Health of Social Science Strategy

In response to concerns from the social science research community and the findings of the ESRC's Demographic Review of UK Social Science, which found the 'health' of the research base to be variable - we developed a Health of Social Science Strategy.

This work involved identifying a number of priority disciplines where ESRC is undertaking capacity building work in partnership with individual communities.

Building capacity through Doctoral Training Centres

To ensure that sufficient capacity is developed in priority areas, we have provided a series of benchmarks for our Doctoral Training Centres (DTCs) which offer a guide to the proportion of students that we aim to fund in each discipline. DTCs have been asked to use these benchmarks as a guide when making their own allocations. We will monitor the proportions of studentships, especially in priority areas, at the annual reporting stage.

The priority areas are: Language Based Area Studies, Economics, Education, Management and Business Studies, Social Work, Empirical Studies in Law and Quantitative Methods.

The benchmarks include a percentage guide – for Economics this is 10 per cent, Management and Business 7 per cent and for Quantitative Methods (QM) 10 per cent. The QM proportion is based on the number of students we would like to attract the Quantitative Methods Enhanced Stipend and it is not a disciplinary pool in its own right. The proportion could be spread across any social science discipline.

Quantitative methods

A key part of our overall research methods strategy has been to combat an enduring skills deficit in quantitative research methods across the social science research base. We have been working in collaboration to develop a strategy to address the current shortages. More recently these efforts have been given added momentum through significant co-funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC).

The strategy recognises that there is a need to enhance quantitative skills across the full breadth of the 'educational lifecourse' from building new capacity at the undergraduate level to refreshing the quantitative skills of mid-career academics that teach undergraduates and supervise PhD students ('training the trainers').

Economics and economics of health

In response to the International Benchmarking Review of Economics (PDF, 734Kb), we ran a targeted studentship competition in macroeconomics in 2009, and a call for postdoctoral research fellowships in 2010.

The National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the ESRC have launched a major initiative to boost research capacity in economics of health. Economics is of increasing importance in healthcare management to inform and improve decision making on, for example, the clinical and cost effectiveness of new and existing interventions. Demand is high for individuals who can conduct economic evaluations and are able to critically appraise such evaluations but there is an acknowledged lack of capacity in this field. This initiative is being taken forward in three strands, early-career postdoctoral fellowships, Masters in Health Economics and Placement Fellows.

We are leading the Placement Fellows Scheme. We awarded two Placement Fellows in March 2011 and we expect to award three more in early 2012.

Management and business studies

We have been building on previous investments with the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM).

We have also been working in partnership with the British Academy of Management (BAM), the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies (SAMS) and the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) on a fellowship scheme to support research capacity building in management and business studies. The scheme comprises a number of routes to enable individuals currently based in professional practice or in another academic discipline to convert to a research career in management and business studies.


Social work and social care

We commissioned an Audit of Social Work and Social Care (PDF, 743Kb) in 2008 to establish the current breadth and depth of research in the field across the social science community. We appointed Dr Elaine Sharland (University of Sussex) as the ESRC Strategic Adviser for Social Work and Social Care Research from September 2008.

The brief for this role was to engage widely with researchers from across the social science community to establish the strengths and weaknesses of the research base in addressing substantive social work and social care research themes, and to identify how different research concepts, methodologies and perspectives could be more effectively brought together to promote innovative, interdisciplinary approaches in social work and social care research. The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) provided a small amount of co-funding for this activity.

We received the final report from Dr Sharland in November 2009.

Final report: Strategic Adviser for Social Work and Social Care Research

Language-based area studies

The ESRC, together with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), co-funds five Language-Based Area Studies (LBAS) Centres. The LBAS Centres are contracted for between £4m and £5.6m over five years.

The LBAS Centres are intended to increase capacity in both linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the geographical area of the following spheres:

  • Russian, FSU and Slavic languages
  • East Asian Languages, specifically Chinese and Japanese
  • Arabic and the Arab World.

We also recently carried out work in Education. We funded three pilot networks to build capacity in education through the collaborative networking of a variety of researchers at different stages of their academic careers.

The pilot networks were the Social and Professional Network for Early Career Researchers (SPNECRE), the Teacher Education Research Network (TERN), and the Welsh Education Research Network (WERN).