Celebrating the GSR Conference 2024

“On Friday 21 June 2024, the Government Social Research (GSR) profession came together to celebrate the work of social researchers across government. The day was a resounding success, with 560 delegates joining in person, 414 joining us online, and several members enjoying the day together via satellite venues in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Newport.

Professor Catherine Hakim (Civitas) kicked off the day with a welcome speech, ‘The singer or the song?’, which examined the relative strengths of academic and policy research. This acted as an important reminder of the power of focusing on the facts, and to need to avoid falling into the trap of privileging statistical significance over impact. We then heard from Georgina Sturge (House of Commons) who explored the topic of ‘Bad Data’. Georgina delivered a powerful array of case-studies, which displayed a stark reminder of what can happen when data is misused, misunderstood or miscollected, and served as a moment for us all to reflect on why we must strive for better data and better decisions.

Delegates were then faced with the difficult decision of how to split the reminder of their time across the 20 breakout sessions. These sessions were led by GSR members across 16 total departments, with some of the most popular sessions covering:

• Including children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) in Survey Research
• Transformation of Population Statistics – Using administrative data to create population estimates
• Estimating hidden populations
• Providing urgent advice in the absence of evidence – the 2023 “bedbugs scare”

We were then joined by Professor Jonathan Wolff (University of Oxford), who discussed the unique intersection of philosophy and policy. As researchers, we sometimes like to think that the data and insight we generate can be completely objective. Wolff’s talk provided a valuable reminder that our approach can be interwoven with the pursuit of good values.

We wrapped up the day by announcing the GSR Award winners and runners up.

The runner up for 2024 GSR Award went to Lucy Bryant, Véronique Siegler, Alice Robinson, Steffi Giji, Samaa Harper, Charlotte Hillyard, Sabina Kastberg, Sophie Poulain, Alysha Sammut, Gerlinde Sansum, Katrina Tyrrell from ONS, in recognition of the high quality, innovative and impactful nature of their paper entitled ‘Leaving no-one behind: Inclusivity in ONS’ social survey data collection’. This was a project that speaks to many of the values of the profession: robust methodologies, inclusivity, a creative attitude towards problem solving, and a desire to keep getting better.

The GSR Conference 2024 Award went to Ayesha Kenan, Uma Redpath, Tom Chisholm, Liz Longden, Julie Sedgwick from HMRC, in recognition of the razor-sharp focus and big impact of their research entitled ‘Understanding the impacts of Making Tax Digital on self-employed individuals and landlords with lower turnovers’. This was a worthy winner, tackling a modern problem with modern techniques, but maintaining a consistent thread of care for research subjects, the impact of policy on society, and improving our understanding both of what works and what will deliver value to the taxpayer.  Congratulations!

We would like to thank all those involved in organising the conference, the Government Economic Social Research (GESR) team, the Senior Leadership of GSR, the keynote speakers, the conference working group, breakout session presenters, and everyone involved in organising the conference”.

Lulu Goodchild