertility differentials resembling those in areas where birth rates are low. The fertility of whites exceeds that of non-whites, educational standards influence child-bearing and there is a rural urban differential of long standing. These differences are documented in the paper and their implication for future population development in Puerto Rico is discussed