Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1985. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 193-195). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

Several investigations have concluded that there is a quantitative deficit within the social sciences in the UK (Fonow and Cook, 1991; Lincoln and Denzin, 2003; Payne et al., 2004; Williams, et al., 2008; MacInnes, 2009; Platt, 2012; Payne, 2014; Williams et al., 2015). Reasons for this are potentially rooted within the societal negative attitudes towards mathematics. Societal negative attitudes towards mathematics could be a product of the traditional teaching approaches of mathematics education. In particular, teaching methods have potentially contributed to the subject identity as being right or wrong, perceived as a difficult discipline (Porkess, 2013; Donaldson, 2015). Significant changes have been made to mathematics education (years 7-13) more recently to encourage greater student uptake post-16, within England and Wales (Porkess, 2013; Donaldson, 2015). Statistics has gained an increasingly important voice within mathematics education. Statistics also cuts across many disciplines, becoming a core subject. In addition, employers are increasingly requesting employees acquire data analysis skills, underpinned by statistical and scientific principles. In relation to the quantitative deficit, the Q-Step initiative was created across 15 British universities to develop a range of undergraduate social science degree courses to improve quantitative methods skills. The Q-Step centre within Cardiff University invested in the development of a range of school and further education activities, to highlight the importance of these quantitative skills. The development of a QCF level 3 course in Social Analytics (investigation of social processes using statistical analysis and techniques) involved the creation of the Pilot Scheme in Social Analytics (SA). This course was developed with a group of secondary school teachers and FE lecturers, delivered over a series of 21 weeks to a mixture of year 12 and 13 students in Cardiff in 2014/15 (44 students) and 2015/16 (29 students). To investigate the effectiveness of the Pilot Scheme in SA, a series of research questions were developed. A quasi-experimental design was used to operationalise these research questions to measure the impacts on student attitudes and attainment in statistics (in year 12 and 13) on an experimental group who received a contextualised statistics course in 2015/16 (Pilot Scheme in SA), compared to two control groups. Results suggest the course did lead to changes in the students’ attitudes, becoming more positive. In addition, their statistical abilities also seem to have improved, in comparison to the two control groups. Although the positive impacts of the course are somewhat tentative, and in places it is difficult to make unequivocal inferences, there is no evidence to suggest the course had a negative impact on the experimental group. In comparison, students in both control groups who didn’t receive the treatment, showed negative differences in their attitudes and abilities with respect to mathematics and statistics. In light of the findings and discussion, recommendations have been made with reference to professional practice and also future research. These include expanding the Pilot Scheme in SA to be made available for more schools in Wales and developing teacher training support to deliver these courses.

This thesis consists of three self-contained research articles that empirically examine the ethnic and spatial patterning of health outcomes in England today. Health is defined here as a multidimensional concept encompassing physical and mental health and wellbeing, in line with the Public Health White Paper ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People’ (HM Government, 2010). Each chapter utilises data from Understanding Society, a nationally representative panel study, which provides detailed information about the social and economic situations of people living in the UK.

Background: The rise of the Internet in recent decades, along with social media and communication platforms, has created an opportunity for transgender individuals to seek out a common alternative identity that may reduce the societal pressure of fitting into a particular gender role dictated by biological sex. The developmental period that adolescents go through is accompanied by an array of challenges, more so for a young person whose biological sex is incongruent to their felt gendered sense. Research in social media use within the trans population is still developing, given the growing interest in how social media impacts on our sense of identity. Given the importance of identity development in adolescence, this highlights the need for research into this specific population. This study thus aims to contribute to the existing literature by exploring the experiences of transgender adolescents in using social media. Method: A qualitative research methodology was employed, using a thematic analysis approach. A total of 11 participants between the ages of 15 to 18 were interviewed. Recruitment took place at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation trust as well as using snowballing sampling. Results: Participants described using a varied range of social media platforms. A total of 3 main themes were developed from the data, with participants describing how social media played an initial role in helping them explore their trans identity, how they find themselves aligning with particular trans narratives on social media and lastly how participants make use of social media to present an image of themselves to others. Discussion: The participants’ experiences on social media mirror and intersect with the transitional journey many of them take in changing their gender and this has implications for how clinicians can take into account social media influences when working with young trans individuals.

