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
A team of researchers have discovered that high levels of discrimination could lead to an increase in mental health problems among gay men, lesbians and bi-sexual men and women.
In a report published today in the British Journal of Psychiatry, the team from Imperial College London, University College London and the University of Brighton found that high levels of discrimination including physical attacks and bullying could be linked to high levels of mental disorder.
Dr J
The problem of bullying in schools is being tackled by a innovative computer software ‘drama’ developed with the help of 1.24 million euros from the Information Society Technologies (IST) area of the EU’s Framework Funding Programme.
The VICTEC project is aimed at children between the ages of eight to twelve and uses self-animating 3D characters to create improvised dramas in a virtual school. The viewer is then asked to help one of the characters to deal with the problems they ar
While the U.S. work week, or hours spent working for pay by the average employee, has not significantly changed over the past 30 years, the demands of work and family are certainly colliding. According to research by sociologists, there is a growing split of the labor force into those squeezed by family and work time demands, usually at the top end of the pay scale, and those unable to find sufficient amounts of work, usually at the bottom of the pay scale. In addition, an ongoing transformation
Most older people are healthier, wealthier, and better educated than previous generations, but these gains have not been equal among today’s older Americans.
In 2003, there were almost 36 million people age 65 and over living in the United States, accounting for just over 12 percent of the total population. Most of these older Americans reported better health, greater wealth, and higher levels of education than older people in the past. However, some groups of older Americans are
Nearly nine out of ten seniors switch their primary care physicians because they are forced to – not by choice. That’s the finding of research published in the November edition of The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice.
Analyzing survey data from nearly 800 patients 65 and older, researchers found that 14 percent of seniors changed physicians in a single year. Of those, almost nine out of 10 changed their physicians involuntarily. Insurance-related reasons acc
Less livestock wealth, means less chance of access to arable land, grain production and friends. Kenyan and Dutch researchers Adano Roba and Karen Witsenburg have discovered that this is the hard truth faced by poor households in North Kenya. They therefore argue that poverty alleviation measures should also focus on guaranteeing better prices for livestock and a broader approach to developing drylands.
Between 1997 and 2000, Adano Roba and Karen Witsenburg studied the life and
Why are old habits so hard to break? A new study suggests that over time, our bad habits (such as smoking cigarettes or over eating) become automatic, learned behaviors. Even if we consciously try to put new good intentions into place, those previously learned habits remain stronger in more automatic, unconscious forms of memory.
This research may help explain why when we’re under stress we fall back into old habits, such as cheating on a new diet after a bad day at work. Stre
Children of immigrants share with their parents all problems connected with adaptation to new surroundings. It is difficult for the children to cope with new social environment and lifestyle, but their relationships with parents are better than those in native families. This conclusion is drawn by the Russian psychologists from Saratov.
Political and social-economic developments within the post-soviet space have induced mass departure of Russian people from newly formed states.
Malnutrition in the first few years of life leads to antisocial and aggressive behavior throughout childhood and late adolescence, according to a new University of Southern California study.
“These are the first findings to show that malnutrition in the early postnatal years is associated with behavior problems through age 17,” said Jianghong Liu, a postdoctoral fellow with USC’s Social Science Research Institute and the lead author of the study published in the American Jou
In recent decade, the words about “religious revival” have entered the language of Russian mass media. What changes in people’s consciousness are implied by these words? Russian psychologists have investigated the issue.
The Yuri Levada Analytical Center has published the data of the All-Russian representative surveys on the problem of religiousness, the surveys having been conducted annually since 1989 up to now. As only approximately 4 percent of survey respondents called the
“Mobile phones are more widely utilised across all strata of society, in terms of income and education, than the PC,” says Ben Anderson of the University of Essex, UK. “Government departments may want to think in terms of text messages rather than Web pages,” if they want a more inclusive communication channel.
Anderson is giving an example from the results of the e-Living IST project, which was completed at the end of June 2004. The project attempted to find out if social be
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