Research Projects
Please click on the links below for more information about each Research Project.
CASciOPe is a multi-disciplinary research network, spanning most Schools in Cardiff University. It fosters collaboration, dialogue, engagement and innovation, including over the understanding of ageing itself. Its membership is drawn from across the disciplines, including Biomedicine, Life Sciences, Social Sciences, Health Studies and Nursing, Dentistry and Optometry, City & Regional Planning, Psychology, Engineering, the Arts and Humanities. It acts as a vehicle to facilitate and coordinate cross-School applications to major multi-disciplinary research funders, such as Lifelong Health and Wellbeing.
Welcome to the Cardiff Hypermedia web-pages. Our main aim has been to explore the potential of hypermedia for all stages of the research process - from fieldwork through to analysis and dissemination. Now that social scientists of all persuasions are increasingly using web-based platforms for the dissemination and storage of their research data AND findings, we are confident that new work will emerge to explore further the uses of hypermedia for qualitative research.
Energy Biographies: Understanding the Dynamics of Energy Use for Energy Demand Reduction
Concerns regarding climate change and the security of energy supplies mean that the transition to a secure, affordable and low carbon energy system has become a key objective of UK energy policy. It is now widely accepted that to achieve this aim we need to focus not only on low carbon forms of energy production (e.g. through renewable technologies), but also innovative ways to reduce our consumption of energy - whether in the home, workplace or transportation.
Insight into Ill Treatment in the Workplace
Planning for this long-term research project on the British workplace began in 2006 and led to an ESRC award in the following year. The spine of the project consists of two representative surveys of British employees, the British Workplace Behaviour Survey (BWBS), which is the largest representative study of workplace ill-treatment so far conducted anywhere in the world, and, in the following year, the Fair Treatment at Work Survey (FTWS), which allowed the repetition of some questions asked in the BWBS.
Four qualitative case studies complete the dataset. These were effectively four separate research programmes undertaken in well-known British companies. The case studies helped us to pin-point the major causes of the ill-treatment of employees and the actions that organisations could take to bring about better treatment.
Learning from experience: informing preventative policies and practice by analysing critical moments in care leavers’ life histories.
The project is a social psychological and qualitative longitudinal investigation into transition and change in the lives of men as first-time fathers. ‘Men as Fathers’ is part of the ESRC qualitative longitudinal and UK distributed Timescapes study.
The project is geared towards ‘scaling-up’ the reach, relevance and impact of studies of men’s sense-making and life transition within a range of theoretical, policy and practice arenas such as psychosocial, gender and life-course studies; parenting education; gender, welfare and citizenship; and also counseling and mental health.
In Cardiff, a growing recognition that social services were in need of a more appropriate, effective intervention for families affected by substance misuse led to the formation of Option 2. Option 2 seeks to provide the necessary skills and support in a way that meets the holistic, complex, immediate needs of a family in a crisis associated with parental drugs or alcohol use. Referrals to Option 2 are often made when action to remove the children from the family home is imminent. An initial evaluation of Option 2 explored the use of public care by ‘Option 2’ children and the financial implications of the intervention. The current study aims to increase knowledge of the impact of Option 2 by investigating the effects of service use on the welfare of children and families.
‘Direct-to-consumer genetic testing’ (DTCGT), also known as ‘online DNA or genetic testing for health’, is now easily purchased online. These tests are promoted as enabling individuals to be more actively involved in their health screening and make life-style choices for a healthier future based on a DNA test. However, there are concerns that these tests may not currently be clinically useful and that people may make health-related decisions on the basis of poor quality information, without the professional healthcare support that is associated with conventional genetic testing in the NHS. Little is known about people’s experiences of online genetic testing in the UK, how its benefits and risks are experienced by people who buy these tests, or the views of genetics professionals who may counsel them about the results.
The School of Social Sciences and the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK are conducting a joint research project to investigate how children of primary school age and below are brought up to be Muslims. The project will be affiliated to the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK and the Cardiff node of the National Centre for Research Methods (QUALITI)
The research aims to describe and explain how children of primary school age and under are brought up to be Muslims. The topic of religious nurture is of interest in relation to all faiths, but given the diversity of schools of thought and ethnic groups amongst British Muslims, there is a strong argument for a detailed study of Islam in particular. Since there has already been attention paid by researchers to Muslim adolescents and 'young people' in recent years, the intention for this proposed project is to focus on families with children of primary school age and younger.
In 2008 the UK entered the deepest recession since at least the Second World War and arguably since the 1930s. Output has fallen quicker and has reached far lower levels than in more recent recessions. This has resulted in unemployment rising (albeit more slowly than expected), total working hours declining, part-time working rising and earnings stagnating. However, relatively little is known about how workplace training and learning activity have fared. In the absence of this evidence, policy-makers and commentators have frequently referred to previous research on the effect of the 1990-1991 recession on training carried out by Professor Alan Felstead (Cardiff University) and Professor Francis Green (LLAKES, Institute of Education, University of London).