Source: PA

May-need-to-know basis: minister: survey could have uses ¡®we can¡¯t imagine¡¯

David Willetts has drawn praise from an unlikely quarter for his support for longitudinal research and his ¡°prolonged and persistent¡± campaign to persuade the government to spend millions of pounds on a new birth cohort study.

Left-leaning commentator Polly Toynbee said she was ¡°unaccustomed to praising this government¡±, but thanked the universities and science minister for ¡°putting evidence first ¨C even if that risks history recording some awkward facts about this era¡±.

Speaking at the launch of a report for the Academy of Social Sciences, Making the Case for the Social Sciences ¨C Longitudinal Studies, Ms Toynbee said that birth cohort studies were ¡°the crown jewels¡­in the long and distinguished history of British social science¡±.

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Her main regret was that the UK¡¯s ¡°world-class longitudinal data¡± were seldom matched by ¡°world-class social policy based on [them]¡±.

Diana Kuh, director of the Medical Research Council Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing, described how collecting fresh data from the 1946 birth cohort had enabled researchers to demonstrate that ¡°the health legacy of social inequality in childhood persists up to retirement¡±.

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Similar studies were essential for addressing ¡°the scientific and political priority¡± to ¡°improve the well-being of ageing baby boomers¡±.

Mr Willetts told the event that he wanted to ¡°maintain the canonical succession of birth cohort studies dating back to 1946¡±, even though this had been interrupted between 1970 and 2000, and ¡°to collect the data for others to use in 50 years¡¯ time in ways we can¡¯t imagine¡±.

Yet he also issued a challenge to academics. He poked gentle fun at those who, when he was trying to organise a tour by experts to explain the new fees regime, had asked them not to go to certain institutions, so researchers could carry out a comparative analysis of the initiative¡¯s impact.

He also suggested that the UK needed far more research on ¡°the difficult question of: ¡®How much social mobility do you buy for different interventions at different stages of the life cycle?¡¯¡±

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Meanwhile, Ziyad Marar, global publishing director of SAGE, which sponsored the event at the BIS Conference Centre on 11?June, highlighted ¡°a climate of mixed fortunes for social science¡±.

He referred to controversial moves by Republicans in the US to take away funding for political science from the National Science Foundation.

While the UK had seen less ¡°intellectual vandalism¡± of that kind, he was still worried by how often ¡°big science drives the debate¡±, for example on open access.

matthew.reisz@tsleducation.com