Making Social Work Count Lecture 1

1. Making Social Work Count Lecture 1 An ESRC Curriculum Innovation and Researcher Development Initiative

2. Why Numbers Matter in Everyday Life

3. Learning outcomes

4. Numbers in everyday life – choosing a mobile • How did you know you were getting good value for money? • How did you make comparisons between deals?

5. Quiz Time! • What gender are you: Male Female

6. Quiz Time! • What age are you: Under 18yrs 26yrs – 29yrs 18yrs-21yrs 30yrs - 33yrs 22yrs-25yrs Over 34yrs

7. Quiz Time! • How did you travel to class today: Walk Cycle Bus Car – drive self Train Car - lift

8. Quiz Time! • Which of these supermarkets did you last shop in: Asda M&S Waitrose Co-op SainsburysMorrisons Lidl Tesco Aldi

9. Quiz Time! • What day of the week did you last shop in the supermarket: Monday Thursday Tuesday Friday Wednesday Saturday Sunday

10. Quiz Time! • Which of these supermarkets do you have a loyalty card for: M&S Sainsbury’s Tesco

11. Who wins with supermarket loyalty cards? Shoppers? • 85% of the UK population have a supermarket loyalty card • A year after Tesco introduced the Clubcard, card holders were spending 28% more in Tesco and 16% less in Sainsbury’s (who then introduced their own loyalty card) • In 2009, 15 million Tesco customers received £259 million in vouchers • 80% of supermarket profits come from 20% of customers

12. Who wins with supermarket loyalty cards? Supermarkets? One supermarket was reported to have spotted a trend: fathers came into stores on their way home from work on a Friday, to buy nappies for their children. As a result, the store placed six-packs of beer on the adjacent shelves, and found that the sales of beer went up.

13. Additional viewing: ‘The Joy of Stats’ http://www.gapminder.org/videos/the-joy-of-stats/

14. Key concepts • Number – a unit of measurement • Statistic – a numerical value or number • Quantification – the act of counting and measuring that maps observations and experiences into members of some set of numbers • Statistics – the study of the collection, organisation, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of numbers

15. Relating numbers to other data Where do millionaires live? http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/sep/13/money-uk-multi-millionaires-regional-breakdown

16. Relating numbers to other data Have GCSEs rates changed?

17. Relating numbers to other data Hate crime in England and Wales http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/sep/13/hate-crime-map-england-wales

18. Using numbers to quantify

19. Using numbers to describe

20. Using numbers to explain

21. Social Construction of Statistics • What is measured? • How? • For what purpose? • What happens next?

22. Example – crime data • Definition of an act as a crime • by an individual • by society • Detection of that act • was it reported? • to whom? • Response to the act • warning v prosecution • legislation • Recording of the act

23. Example – educational outcomes and ethnicity 65% of pupils are of ‘ethnic minority’ background In 2003, 70% had less than five higher grade GCSEs

24. The statistical picture is complicated

25. Factors influencing educational outcomes

26. Learning outcomes Are you able to: • appreciate that numbers are a critical component of everyday life • understand how numbers can be created, represented and interpreted in social life • explore how quantification can help us understand a complex issue • understand basic statistical concepts

27. Activity

28. Activity – Part A • Ask students to think about the most recent purchase they made (such as a new house, a car, a new mobile phone contract, a holiday, a laptop). • How did they make the choice? • What information did they seek out? • How did they make sense of different types of information (eg comparing mortgage deals, mobile phone contracts, holiday prices)? • How much easier/more difficult would the decision have been without numbers (eg choosing a phone contract without knowing the number of minutes or the price from different providers for the same phone; how much the rent or mortgage payment on a house would be each month)

29. Activity - Part A continued • It may be useful to ask the students to discuss these questions with the person sitting beside them before having a whole class discussion. The points to draw out are: • numbers are a part of everyday life • we often need to be able to inform everyday decisions by making sense of numbers • this making sense often involves comparing numbers in quite sophisticated ways • if understanding and using numbers is part of what we do already, then how do we develop the confidence and competence to use numbers in our professional lives?

30. Activity – Part B • Students should come to the session having read the newspaper article by Leo Benedictus. Ask them to discuss their thoughts about the content of the newspaper article – what are the key lessons we should take away from it: • statistics can be helpful to support an argument but only if used appropriately • there is a need to be able to understand that statistics are socially constructed, and that they may be accurate but used in ways that they were never intended to be • being a critical consumer of statistics will strengthen ones practice

31. References • Benedictus, L. (2013) Unreliable statistics of 2013. The Guardian 29th December. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/29/unreliable-statistics-of-2013 • PART (2012) Taking The Path Less Travelled: Critical Thinking For Child Welfare Practitioners. Practice and Research Together, Toronto. • Available at: http://partcanada.org/uploads/File/Guidebook/PART-CRITICAL-THINKING-GUIDEBOOK-FINAL---PRINT-PDF.pdf