The Understanding Society Fellowship Programme enables researchers to take time out to focus on research projects based on the Study’s data.
Funding is available for 12-month Fellowships to undertake a project based on Understanding Society data, with additional resource for follow up dissemination and impact generation activities. Practical support will also be available from the Study team, for example, to advise on data and analysis plans and communication and impact strategies.
The August 2024 (for a January 2025 start) call focuses on three themes: exploiting the Study’s social and biomedical data; research on ethnicity and immigration; and methodological issues around whole-household participation. We will announce the topics of our next call in the first part of 2025.
Social and biomedical data
Fellowships under this theme should undertake projects built around quantitative analyses of the combined social and biomedical data from Understanding Society. Projects should contribute new scientific knowledge about the two-way relationship between people’s social, economic, environmental circumstances and their health. They should also build understanding of the value of, and capacity for, using biomarkers, proteomics, epigenetics and genetics in the social sciences.
Ethnicity and immigration
Understanding Study is a unique resource for ethnicity and immigration research. It has sufficiently large sample sizes of different minoritized ethnic and migrant groups (made possible by its large sample size and an Ethnic Minority Boost sample and Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Boost sample), plus questions focussing on topics such as ethnic identity, remittances, harassment, migration history, religiosity. The Study takes a multi-dimensional approach to measuring ethnic and cultural background (by asking questions on own, parents, grandparents countries of birth, religion, language at home during childhood, census ethnic group question, parents’ ethnic group), and it is a multi-topic longitudinal household survey, collecting data from and on its core sample members and their entire households annually.
In this Fellowship strand we would welcome applications on:
- key policy questions about minoritized ethnic and migrant groups
- topics such as religiosity, ethnic identity, language, remittances
- methodological research such as comparing survey response behaviour or interview mode effects across minoritized ethnic and migrant groups.
Whole-household participation
At each wave of the survey we ask each adult member of each household (aged 16+) to complete a questionnaire, but in a substantial minority of cases, not all do so. There is interest in the effect of partial household response (households in which at least one adult participates but at least one does not) on analysis and estimation and in ways of minimising this effect, either through statistical adjustment of some kind, or by finding ways to reduce the extent of partial household response.
We would welcome fellowship applications that aim to do some combination of the following:
- Describe the nature of partial household response and its effects on the data
- Assess the impacts of partial household response on analysis and estimation
- Develop analysis/adjustment methods that take partial response into account
- Identify data collection techniques likely to reduce the extent of partial household response.
How to apply
Applications must be submitted by 17.00 on 22 August 2024. To apply, please read the full Call for Fellows (pdf 247 KB) and complete the application form (Word 134 KB).
Read more about our Fellowship Programme.
Biomarkers, genetics and epigeneticsEthnicity and immigrationSurvey methodology
