What is ‘impact’? Learning from examples across the professional life course

Author(s):  
Tina Haux

The inclusion of research impact in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework in the UK (REF2014) was greeted with scepticism by the academic community, not least due to the challenges of defining and measuring the nature and significance of impact. A new analytical framework of the nature of impact is developed in this chapter and it distinguishes between policy creation, direction, discourse and practice. This framework is then applied to the top-ranked impact case studies in the REF2014 from the Social Work and Social Policy sub-panel and the ESRC Early Career Impact Prize Winners in order to assess impact across the life-course of academics.  

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan M. Paddock ◽  
Beau Kilmer ◽  
Jonathan P. Caulkins ◽  
Marika J. Booth ◽  
Rosalie L. Pacula

Trajectories of drug use are usually studied empirically by following over time persons sampled from either the general population (most often youth and young adults) or from heavy or problematic users (e.g., arrestees or those in treatment). The former, population-based samples, describe early career development, but miss the years of use that generate the greatest social costs. The latter, selected populations, help to summarize the most problematic use, but cannot easily explain how people become problem users nor are they representative of the population as a whole. This paper shows how microsimulation can synthesize both sorts of data within a single analytical framework, while retaining heterogeneous influences that can impact drug use decisions over the life course. The RAND Marijuana Microsimulation Model is constructed for marijuana use, validated, and then used to demonstrate how such models can be used to evaluate alternative policy options aimed at reducing use over the life course.


2012 ◽  
pp. 138-154
Author(s):  
Richard Ennals

At a time of change and disorder, this article argues that the whole range of government policies need to be reviewed, and reconceptualised in terms of generations and relations between generations. This article concentrates on the UK, from a European perspective, and with particular reference to the Scandinavian Model. In the context of crisis, new initiatives are required, taking account of transitions during the life course, relations between generations, and sustainability. The perspective of the Ageing Workforce casts light across the spectrum of policy areas. It is a moving picture, not a snapshot.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATHERINE E. SMITH ◽  
ELLEN STEWART

AbstractOf all the social sciences, social policy is one of the most obviously policy-orientated. One might, therefore, expect a research and funding agenda which prioritises and rewards policy relevance to garner an enthusiastic response among social policy scholars. Yet, the social policy response to the way in which major funders and the Research Excellence Framework (REF) are now prioritising ‘impact’ has been remarkably muted. Elsewhere in the social sciences, ‘research impact’ is being widely debated and a wealth of concerns about the way in which this agenda is being pursued are being articulated. Here, we argue there is an urgent need for social policy academics to join this debate. First, we employ interviews with academics involved in health inequalities research, undertaken between 2004 and 2015, to explore perceptions, and experiences, of the ‘impact agenda’ (an analysis which is informed by a review of guidelines for assessing ‘impact’ and relevant academic literature). Next, we analyse high- and low-scoring REF2014 impact case studies to assess whether these concerns appear justified. We conclude by outlining how social policy expertise might usefully contribute to efforts to encourage, measure and reward research ‘impact’.


1986 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pat M. Keith

A model of singleness in later life was developed to show how the social context may influence the personal and social resources of older, unmarried persons. The unmarried (especially the divorced) will be an increasing proportion of the aged population in the future, and they will require more services than will the married. Role transitions of the unmarried over the life course, finances, health, and social relationships of older singles are discussed with implications for practice and future research.


This book presents an up-to-date and diverse review of the best in social policy scholarship over the past year. The book considers current issues and critical debates in the UK and the international social policy field. It contains vital research on race in social policy higher education and analyses how welfare states and policies address the economic and social hardship of young people. The chapters consider the impacts of austerity on the welfare state, homelessness, libraries and other social policy areas. The book begins by asking what are the pressing racial inequalities in contemporary British society and to what extent is social policy as a discipline equipped to analyse and respond to them. It then discusses the key analysis and messages from the Social Policy Association (SPA) race audit, looking at the challenges facing the discipline, and moves on to examine the experience and views of young British Muslim women in Sunderland. Attention is given to the ‘othering’ of migrants, family welfare resources on young people's transition to economic independence, youths' labour market trajectories in Sweden, innaccessibility to community youth justice in England and Wales, benefits entitlement of different UK families, and the book concludes with the final chapters focussing on the impacts of austerity.


2020 ◽  
pp. 215686932091653
Author(s):  
Melissa Thompson ◽  
Lindsey Wilkinson ◽  
Hyeyoung Woo

Although originally considered to be a disorder of childhood, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is increasingly being diagnosed for the first time in adulthood. Yet we know little about the social characteristics (race, gender, and social class) of those first labeled in adulthood, how these differ from those first labeled in childhood/adolescence, and whether the ADHD label is applied proportionately across social groups given ADHD symptomology. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the current research considers how typifications of ADHD affect application of the ADHD label in childhood/adolescence and in adulthood. Results indicate that even after controlling for ADHD symptoms, social characteristics are important predictors of the ADHD label in childhood/adolescence but are less influential in predicting ADHD labeling in adulthood. Additionally, results indicate the importance of race in moderating the association between childhood ADHD symptoms and application of the ADHD label throughout the life course.


2018 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho

Analyzing emigration, immigration, and re-migration concurrently, under the framework of contemporaneous migration, directs us toward evaluating what it means to stake claims to different components of citizenship in more than one political community across a migrant’s life course. This chapter examines the way the Mainland Chinese migrants negotiate social reproduction concerns that extend across international borders, their multiple national affiliations, and aspirations for recognition and rights as they journey between China and Canada across the life course. Patterns of re-migration are transforming the social relations of citizenship, re-spatializing rights, obligations, and belonging. Source and destination countries are also reversed during repeated re-migration or transnational sojourning. Transnational sojourning forges citizenship constellations that interlink how migrants understand and experience citizenship across different migration sites.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Copestake

This paper contributes to an ongoing conversation between development studies (DS) and social policy (SP) as academic fields, particularly in the UK. Using Andrew Abbott's analysis of the social sciences as an evolving system of knowledge lineages (KLs), it reflects on the status of DS and its relationship with SP. Defining DS as a distinctive KL centred on critical analysis of ideas and projects for advancing human well-being, I suggest that it has lost coherence even as research into international development thrives. Indeed it is easy to envisage its gradual assimilation into other KLs, including SP. The two increasingly overlap in their analysis of the causes of relative poverty and injustice, and what can be done to address them, within countries and globally. Strengthening links between the two fields can be justified as a political project, even at the risk of some loss of plurality and plenitude across the social sciences.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Hargreaves

Abstract This article engages with community-led responses to religious and political forms of violence within British Muslim communities. The focus here is on ‘bottom-up’, community-led responses to religious and political forms of violence, a relatively underrepresented topic, given the extent of policy and research literature concerning the nature and effects of ‘top-down’ counter-terrorism and counter-extremist initiatives such as the UK Government’s Prevent strategy. The article argues two main points. First, that solutions to the problems of extremism, radicalisation and terrorism (to use the linguistic framework of the UK Government), or to the problems of religious and political forms of violence (the term used here), might be found as much within the realms of religion, culture, family and community as within the realms of security, policing and legislation. Second, that an analytical framework for the development of community-led approaches may be developed via consideration of the social psychological concept of resilience.


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