Capturing the temporal elements of individuals’ experiencesĀ ā thatās something I am setting out to do. I really hope I can achieve it! I am a first year PhD student and this blog post piece is about my plans to use a longitudinal qualitative design, primarily using interview-based techniques. My project is about educational experiences for forced migrant parents as they go through the asylum process in Wales. (The term āforced migrantsā means, for the purposes of my work, asylum seekers and refugees.) Continue reading
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Measuring social class: is a multi-dimensional approach needed?
A good place to start this would be through posing a question:
If an upper-class individual (defined economically) loses their job, do they then cease to be upper-class and become working-class or a member of the precariat (social class below working-class and characterised by precarious employment relations/unemployment)?
Your answer is likely to be no, and this gets to the central argument of this blog post: an individualsā social class is not defined only through their occupational status, or the status of their parent(s). It is instead a combination of the economic, cultural and social practices and resources they are able to draw upon (Reay, 1998;Savage et al, 2014). Despite the increasing recognition within the social sciences of the multi-dimensional nature of social class there is still little innovation in terms of conceptualising social class in this way in quantitative research aiming to measureĀ social class. This is mainly due to the dominance of the NS-SECĀ (National Statistics Socio-economic Classification) in national survey and statistical research, which defines social class occupationally, and the absence of any attempts to broaden the conceptualisation of social class in quantitative forms of research. Continue reading
Freedom of Information Requests as a Tool for Social Science Research
Following the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulations earlier this year, we are now more aware than ever of the proliferation of information produced through every day interactions, the nature of its storage and our rights to protect that information. But as a research community, those in the social sciences appear to be less aware of the individual right to access public information through Freedom of Information requests (FOI) and their potential to generate unique data. It has been reported that the majority of requests made since the introduction of this right have been from an “inquisitive general public”, demonstrating the lack of interest from researchers. Continue reading