Applied Quantitative Methods Network: Phase II (Resubmission of proposal)

The Applied Quantitative Methods Network (AQMeN) Phase II represents an ambitious and wide-ranging set of activities that will: exploit the UK's social science data infrastructure through a programme of research, expand the boundaries of academic knowledge, contribute to the evidence base supporting public policy decision making, build capacity amongst social scientists in quantitative methods, create new toolkits and resources for data users, and improve public understanding about complex social issues affecting the UK. Phase I of AQMeN, which began in 2009, focused on addressing a major gap in quantitative skills amongst Scottish social scientists. However, engagement with policy makers during Phase I highlighted gaps between academic research and policy-based evidence in key areas of government importance which they were not able to address because of limited capacity to conduct advanced statistical research. This proposal attempts to address some of these gaps. Our main goal is to develop a dynamic and pioneering set of projects that will improve our understanding of current social issues in the UK and provide policy makers and practitioners with the evidence to build a better future. We focus on three key strands of research: * Education and Social Stratification - This strand aims to better understand the ways in which social class differences in entry to, progression in and attainment at tertiary education affect individuals' labour market outcomes and their civic participation. The proposed research will provide an in-depth analysis of individuals' educational and labour market trajectories and will try to explain how educational differentiation of curriculum and status shapes individuals' life chances. * Crime and Victimisation - This strand will seek to explain the dramatic change in crime rates in Scotland and many other jurisdictions. It will also draw on international data to understand and compare the determinants and impact of criminal careers amongst populations of offenders. This analysis can be used to identify the potential impact of interventions and national crime reduction policies. * Urban Segmentation and Inequality - This strand will create innovative new measures of social segmentation and combine these with cutting-edge longitudinal and sorting-model techniques to explore the causes of neighbourhood segmentation, household location choice and neighbourhood inequalities. It will also explore the effect of such inequalities on life chances and wellbeing for individuals and communities and the implications for how we design interventions through the development of policy simulation toolkits. Bringing the research strands together represents an innovative approach to social science research. For example, we will attempt to understand the various roles that education, crime and urban segmentation play in determining life chances and outcomes. We can also derive robust models of the economic costs and the benefits of policy interventions by taking account of the links between education, crime and urban segmentation. Our programme of research will feed into a broader set of training activities and knowledge exchange events that will benefit the wider social science community. Doctoral students will be the primary beneficiaries of our training activities, thus boosting capacity in quantitative methods skills amongst the emerging members of the academy, and the training manuals, dissemination materials and policy toolkits that we develop will leave a longstanding legacy for future researchers. Our programme will place UK social science on the international map as exemplars of how to do statistically well-informed policy research, how to exploit existing high-quality data resources, and how to embed a programme of training in these activities so that the next generation of researchers emerges with a deep understanding of advanced research techniques applied to society's needs.