Social science research - recent awards
The following is a sample of recent awards won by social scientists at Reading:
Project titles:
- Credit Finance in the Middle Ages: Loans to the English Crown c. 1272-1340
- The Diffusion of Intensive Rearing Technologies and the Impact of Food Retailer Interventionism in British Agriculture since 1945
- Cross-linguistic study on the production & processing of grammatical morphemes in L2 children compared to children with SLI
- The effectiveness of fat taxes and thin subsidies in improving diets
- Interventions to Promote Healthy Eating Habits: Evaluation and Recommendations--EATWELL
- Understanding public perceptions of the social significance of work-related fatality cases
- Interdisciplinary perspectives on African language publishing for children
Professor Chris Brooks, Professor in Finance, ICMA and Dr Adrian Bell, Senior Lecturer in History of Finance, ICMA
ESRC standard research grant. £350,000.
Credit Finance in the Middle Ages: Loans to the English Crown c. 1272-1340
This project is the first to examine the credit relationships between Edward I, II and III and various banking associations, most of which involved Italian merchant societies. Some of these loans used innovative financial techniques - for instance, employing undetermined credit backed by long-term grants of customs duties.
The existing sources, primarily drawn from the English Exchequer, will be examined from both historical and modern financial perspectives. We aim to analyse this 80-year period when credit relationships between the English Crown and Italian merchant societies supported the efficient running of the English government and financed a succession of wars. One important output will be the construction of a dataset from the translated and transcribed sources of agreements between Edwards I, II and III and their various creditors over the period 1272-1340, and from this we will build a numerical record of the timings of borrowings and repayments, including, where available, details of "favours" or side payments. We also plan to transcribe and translate all of the appropriate source material from the archives and extract the core financial details of the loans in order to correctly determine the interest rates.
The analysis of these medieval credit arrangements will utilise several different methodologies, both historical and financial. The study will examine the factors that affected the interest rates payable such as loan amount, borrower, or re-negotiations following a period of tardy payment or non-payment. Thus we will consider the reasons for late payments or defaults, and whether the King's creditworthiness was in any way compromised in such circumstances. We intend to compare the interest rates charged to sovereign borrowers with those charged to private borrowers over the same time period. Finally, our study will attempt to draw out the linkages between the medieval borrowing environment and more recent sovereign loans.
Professor Andrew Godley, Professor of Management
ESRC standard research grant. £41,432.
The Diffusion of Intensive Rearing Technologies and the Impact of Food Retailer Interventionism in British Agriculture since 1945
Recent official investigations appear to give some support to the widespread belief that leading food retailers in the UK enjoy some sort of monopoly power over suppliers of primary products such as meat and dairy. Yet the retailers themselves retort that in reality they have been the saviours of British farmers. There would appear to be little scope for middle ground between these two views. The study aims to analyse the origins and subsequent developments of what are undoubtedly comparatively close commercial relations. These go back to the initial interventions by a few leading food retailers in 1950s in only some agricultural markets, notably in poultry and pork meat farming.
The study focuses on the introduction of intensive rearing technologies in British white meat farming after 1945, and examines why food retailers intervened in the industry's organisation during its experimental phase, but then stopped short of acquiring ownership interests. It does this through comparative analysis with the other two pioneer nations of intensive rearing technologies, the United States and Australia. Retailer interventionism there was far more muted, rather it was producers who have dominated the sector's development there. This will be the first project systematically to study the historical emergence of intensive rearing technologies and their impact on the structure of the British agricultural sector.
Dr Theo Marinis, Lecturer, Clinical Language Sciences and Professor Susan Edwards, Professor of Clinical Linguistics,
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). £76,000.
Cross-linguistic study on the production & processing of grammatical morphemes in L2 children compared to children with SLI
In today's global society, multilingualism is gradually becoming the norm. In the UK, a significant minority of children in English primary schools and the majority in some inner urban schools have a language other than English as a first language (L1), and English as a second language (L2). Many of those children start to learn English as they enter the education system and, although they may be proficient in their L1, they have a smaller vocabulary than children from the same age who have been exposed to English from birth, and they make errors when they speak. Therefore, they may be confused with children who have an impairment specific to language - Specific Language Impairment (SLI). This causes great difficulties in schools, and speech and language units to distinguish between L2 children who have difficulties in English because they haven't been exposed to English from birth, from L2 children who have a language impairment, and some children get unnecessary treatment while others do not get the services they need.
This project addresses in a systematic way the language abilities of primary school children who have Turkish from birth and English as L2. We are comparing how they use language with the way they comprehend/process the language they hear in order to see whether their problems in the use of language extend to the way they process the language they hear. We also compare their language abilities to those of English children with SLI in order to seek differences between the two groups that will help teachers and speech and language therapists to distinguish between the two groups. Finally, we compare these findings with findings from similar groups of children growing up in a similar setting, but in a different country - children who have Turkish from birth and learn Dutch or Greek as L2. This can show us whether Turkish-English, Turkish-Dutch and Turkish-Greek children have similar strengths and weaknesses, and can help us understand better how children learn a second language.
Department of Agricultural and Food Economics
Policy makers have become increasingly concerned about the obesity 'epidemic' and other aspects of diet, such as consumption of too few fruit and vegetables and too much saturated fat.Together these impose substantial costs on the health services around the world as well as lost productivity through days of work lost and early retirement due to ill-health.In the UK alone the Government's recent Foresight Report estimates the cost of overweight and obesity to be £7b per year and extrapolates it to rise to £45.5b by 2050.To examine policies to promote healthier eating, two projects in the Department of Agricultural and Food Economics have recently been awarded funding.
