The ESRC-funded Research Centre on Micro-Social Change (MiSoC) based at ISER begins a new five year cycle of work this week, dedicated to research on the process of social change. The MiSoC research programme will examine how behaviours, outcomes and attitudes for individuals, households and families are influenced by, and themselves influence, the wider processes of macro-social change.
MiSoC is directed jointly by Mike Brewer, Professor of Economics and David Voas, Professor of Population Studies, both at Institute for Social and Economic Research
(ISER) at the University of Essex, and contains a team of experts at Essex, with collaborators across the UK and in other countries.
MiSoC research is both substantive, addressing important social issues, and methodological, contributing to the development of research methods and the building of research capacity. It is based primarily on
household- and individual-level survey data and aims to take a dynamic, longitudinal view rather than a static cross-section view; and to allow for the inter-relatedness of different aspects of social change, and the endogeneity and selection effects that are typical of social research problems. MiSoC research aims to be relevant to policy and practitioner research needs, but to inform the development of policy and practice rather than to evaluate specific policies or practices.
The new programme, for the 2014-2019 period, is titled “Understanding individual and family behaviours in a new era of uncertainty and change” and covers three main areas.
The first area examines how individuals and families are affected by and react to changes in their life circumstances, including shocks to their health, disability, income and living arrangements. Researchers will pay special attention to the way that new welfare systems, such as changes to benefits, protect households. The study will make a major contribution to important debates on poverty by advancing new ways of measuring poverty, and with new evidence on the dynamics of poverty.
The second investigates how new members of society – children, young people and new migrants –develop and are integrated into it. Researchers will analyse how parents, school, peers and society interact to influence the development of children’s mental, social and physical skills, and the long-term consequences of childhood disadvantage. The study will also look at how some people get more out of gaining a university degree than others. This study will provide new evidence on the integration of ethnic minorities, and how this varies across individuals. Researchers will look at the experience of new migrants, and how characteristics and behaviours are passed between generations in migrant families.
The third area of research investigates how values, attitudes, expectations, tastes or preferences and identity are formed, and how they are linked to our education, employment and family set-up. A better understanding of this will help policy-makers come up with the best policies to help more people live successful, happy lives.
How we research the important issues facing society today is just as important as the research itself, so MiSoC’s integrated programme of methodological work will help researchers to better examine the impact of specific policies, and to advise on new ways to handle the sometimes incomplete information which comes from survey data they are using in their research.
The programme of research will be of interest to a wide range of organisations involved in policy debates, policy design and practice, in a range of domains, located in the UK and other countries, and provide evidence informing key policy choices, such as the balance between intervening late or early in children’s lives, the role of family and wider society in an individual’s development, the choice between universal or targeted support or safety nets for the vulnerable, and the relative roles of values, expectations and preferences versus structure in determining how we act.
Professor Anthony Forster, Vice Chancellor at the University of Essex said:
“MiSoC has built an excellent reputation for the impact of its interdisciplinary work over the past 25 years. I look forward to the next five years with ISER’s high profile researchers working on vitally important studies, which inform policy on a range of issues both in the UK and internationally.”