Applied Quantitative Methods Network: Phase II (Resubmission of proposal)

应用定量方法网络（AQMeN）第二阶段是一套雄心勃勃的、范围广泛的活动，将：通过一个研究项目开发英国的社会科学数据基础设施，扩展学术知识的边界，为支持公共政策决策的证据基础做出贡献，建立社会科学家在定量方法方面的能力，为数据用户创造新的工具包和资源，并提高公众对影响英国的复杂社会问题的理解。AQMeN的第一阶段始于2009年，重点是解决苏格兰社会科学家在定量技能方面的主要差距。然而，在第一阶段与政策制定者的接触突出了学术研究与基于政策的证据在政府重要关键领域之间的差距，由于进行高级统计研究的能力有限，他们无法解决这些差距。这项提议试图解决其中的一些差距。我们的主要目标是开发一套充满活力和开创性的项目，这些项目将提高我们对英国当前社会问题的理解，并为政策制定者和从业者提供建立更美好未来的证据。*教育和社会分层——这一领域旨在更好地理解在高等教育的入学、进步和成就方面的社会阶级差异是如何影响个人的劳动力市场结果和公民参与的。拟议的研究将对个人的教育和劳动力市场轨迹进行深入分析，并试图解释课程和地位的教育差异如何影响个人的生活机会。*犯罪和受害-这部分将试图解释苏格兰和许多其他司法管辖区犯罪率的巨大变化。它还将利用国际数据来了解和比较罪犯群体中犯罪生涯的决定因素和影响。这一分析可用于确定干预措施和国家减少犯罪政策的潜在影响。*城市分割和不平等-这一链将创造创新的社会分割的新措施，并将这些与尖端的纵向和分类模型技术相结合，以探索邻里分割，家庭位置选择和邻里不平等的原因。它还将探讨这种不平等对个人和社区的生活机会和福祉的影响，以及通过开发政策模拟工具包对我们如何设计干预措施的影响。将这些研究链结合在一起代表了社会科学研究的一种创新方法。例如，我们将尝试理解教育、犯罪和城市细分在决定生活机会和结果方面发挥的各种作用。我们还可以通过考虑教育、犯罪和城市分割之间的联系，推导出政策干预的经济成本和收益的稳健模型。我们的研究计划将纳入更广泛的培训活动和知识交流活动，这将使更广泛的社会科学界受益。博士生将是我们培训活动的主要受益者，从而提高科学院新兴成员在定量方法技能方面的能力，我们开发的培训手册、传播材料和政策工具包将为未来的研究人员留下长期的遗产。我们的课程将把英国社会科学置于国际地图上，作为如何进行统计信息充足的政策研究、如何利用现有的高质量数据资源、以及如何在这些活动中嵌入培训计划的典范，以便下一代研究人员对应用于社会需求的先进研究技术有深刻理解。

The Applied Quantitative Methods Network (AQMeN) Phase II represents an ambitious and wide-ranging set of activities that will: exploit the UK's social science data infrastructure through a programme of research, expand the boundaries of academic knowledge, contribute to the evidence base supporting public policy decision making, build capacity amongst social scientists in quantitative methods, create new toolkits and resources for data users, and improve public understanding about complex social issues affecting the UK. Phase I of AQMeN, which began in 2009, focused on addressing a major gap in quantitative skills amongst Scottish social scientists. However, engagement with policy makers during Phase I highlighted gaps between academic research and policy-based evidence in key areas of government importance which they were not able to address because of limited capacity to conduct advanced statistical research. This proposal attempts to address some of these gaps.Our main goal is to develop a dynamic and pioneering set of projects that will improve our understanding of current social issues in the UK and provide policy makers and practitioners with the evidence to build a better future. We focus on three key strands of research: * Education and Social Stratification - This strand aims to better understand the ways in which social class differences in entry to, progression in and attainment at tertiary education affect individuals' labour market outcomes and their civic participation. The proposed research will provide an in-depth analysis of individuals' educational and labour market trajectories and will try to explain how educational differentiation of curriculum and status shapes individuals' life chances. * Crime and Victimisation - This strand will seek to explain the dramatic change in crime rates in Scotland and many other jurisdictions. It will also draw on international data to understand and compare the determinants and impact of criminal careers amongst populations of offenders. This analysis can be used to identify the potential impact of interventions and national crime reduction policies. * Urban Segmentation and Inequality - This strand will create innovative new measures of social segmentation and combine these with cutting-edge longitudinal and sorting-model techniques to explore the causes of neighbourhood segmentation, household location choice and neighbourhood inequalities. It will also explore the effect of such inequalities on life chances and wellbeing for individuals and communities and the implications for how we design interventions through the development of policy simulation toolkits. Bringing the research strands together represents an innovative approach to social science research. For example, we will attempt to understand the various roles that education, crime and urban segmentation play in determining life chances and outcomes. We can also derive robust models of the economic costs and the benefits of policy interventions by taking account of the links between education, crime and urban segmentation. Our programme of research will feed into a broader set of training activities and knowledge exchange events that will benefit the wider social science community. Doctoral students will be the primary beneficiaries of our training activities, thus boosting capacity in quantitative methods skills amongst the emerging members of the academy, and the training manuals, dissemination materials and policy toolkits that we develop will leave a longstanding legacy for future researchers. Our programme will place UK social science on the international map as exemplars of how to do statistically well-informed policy research, how to exploit existing high-quality data resources, and how to embed a programme of training in these activities so that the next generation of researchers emerges with a deep understanding of advanced research techniques applied to society's needs.