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UK Body to Support Social Science Research
In the UK, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has awarded £1.1m to establish the Survey Resources Network (SRN), a body which will promote best practice in survey research, provide online information resources for researchers and link academics, policy-makers and survey practitioners.
A consortium led by the University of Essex will run the project, which aims to support the work of the UK's research community and raise the standards of social science research at home and abroad.
The consortium includes seven organisations: the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), the UK Data Archive (UKDA), the Department of Sociology, the National Centre for Social Research, the LSE Methodology Institute, the Institute of Education and the University of Southampton. ISER's Peter Lynn will lead the new body as Principal Investigator and co-director.
The SRN will co-ordinate survey research training and information, and will advise the ESRC on strategic matters relating to survey use in the UK. New training programmes wil give researchers and students the chance to visit survey and research organisations, observe and take part in survey work. The new online resources will include a large searchable repository of questionnaires.
Lynn comments: 'As well as making sure researchers are properly equipped to make the best use of the rich survey data available in the UK, this highly influential project will help improve the quality of future surveys.'
The ESRC is online at www.esrc.ac.uk .
In September WISERD, a new centralised social research body was established for Wales, with part of its £9m joint funding coming from ESRC.
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