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Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Engagement with non-academic groups and actors – such as policy-makers, industry, charities and activist groups, communities, and the public – in the co-production of knowledge and real-world impact is increasingly important in academic research. Drawing on empirical research, interdisciplinary methodologies, and broad international perspectives, this collection offers a critical examination of the liminal space of interactions between policy and research as spaces of difference and engagement, showing them to be far from apolitical.
The authors consider what, and who, are present in these encounter spaces and examine how pre-existing perceptions about differences in social identity, positionality and knowledge can affect engagement, equity and research outcomes.
Bringing together new, multidisciplinary research, this book explores how children and young people across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas experience and cope with situations of poverty and precarity.
It looks at the impact of neoliberalism, austerity and global economic crisis, evidencing the multiple harms and inequalities caused. It also examines the different ways that children, young people and families ‘get by’ under these challenging circumstances, showing how they care for one another and envisage more hopeful socio-political futures.
Assumptions made about social class, accent and identity, and the links between them, have long been understood as a form of geographical referencing, a way of placing ourselves and of being placed by others, both socially and spatially (Donnelly et al, 2019; Savage, 2015; Skeggs, 2004). In this chapter I reflect on this form of identity making and social positioning in the context of research engagement with families, academic communities and policy makers alike, in an attempt to speak back to these various stakeholders. As I discuss, by locating people socially and spatially according to accent and dialect, leaps in understanding can be made about whether and how as a researcher your lived experiences are similar to those whom you research, and the extent to which you may be able to speak for others – if this is ever even preferable (also see Chapter Four in this volume). To do this I draw upon relevant literatures alongside insights from two ethnographic research projects in the north-west of England. Both studies explored everyday family relationships and practices (the first in 2007–9, the second in 2013–15), involving families and communities from varied socio-economic backgrounds. They also applied similar research designs, built predominantly on participant observation and supported by taped discussions, participatory tasks and photographs (for further details on methodology, see Hall, 2017). And, significantly, both projects were led by and carried out, with findings disseminated by the author, Sarah: a young(ish) white woman from a working-class family, born and raised in Barnsley, a small Yorkshire town in the north of England.
Drawing on thinking across human geography and sociology, and engaging with key concepts of caringscapes, personal lives and the lifecourse, this chapter argues for greater consideration of the impact that austerity can have on both personal and relational biographies. Findings in the form of ethnographic accounts and vignettes from recent research with families and communities in Greater Manchester, UK, regarding everyday life in austerity, and particularly using findings from a biographical mapping tool developed by the author, are reported. Using these data, the chapter makes the case for developing both concepts and methods for understanding social and personal lives in times of austerity and crisis.
Home and care are central aspects of everyday, personal lives, yet they are also shaped by political and economic change. Within a context of austerity, economic restructuring, worsening inequality and resource rationing, the policies and experiences around these key areas are shifting. Taking an interdisciplinary and feminist perspective, this book illustrates how economic and political changes affect everyday lives for many families and households in the UK. Setting out both new empirical material and new conceptual terrain, the authors draw on approaches from human geography, social policy, and feminist and political theory to explore issues of home and care in times of crisis.
Behavioural public policy interventions have been implemented across the world, targeting citizens, professionals, politicians and policymakers. This article examines poor quality reporting of interventions and methods in some behavioural public policy research. We undertake a review of existing reporting standards to assess their suitability for the behavioural public policy context. Our findings reveal that the adoption of standards can improve the reliability and reproducibility of research; provide a more robust evidence base from which to generalise findings; and convince sceptics of the value of behavioural public policy research. We conclude that use of the Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) checklist and the Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy (BCTTv1) would add rigour to intervention reporting. We argue there is a need for a combined tool to guide the design and reporting of randomised controlled trials, incorporating elements from the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) checklist and other sources.
Through personal anecdotes, this collection has zoomed in on certain aspects of how research is conducted and perceived, many of which often remain hidden in academia and beyond. The main message of the book is that these encounters and engagements matter, not only to researchers but also to the way the research is perceived in and percolates through into the ‘real world’. Rich in illustration of cases across different countries and contexts, the chapters in this volume offer a persuasive account of why it pays those involved in research or users of research to develop a more critical eye towards the research process and its impact. The aim of the book has been to expose the plethora of social interactions and characteristics that are manifested in encounters and the role of researchers, policy makers, industry representatives and civil society in negotiating difference in engagement and impact. A key message of the book is that difference is encountered in many ways, some less subtle than others, during every aspect of research and engagement. However, institutions are ill equipped to recognise and offer support and training in critically engaging with intersectionality and its implications in encounters and encounter spaces. This needs to change. This book serves as a testimony that the things that can shape research are often unexpected to the researchers themselves and that, while they may be invisible to others, they can be unsurmountable to some, shaping and moulding future research and reaching out beyond neatly labelled parts of research work, such as fieldwork and engagement.
