#WISERD2016 WISERD Annual Conference 2016 WISERD Annual Conference 2016 Abstract Booklet 13th and 14th July 2016 Swansea University #WISERD2016 @WISERDNews 1 WISERD Annual Conference 2016 #WISERD2016 DAY 1: Wednesday 13 July Welcome: 9.30am Ian Rees Jones, Director Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD) Ian Rees Jones was appointed Professor of Sociological Research at Cardiff University in 2012 and is currently the Director of the Wales Institute for Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD). He is interested in theoretical and empirical work on social change and processes of social change. He is currently engaged in a series of research projects that addresses processes of social change and their impact on individuals, institutions, communities and civil society. He is also undertaking research specifically addressing ageing, later life and the experience of dementia. This includes work looking at class and health inequalities in later life, generational relations, social engagement and participation and changes in consumption patterns as people age. He is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences. 2 #WISERD2016 WISERD Annual Conference 2016 Welcome Address: The Right Honourable Rhodri Morgan Chancellor of Swansea University The Services/Manufacturing Balance and the Welsh Economic Recovery The Right Honourable Rhodri Morgan was the First Minister for Wales from 2000-2009. He was educated at St John’s College Oxford and Harvard University. After working as the Industrial Development Officer for South Glamorgan County Council from 1974 to 1980 he became Head of the European Commission Office in Wales form 1980 to 1987. Elected Labour Member of Parliament for Cardiff West in 1987, he was the Opposition Front Bench Spokesman on Energy from 1988-92 and Welsh Affairs from 1992-1997. Rhodri Morgan announced his intention to stand down as Leader of the Labour Party in Wales on 1 October 2009, and stepped down as First Minister for Wales on 8 December 2009. He was elected as Chair of the European and External Affairs Committee on 26 January 2010, and was also a Member of the Assembly’s Constitutional Affairs Committee and Legislation Committee No.2. 3 WISERD Annual Conference 2016 #WISERD2016 Keynote Speaker: 9.45am Ottón Solís President of the Citizens’ Action Party, Costa Rica Corruption, Democracy and Development: The Impossible Wedlock Chair: David Blackaby, WISERD Co-Director and Professor of Economics, Swansea University Ottón Solís is the founder, president and three times presidential candidate of the Citizens’ Action Party (Partido Accion Cindadana) in Costa Rica. The 2006 presidential election required a recount in which he lost by a narrow margin. He has held visiting positions at the Universities of Florida, Notre Dame and Costa Rica. Ottón Solís currently has a seat in the Costa Rica Parliament and has headed the Congressional Finance Committee and the Appointments Committee. 4 #WISERD2016 WISERD Annual Conference 2016 Session One: 11:00 - 12.30 Parallel 1A Title: Capabilities, Capitals and Childcare: Complex decision making in public services Author: David Dallimore, Bangor University Public services are increasingly being framed within a context of ‘choice’ with service users portrayed as consumers of health, education or other services with the assumption that the best and most sustainable way to deliver those services is to improve the expectations and entitlements of those who use them. Competition between public service providers is seen in many welfare states as the best way to improve quality - whether this is between schools, care providers or hospitals - as the citizen consumer is empowered to express choice. Using data from 45 narrative interviews with parents this research proposes a model that challenges the notion of consumer ‘rational choice’ in situations of complex decision-making in public services. Taking the simple parental decision of whether to use formal childcare (in daycare centres, for example) or informal childcare (with relatives or friends), it suggests that what is often perceived to be a predictable choice based on factors such as economics is in fact a multifaceted accommodation of internal and external variables. Title: Challenging deficit models of poverty Authors: Duncan Holtom and Sarah Lloyd-Jones, People and Work Unit Political and social expectations of schools have never been higher and their failure to attain the academic, social and civil outcomes required is often attributed to the perceived weakness of children and young people and their families, communities, teachers, and school leaders. This “deficit” model dominates the policy discourse. The paper will critically assess this discourse. Drawing upon People and Work’s action research and evaluation work during the last 30 years in Welsh communities and schools, it will explore the relationship between children and young people and their families, communities, teachers and schools in order to elucidate: how weaknesses (“deficits”) in areas like the “home learning environment”, aspirations and school effectiveness explain the strong relationship between poverty and low attainment at the level of individual children/young people, neighbourhoods and schools; the extent to which “assets” or resources are effectively exploited (or mobilised); the barriers that constrain their use or impact; and their implications for achievement and resilience; the impact of cuts in public services (e.g. social services and SEN specialist services); and the implications for the Welsh policy and research agendas. Title: An experiential account of using cognitive interviewing techniques within a repeated measures design in the development of ONS services questionnaires Authors: Bethan Huxley, and Gentiana Roarson, Office for National Statistics The service sector is notoriously difficult to measure with both conceptual and practical challenges. The speed of change within this sector means that developing and updating the ONS suite of official establishment surveys needs to demonstrate pace and flexibility in its approach. The aim of the presentation is to provide a practical account of the experience and the challenges encountered in using cognitive interviewing techniques within a repeated measure design and under project specific constraints while developing surveys measuring the size and the structure of the service sector in the UK. The work consisted of the redesign of industry specific paper questionnaires to a format suited for electronic data collection, while at the same time aligning the constructs intended for capture with international regulatory frameworks for establishment statistics. 5 WISERD Annual Conference 2016 #WISERD2016 The presentation discusses the challenges encountered in conducting sound methodological research in a short period of time. Cognitive interviewing techniques were used in pretesting to evaluate different questionnaires in a repeated measure design method, while controlling for order effects. This approach facilitated the timely identification of issues and problems that the design team had not initially recognised, including skip patterns and layouts. This in turn allowed the research team to gain insight into respondent’s interpretation of survey constructs within each layout option, aided the process of identifying areas of concern and informed changes to survey items in order to reduce survey error. Parallel 1B—Symposium: Trade Unions in Wales Title: What Do Unions Do In Wales? The Case of Job Satisfaction Authors: Alex Bryson, UCL/IOE and Rhys Davies, Cardiff University National level studies of job satisfaction and trade union membership consistently find that members of trade unions exhibit lower levels of job satisfaction than non-members. Using three nationally representative data sets (the Skills and Employment Survey, the Workplace Employment Relations Survey and the British Household Panel Study), we explore variations in job satisfaction by trade union membership status across different regions of the UK with varying rates of trade union membership. Utilising various measures of self-reported job satisfaction, we firstly show that employees are happier in Wales than anywhere else in Britain, despite experiencing lower job quality and higher union membership. In keeping with earlier national-level estimates, union membership is generally associated with greater job dissatisfaction across the regions of Great Britain and this relationship is generally strongest in those areas where union membership is highest. The noticeable exception to this is Wales. We argue that the economic and social history in Wales has created conditions conducive to a different type of trade unionism in Wales, one which has its roots in a wider sense of community, and which predisposes both workers and employers to perceive trade unionism in a positive light. Title: Trade Union learning activity in Wales: institutional revitalisation and the case for social partnership Author: Katy Huxley, Cardiff University The trade union learning agenda promotes a social partnership approach to engagement between trade unions, employers and government over employee skill development. In this presentation Lévesque and Murray’s (2010) model of trade union capacity is employed to interrogate the potential impact of trade union learning activity upon trade union power resource and trade union capabilities. Power resources include infrastructural