Chapter 1 examines the health benefits of the Winter Fuel Payment (WFP), an unconditional but labelled cash transfer given to elderly people above the female state pension age with the stated intent of help to deal with heating costs. We exploit the eligibility age cut-off to estimate the causal effect of the WFP on self- reports of chest infection, measured hypertension and biomarkers of infection and inflammation, such as C-reactive protein and fibrinogen. We find a robust reduction in the incidence of high levels of serum fibrinogen and some evidence of reductions in other disease markers that point to health benefits. In Chapter 2, we estimate the incidence of the housing subsidy on subsidised and unsubsidised tenants. Using a reform of the housing subsidies in the UK, we inves- tigate how the exogenous cut in the subsidy affected rents. We find that rents were not significantly reduced by the subsidy cut and the incidence mostly fell on tenants. These findings suggest that the rental market was not originally segmented between subsidised and unsubsidised tenants and the fall in the demand of subsidised tenants was offset by the recent expansion of the private rental market. In Chapter 3, we revisit and offer a reassessment of the literature on the impact of UK National Minimum Wage on employment. We highlight that this literature has em- ployed difference-in-difference designs, which have significant challenges in conducting appropriate inference and very low power when inference is conducted appropriately. In addition, the literature has focused on the binary outcome of statistical rejection of the null hypothesis, without attention to the range of employment effects. In our reanalysis of the data, we find that the data are consistent with both large nega- tive and small positive impacts of the UK National Minimum Wage on employment offering little guidance to policy makers.

This thesis explores some of the complexities of young people’s sexual subjectivities by foregrounding their experiences during a range of bodily practices. While the majority of research in the field of youth sexuality has focused on negative outcomes, in my research I emphasise pleasure. I worked with a socio-economically and culturally diverse sample of 36 young women and men aged 16 to 18 from south Wales (U.K.). Together we explored their embodied experiences, and a range of different methods of researching these experiences. Rather than asking participants about specific sexual practices, I focused on what felt good (and bad) in and on their bodies in a wide variety of contexts. I used group and individual interviews, and object- and arts-based methods, to map what felt sexual and/or pleasurable to them. I explored the ways in which their sexual subjectivities emerged not only during activities normatively defined as ‘sex’, but also in their engagements with objects, technology, sports, dance, and when their bodies were still. Taking inspiration from feminist appropriations of the Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts of ‘becoming’, ‘assemblage’, ‘affect’, ‘territorialisation’, and ‘deterritorialisation’, I offer intricate mappings of the ways in which affective flows in specific encounters can limit or expand young people’s (sexual) capacities. My data highlights how gendered violence, ‘trophy sex’, objectification and disembodiment remain significant forces in many young people’s sexual lives, especially those of young women. However, my thesis also maps ruptures and ‘alternative figurations’ of youth sexualities (Braidotti 1994; see Renold and Ringrose 2008). I illustrate how young sexual subjectivities can move beyond normative notions of (hetero)sexuality, and how young people sometimes experience sexuality and pleasure in unexpected ways and places. My thesis points to the malleability and multiplicity of youth sexual subjectivities, and towards possibilities for re-imagined sexualities that exceed gendered bodies and phallocentric desire.

The study explores the way further and higher education lecturers, who identify as Cornish, view their cultural knowledge and identity and how this informs their pedagogic practice. The study took place in the context of the newly established Combined Universities in Cornwall, following the allocation of European Union funding. Bernstein’s sociology of pedagogy (1990, 2000), specifically the pedagogic device and pedagogic identity provided an analytical framework to explore knowledge production, recontextualisation and reproduction and the extent to which lecturers contributed to the production of a localised pedagogic identity. Holland and Lave’s (2001) concept of “history-in-person” enabled further consideration of individuals’ relationships to Cornish culture and identity. Three research questions were identified: how do historical and contemporaneous contexts impact on lecturers’ practice? In which educational contexts does identity become salient? And, what role do lecturers play in the creation of a localised pedagogic identity? In-depth semi-structured interviews, with 14 lecturers based in 1 HEI and 2 FEIs, were undertaken during 2010 and 2011. The subsequent thematic analysis helped identify key aspects of Cornish identity, such as the importance of relationship to geographical place, and a range of values including that of hard work. Key practice issues identified included a desire to create and transmit localised identities. The findings established that lecturers consider their Cornish culture to be distinct, yet marginalised by non-Cornish peers, institutions and wider society. Opportunities for lecturers to relay Cornish culture to the next generation were shown to be context dependent on the type of employing institutions, position in the institutional hierarchy and the types of programme taught. However, where lecturers were able to implement their ambitions localised pedagogic identities became available to students. This study furthers understanding of how minority lecturers’ discursively- informed pedagogic practices co-exist with - and seek to challenge - hegemonic discourses.

