It is now half a century since Joey explained to Paul Willis: 'Vandalising […] that's the opposite of boredom -- excitement, defying the law', one of many similar comments subsequently recorded in "Learning to Labour" (34). The book rapidly became an academic best-seller, and has since become an academic 'national treasure'. But, before…

Internationally, standard observational measures of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) are used to assess the quality of provision. They are applied as research tools but, significantly, also guide policy decisions, distribution of resources and public opinion. Considerable faith is placed in such measures, yet their validity, reliability…

Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a methodology for sampling and analysing survey data from rare and elusive populations that has gained increasing attention in migration research in recent years. Since its introduction in 1997, it has been applied in numerous surveys in the field of epidemiology (mainly for the estimation of HIV/AIDS prevalence…

International survey researchers are increasingly turning to a geospatial sampling approach known as gridded population sampling for finer resolution and a more updated sampling frame than conventional census-based sampling. To date, there have been no direct comparisons of accuracy between survey results derived from the two methods. This…

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) introduced creative thinking as an innovative domain in 2022. This paper examines the unique methodological issues in international assessments and the implications of measuring creative thinking within PISA's framework, including stratified sampling, rotated form designs, and a distinct…

The aim of this analysis of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey is to compare labour market outcomes between individuals who have Vocational Education and Training (VET) qualifications only, VET and Higher Education (HE) qualifications and HE qualifications only, but who work in the same occupations. In…

This paper considers the potential for the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) of England and Wales to incentivise the exclusion of people with dementia from research. The MCA is intended to standardise and safeguard the inclusion of people with cognitive impairments in research. This entails various procedural requirements, which in pressurised research…

Disability research often favours the use of disabled researchers carrying out research with disabled participants. It is believed to empower disabled people and create results that are more valid. However, little consideration has been given to the ethical implications of this type of research process, including in relation to female researcher…

In the context of cross-sectional surveys, the scope of research on the impact of response enhancing strategies on sample composition and nonresponse bias is vast. This topic has rarely been addressed for panel studies, however, although these are becoming an increasingly important data source in social research. In this article, we evaluate the…

Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a survey method for hidden populations and, as such, it offers a suitable approach for sampling the homeless. Surprisingly, the practical use of RDS in surveying homeless populations has only sporadically been described in the professional literature so far, and the specifics of using RDS for sampling this group…

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)'s mission is to break the link between family income and educational achievement. This is achieved through summarising the best available evidence in plain language, generating new evidence of 'what works' to improve teaching and learning, and supporting teachers and school leaders to use research evidence…

Although over the past decades the numbers of studies investigating international student mobility and migration (ISM) increased, methodological challenges in empirical research on the topic have remained mainly unaddressed. This is particularly the case for sampling, which is a crucial but often less considered part of qualitative research…

Snowball sampling is frequently advocated and employed by qualitative social researchers. Under certain circumstances, however, it is prone to faltering and even failure. Drawing on two research projects where the snowball failed to roll, the paper identifies reasons for this stasis. It goes on to argue that there are alternative forms of…

This rejoinder keeps the original focus on statistical computing pertaining to the correlation of student achievement between mathematics and science from the Trend in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Albeit the availability of student performance data in TIMSS and the emphasis of the inter-subject connection in the Next Generation Science…

Biased sampling occurs frequently in economics, epidemiology, and medical studies either by design or due to data collecting mechanism. Failing to take into account the sampling bias usually leads to incorrect inference. We propose a unified estimation procedure and a computationally fast resampling method to make statistical inference for…