News and Blog

The Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) is the Welsh Government’s official measure of relative (‘ranked’) deprivation for small areas in Wales. WIMD is used by government and other organisations to target services to address social disadvantage. For example, as part of their programme to increase access to higher education, the Higher Education Funding Council…

In a new, open access paper, Rhys Davies and Professor Alan Felstead share insights from quiz data collected before and after Covid-19 to examine what short-term effects the pandemic has had on job quality in the UK. The results show that non-pay-related job quality has improved, differences between occupations have shrunk and the growth of…

Our previous studies examining variation in access to sporting facilities in relation to socio-economic patterns in Wales have been predicated on an assumption of private travel as the means of transport. We are now including travel distances and times for alternative modes of transport as part of our accessibility calculations. These are derived from an…

This blog post is the second part of a series presenting preliminary findings on children’s well-being in Wales before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. It uses data from the International Survey of Children’s Well-Being (ISCWeB) – Children’s Worlds, a worldwide survey on children’s subjective well-being, with this wave comprising 20 countries in total. The survey…

Katy Huxley, Alan Felstead (WISERD) and Francis Green (UCL) presented the first results of their research on the changing job quality of teachers to a fringe event at the National Education Union (NEU) annual conference in Harrogate today (3 April 2023). The evidence is based on a research project carried out by WISERD at Cardiff…

Citizen science is a popular method of gathering data for natural and social scientists, with the number of projects and publications produced growing year by year. A typical citizen science project uses volunteers to gather data that would otherwise be unaffordable or inaccessible. But, based on the evidence we gathered during our study of a…

It probably comes as no surprise to hear that you can travel further in less time when travelling by private transport, such as in a car, than by public transport using a bus or a train. However, have you ever wondered what this difference looks like visually for the place where you live or work?…

There is no denying that the disruption to daily life caused by the coronavirus pandemic had a profound influence on children’s well-being, with various international organisations (eg, WHO, UNESCO, WFP, UNICEF) requesting that more be done to assist children in coping with this, to  avoid long-term negative consequences. In Wales, data from the 2021 International…

In our last blog post we looked at how WISERD’s free interactive mapping tool UnionMaps reveals the complex patterns in trade union membership that exist across Great Britain. Analysis revealed that the overall downward trend in union density that is observed across Great Britain as a whole masks very different local fortunes for the trade…

Recent waves of strike action by nurses, train drivers, ambulance drivers, university lecturers, teachers and others besides has highlighted the prominent position that trade unions continue to hold within the UK. An important factor that determines the power and influence of trade unions, either within an organisation or across a sector, is the proportion of…