Informative, eye-catching and essential for anyone working in public sector research, the LARIA Annual Conference is the flagship LARIA event.

Held at a university venue over 3 days during late March or early April each year, the Conference attracts upwards of 130 delegates to discuss topical public research issues and hear about ways to address current and future challenges.

It provides a networking opportunity par excellence, not only with colleagues but also with academic and Government delegates as well as commercial exhibitors.

The 2008 Conference was held at Nottingham University between 1st – 3rd April and was themed Research for Policy: Places, Partnerships and Performance. If you were unable to attend the Conference, or would like to view the presentations again, they are available for download as Adobe Acrobat documents (.pdf ) here

If you need to download the Acrobat Reader, please visit http://www.adobe.com Users with accessibility issues should visit access.adobe.com

If you would like to view the presentations from the LARIA Annual Conference 2007 held at Lancaster University, they are available here

Details of the 2009 Annual Conference will be available soon.

FORTHCOMING LARIA EVENTS

LARIA organises around six one-day seminar events every year at venues around the country. These day events offer opportunities to hear about and contribute to debates on topical research issues.

The most recent of these was: Population and Household Analysis: Current Research Issues - A Joint LARIA/LGA Seminar - Tuesday 17th June 2008 - Local Government Association Offices, London.

Details of future events will be posted here when they are confirmed.

Commissioning Research - A Joint LARIA/LGA Seminar in London and Manchester - Local Government Association Offices, London - Wednesday 3rd September 2008 or Manchester Cathedral Visitors Centre, Manchester - Wednesday 24th September 2008

PRESENTATIONS FROM LARIA CONFERENCES AND DAY SEMINARS

If you would like to download or view the presentations from some of the previous LARIA conferences and day seminars, they are available here.

OTHER FORTHCOMING EVENTS

n.b. Some flyers are in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format - for help, or to download the Acrobat Reader - click here. Users with accessibility issues should visit access.adobe.com

Expert Development for Social Researchers - The Social Research Association is very pleased to announce the launch of a new series of advanced training workshops developed with funding from the ESRC’s Researcher Development Initiative (RDI). Further details here (pdf 131k)

BSPS Annual Conference - Call For Papers - The call for papers for the 2008 Annual Conference of British Society for Population Studies can be accessed at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/BSPS/annualConference/Default.htm and may be of interest to our members. The Conference itself will take place at the University of Manchester from 10-12th September.

Local Government Centre - Research and Evaluation Seminar Series - to be held at Warwick University. For further details click here (doc 69k)

SUF Conference 2008 - Transforming Official Statistics to Serve Society - November 12th at the Royal Society - download programme (doc 26k)

TFPL TRAINING COURSES

The Following TFPL Training Courses may be of interest to LARIA members, who will receive a 20% discount.

Assessing the Quality of Information
http://www.tfpl.com/results/results.cfm

An Introduction to Information Governance
http://www.tfpl.com/skills_development/courses/cd.cfm?linkid=TR1422

Be a Better Searcher Without Using Google
http://www.tfpl.com/skills_development/courses/cd.cfm?linkid=TR1186

Introduction to Copyright
http://www.tfpl.com/skills_development/courses/cd.cfm?linkid=TR11

Introduction to Records Management
http://www.tfpl.com/skills_development/courses/cd.cfm?linkid=TR966

NATCEN LEARNING COURSES - SPRING 2008

Details of forthcoming NatCen Learning Courses for Spring 2008 can be found here (pdf 14k)

FORTHCOMING ESDS GOVENMENT EVENTS

Census Microdata: Findings and Futures

An International Conference at the University of Manchester, UK

http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/sars/conference/

Monday 1st - Wednesday 3rd September 2008

Keynote Speakers

Ian Diamond, Chief Executive, Economic and Social Research Council Professor

Denise Lievesley, Special Advisor, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

Lessons for Public Services Reform in Scotland: a workshop for policy makers and practitioners.

24th September 2008, 9:30-16:30h, 15 Mansfield Place, Edinburgh, EH3 6BB

Scotland is undergoing an unprecedented period of public services reform aimed at creating a clearer, simpler and more effective public sector. This workshop highlights the latest lessons on public services reform emerging from the ESRC Public Services Programme. Policy makers, practitioners and academics will explore and discuss what these findings mean in the context of Scottish policy and practice.

Topics include:

• 'Still not satisfied?' - evidence about public sector performance, citizen and user satisfaction and public expectations.
• 'One size fits all?' - lessons from the different approaches to performance regimes in Britain.
• 'Managing to innovate' - how does the third sector stimulate innovation and change?
• 'Lost in translation' - why does policy often fail to become practice?

Speakers include:

Christopher Hood (Oxford), Oliver James (Exeter), Sandra Nutley (Edinburgh), Stephen Osborne (Edinburgh) and Martin Smith (Sheffield)

Attendance is free but advance registration is essential as places are limited. For further information and a registration form, please visit: http://www.publicservices.ac.uk/events/lessons-for-public-services-reform-in-scotland/

CCSR TRAINING COURSES - SEPTEMBER 2008

The Centre for Census and Survey Research (www.ccsr.ac.uk) at Manchester University will be running a series of one-day research training course in questionnaire design and methods in September 2008. Places are likely to be limited. For more information and to book please go to CCSR home page or to http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/courses/external/2008-2009/index.html

Questionnaire Design - 24th Sept
Rubbish in, rubbish out – have you ever discovered too late that your survey questions did not deliver useful or useable data? Through looking at a wide range of pitfalls, this course explores ways to assess the effectiveness of existing questionnaires as well as how to write successful new ones. It combines suggestions from the research literature on questionnaire design with a very practical approach. Common errors in the wording of individual questions are examined as well as how to combine individual questions into a meaningful questionnaire. Special features for interview versus self-completion surveys will also be discussed.

Cognitive Interviewing for Testing Survey Questions - 25th Sept
This one day course is designed to familiarise participants with this powerful and efficient method of piloting survey questions called Cognitive Interviewing. Cognitive Interviewing is a type of in-depth interviewing which focuses on respondents' thought processing in answering survey questions and uses specialised techniques such as thinking aloud, probing, observation and paraphrasing. The course is about what cognitive interviewing is as well as how to do it. There are practical exercises as well as lecture time.

Standardised Multi-item Scale Development for Surveys - 26th Sept
Standardised multi-item scales are very common in psychology, education, and health, but much less so in sociology, political science, and survey research. This one day course is designed to inspire participants from all disciplines that it is possible to develop your own high quality multi-item scales. This course offers an introduction on how to do this: looking at psychometric principles, exploring the special questionnaire design concerns, introducing some basic statistical tools for assessing the reliability and dimensionality of multi-item scales, and practice evaluating some existing scales in a lab session at the end of the day.

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