National Prevention Research Initiative and the Medical Reseach Council.
The effectiveness of fat taxes and thin subsidies in improving diets
Recent research suggests that it may be possible to combine a tax on the saturated fat component of foods with a subsidy on fruit and vegetables to promote healthy eating without imposing an excessive burden on either households' or the government's wallet. Econometric demand models will be developed to assess the impact of different combinations of taxes and subsidies on nutrient demand in England by socio-economic group, Government Office Region and income. The burden of the tax/subsidy combinations on different socio-economic groups will also be calculated.The objective will be to find whether certain combinations of tax and subsidy are particularly effective, especially to those social groups whose health outlooks are poorest, and whether diets can be improved without placing a financial burden on the poorer groups.
European Commission £516,904
Interventions to Promote Healthy Eating Habits: Evaluation and Recommendations--EATWELL
This project is funded by the European Commission, co-ordinated by the University of Reading and will involve 9 partners across the EU.It is a 3.5 year project scheduled to begin around May 2009. The EATWELL project will gather benchmark data on healthy eating interventions in Member States and review existing evaluations of the effectiveness of interventions using a 3 stage procedure: 1. The impact of the intervention on consumer attitudes and diets;2. The impact of the change in diets on obesity and health;3. The value attached by society to these changes, measured in life years gained, cost savings and Quality adjusted Life Years (QALYs).Interventions must be accepted by stakeholders and, through consumer surveys and workshops with other stakeholders, EATWELL will assess the acceptability of the range of potential interventions.Armed with scientific quantitative evaluations of policy interventions and their acceptability to stakeholders, EATWELL will recommend appropriate interventions for Member States and the EU.
Dr Paul Almond, Lecturer, School of Law
ESRC Small Grant Scheme Award of £100,000
Understanding public perceptions of the social significance of work-related fatality cases
This research project will involve an investigation into public attitudes towards work-related fatality cases; incidents where deaths are caused as a result of corporate activity. Despite the influence of a number of high-profile disasters in recent years which have raised awareness of these cases (including the Herald of Free Enterprise (1987), and Southall (1995), Ladbroke Grove (1999), and Hatfield (2000) rail crashes), these incidents do not tend to be recognised as crimes by the public or treated as such by the criminal justice system. This perception has been enhanced by enforcement patterns in response to such cases; although around 364 people are killed as a result of corporate activity each year, only around 25% of these lead to health and safety prosecutions, and only 7 have ever led to successful corporate manslaughter prosecutions.
In 2007 the government introduced a new 'corporate manslaughter' offence to handle the worst of these cases, which was intended to give such cases the same status as other involuntary homicide offences. The Home Office's primary justification for this reform was the perception that work-related fatality cases provoke high levels of public concern and insecurity, leading to a lack of public confidence in the law's ability to satisfactorily resolve such cases. This interpretation of public attitudes can be questioned, however, as the available evidence suggests that the general public are indifferent towards, and lack knowledge about, health and safety regulation as an issue. Public attitudes towards work-related fatality cases have never been empirically tested in detail, meaning that we do not really know what people think, and cannot accurately evaluate either the need for the new law or the ability of the law to adequately resolve these problems. Does the new offence address an area of real concern? Which cases are regarded as most serious, and ought therefore to be treated as serious criminal offences? It is a core principle of fair and democratic governance that there should be broad agreement between the criminal law and the attitudes and values of the wider populace. The proposed research aims to verify the extent of this agreement in relation to work-related fatality cases.
This research project will generate reliable information about public attitudes towards work-related fatality cases, and will examine how this relates to wider concerns about crime and risk in modern society. It will investigate public awareness of work-related fatality cases, identifying which cases are seen as most serious and why. The project will measure whether there is a public 'lack of confidence' in the law's ability to handle work-related fatality cases, and whether this translates into support for the new offence. This project is vitally important, as it will address whether public attitudes on criminal issues are always harsh and punitive in nature, as has been suggested, or might actually be more subtle and nuanced in relation to specific issues such as this.
A year-long investigation will be conducted, consisting of a series of interviews with a sample of the general public, which will centre on structured discussions of specific work-related fatality cases. These respondents will be interviewed for one hour, and will be asked about their assessments of the seriousness real-life cases, the legal responses (in terms of prosecutions and sentences) that they feel are appropriate, and will be asked to determine who or what bears responsibility for the outcome. The data that is gathered will inform understandings of the form that the law governing work-related fatality cases should take, and will also uncover the processes of blame attribution which underpin public perceptions of these cases, as well as illustrating how these cases function as indicators of risk and feelings of insecurity among the general public
Professor Viv Edwards, Director, National Centre for Language and Literacy, Institute of Education
Leverhulme Trust £119,502
Interdisciplinary perspectives on African language publishing for children
New education policies are stimulating demand for African language books for children. However, African language publishing is at an embryonic stage. Challenges include heavy dependence on sales guaranteed by Education Departments, a lack of infrastructural capacity, a dearth of writers in African languages and translators with experience of children's literature and problems in distribution.
The aim of this project is to deepen our understanding of the conditions necessary for African language publishing to thrive in order to strengthen capacity and stimulate demand. The research will have two main components: (a) a case study of South Africa and (b) the evaluation of a pan-African publishing initiative. The project team will take advantage of existing professional networks which allow easy access to publishers, distributors and policy makers across Africa and use these same networks to ensure that the findings of research are disseminated in ways that have maximum impact on policy and practice.