The future is a tricky issue for the sciences because it has not happened yet and therefore is not 'fact' (see Adam and Groves 2007) to be studied. Nonetheless the future in and by its intangible nature acts upon us and is brought into the present, shaping both interactions and actions taken in the now. At the same time, futures are continually in the making and already made as actions past shape future lives to come. How futures are made then, how people’s lives to come are shaped, is both a social and political issue which requires attention. This thesis focusses on the lives of one particular group of people - those who have severe brain injuries. It explores how their futures are being shaped and negotiated, made and constrained by and through rehabilitation in a context of every day care delivery within independent neurological rehabilitative settings. This research draws on in-depth ethnographic data collected over five months at two neurological rehabilitation settings in England which includes interviews and broad and close observations of day-to-day happenings in the lives of around 60 brain injured residents, families and health care staff. The data was subject to a situational analysis (Clarke 2011), which is underpinned by grounded theory and discourse analysis, to foreground the collective multiplicity of actors in context. The findings highlight how patients’ futures are imagined depends upon their ability (or not) to demonstrate rehabilitative progress and are imagined in line with their fit to a ‘rehabilitative imaginary’. The dominance of this imaginary simultaneously negates the futures of those unable to fulfil it but enables the ‘good care’ of all in the present. Those that are considered marginal to care - ‘hotel service staff’ (cleaners, cooks, maintenance and administrative staff) are shown to be central to the making of futures of brain injured residents and how differences in the way in which patients’ futures are imagined by patients, their families and HCPs are shown to contribute to tensions between them. It contributes to the sociological literature by extending temporal analysis to this under-researched condition (brain injury), process (rehabilitation) and place(s) (independent neurological rehabilitation settings in the independent sector) and by illuminating how futures of brain injured residents are imagined and shaped by brain injured residents themselves, by families and HCPs working with them.

We live in a world now dominated by complex and fast moving sociotechnical systems. This work considers the difficulties presented in even discussing such systems in an intelligible manner, especially given that many escape the immediate capabilities of human cognition to properly apprehend. Numerous means have in recent history been used to ‘fix’ or ‘stabilise’ the meanings and capabilities of such systems through one form of ‘Black Box’ or other. This work argues that our current conceptual resources are not appropriate to the task and explores ways in which both academics and practitioners can effectively and usefully apprehend such fast moving sociotechnical systems. It draws in particular on the work of Bruno Latour and Paul Thagard, combining their notions of ‘Circulating Reference’ and ‘Computational Coherence’ respectively, to propose more dynamic approaches and methodologies situated in kind of Computationalism that can be adapted to enable complex computing and digital networked events and the dynamic sociotechnical networks that underpin them to be talked about, and thereby known in ways that both express and encompass their dynamism and complexity and without inappropriately and prematurely placing them into ‘Black Boxes’.

This study seeks to address a number of important questions with regard to children in public care, commonly referred to in the UK as ‘looked-after’ children. Firstly, the study aims to identify whether there are child or placement characteristics that explain the observable variations in rates of children ‘looked-after’ between local authority areas. Secondly, it seeks to investigate the impact of poverty and social inequality on the likelihood of children becoming ‘looked-after’. Using a social inequalities lens the study seeks to identify whether there is a ‘social gradient’ in the rates at which children enter public care. Finally, the research aims to identify factors that predict a child who has experienced a period of being ‘looked-after’ re-entering care. Using six years of administrative data on children ‘looked after’ in Wales the study was undertaken using quantitative analyses of secondary data relating to approximately 15,000 ‘looked-after’ children. The research was undertaken using descriptive statistics, linear regression and binary logistic regression. The study identifies a relationship between neighbourhood level deprivation and the likelihood of children becoming ‘looked-after’. There is clear evidence of a ‘social gradient’ in the numbers of children entering care, with a corresponding increase in rates of children ‘looked-after’ for each step increase in neighbourhood level deprivation. Whilst both age and predominant category of need of children entering care are statistically correlated to a local authority’s overall rate of children ‘looked-after’, there are a number of differences not related to overall rates, which suggest differences in local social work practice. Logistic regression analysis results show that the length of a child’s initial period in care (stays of < 90 days) and their age group (11-15 years) were associated with an increased likelihood of returning to care. The implications for child welfare policy and practice are considered.