Ethnic Minorities Biritish Election Study - a Research Workshop

Date: 19th September 2011
Venue: Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester

This ESRC sponsored research workshop is designed as an introduction to the new major dataset on political attitudes, behaviour and integration of ethnic minorities in Britain: Ethnic Minorities British Election Study 2010. This major new survey has been conducted following the last general election in May 2010 and was in the field simultaneously with the main British Election Study, with which it shares a core common questionnaire. As such, it is the largest and the only up to date source of comparison of political attitudes of British ethnic minorities with the white majority.

The workshop is designed specially to encourage and enable graduate students to use this data in their research. It is open to anyone with a research interest in ethnicity, the integration of ethnic minorities and the political attitudes of British Muslims, although graduate students will have priority if space is limited. The workshop will introduce the data, provide expert advice on the best ways to use and analyse it, and there will be an opportunity for the students to obtain expert feedback on their own research projects.

The event is free to attend and a small number of bursaries will be available to graduate students to cover travel costs to Manchester. This will be on a first come-first served basis.

Programme includes:

Introduction to EMBES - Prof Anthony Heath
How to analyse EMBES - Dr Stephen Fisher
Questions EMBES has already helped to answer - Dr Maria Sobolewska

Please e-mail Alexandra.mandich@manchester.ac.uk to register your attendance and get further details of the workshop. Please write on that e-mail, your Dept/ Course/ Year/ Dissertation Topic, and any diet restrictions. Alternatively please provide details of your organisation or company, and your interest in this subject area.

Consultation on Tax Credits and HMRC Official Statistics

HM Revenue & Customs are carrying out a formal review of our Tax Credits National and Official Statistics publications (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/personal-tax-credits/menu.htm).


Your views will enable HMRC to evaluate whether any changes are needed to their publications. They would like to know if other information would be useful to their users that is not currently available, or whether there are any areas of the statistics which you feel are irrelevant. There may also be issues with the format of the tables that need to be addressed, or presentational amendments that could be useful.

The survey can be found here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/tax_credits

The survey should take 5-10 minutes of your time. The results will be published but all results and all views will be completely anonymous. The deadline for reply is 31st August.

Consultation on Statistics on Poverty

The UK Statistics Authority is currently assessing the following Statistics on Poverty, Benefit Take-Up and Household Resources produced by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP):


* Households Below Average Income;
* Income Related Benefits: Estimates of Take-Up;
* Family Resources Survey; and
* The Pensioners' Incomes Series

They would like to hear from any current and potential users of these statistics. Meeting users' needs is at the heart of the Code of Practice, and collecting user views is an important part of the assessment process.

Please see http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/assessment/assessment/current-assessments/statistics-on-poverty--benefit-take-up-and-household-resources.html for more information.