Social sciences | The Guardian

Six hours of family time, two hours with friends, plus extra socialising, exercise and work ... Does it all add up to a highly satisfying 24 hours – or just a very tiring one? Name: The perfect day. Appearance: Data driven. Continue reading...

My husband, Colin Robson, who has died aged 89, pioneered the degree of behavioural sciences, combining psychology and sociology, in the 1970s. The fifth edition of his textbook Real World Research , originally published in 1993, came out earlier this year. Born in the village of Almondbury, near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, the only child of Mary (nee Addy) and Raymond Robson, a clerk in the co…

My husband Peter Wedge, who has died aged 89, was passionate about high-quality social research and its ability to represent objectively the experiences and needs of those whose voices are otherwise seldom heard. His 1973 book Born to Fail?, written with Hilary Prosser (and based on data from the National Child Development Study of 17,500 children born in one week in 1958), documented the evidenc…

Dr Keith Snell on Rembrandt’s painterly device and Geoff Ribbens on how society and culture frame our perceptions The neurophysiological study of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring that identified a triangle of a “sustained attention loop” ( Real art in museums stimulates brain much more than reprints, study finds, 3 October ) seems to be an affirmation of the power of the “Rembrandt triangle” i…

Inspired by the documentary Seven Up! and based on real data, this important book exposes the extent of inequality in the UK and what it means for our poorest children One of the first social rules children learn is the painful necessity of sharing. After the shock of encountering other wants and needs as strong as their own, a child who hands over stickers and sweets to their peers is praised. Y…

The Sapiens author may be a superb narrative writer, but his apocalyptic pontificating about AI stretches credulity As befits a writer whose breakout work, Sapiens , was a history of the entire human race, Yuval Noah Harari is a master of the sententious generalisation. “Human life,” he writes here, “is a balancing act between endeavouring to improve ourselves and accepting who we were.” Is it? I…

Government needs to promote the study of all disciplines to improve workforce skills, says Prof Jonathan Michie Molly Morgan Jones, the director of policy at the British Academy, is right to warn that Michael Gove’s legacy is undermining workforce skills ( A-level students choosing narrower range of subjects after Gove changes, 14 August ). To contribute at work, and in society more generally, re…

Study shows fewer students in England combining humanities such as history or music with sciences or maths A-level students in England have increasingly dropped humanities and arts subjects in favour of a narrower range of science-based subjects after being nudged by the last government’s changes to A-levels made a decade ago. The changes, backed by the former education secretary Michael Gove , s…

My mother, Pat Coombes, who has died aged 89, was a course coordinator at the Open University (OU), where in the late 1970s she helped to create a groundbreaking social sciences foundation course known as D102. When, in the early 80s, the Conservative government’s secretary of state for education, Keith Joseph , attacked the OU for having a Marxist bias, D102 was one of the courses in the firing …

Social scientist and adviser on equality matters to the EU and Welsh government who strove to improve the position of women Teresa Rees, professor emerita of social sciences at Cardiff University, who has died of cancer aged 74, was an enthusiastic and effective campaigner for gender equality, and played an important role in bringing about change in universities and in how public policy decisions…

Machine learning research into changing attitudes to women in the US reveals it’s not just technology that has progressed People love new technology. Last week, half the internet was experimenting with ChatGPT, a new artificial intelligence chatbot that can write text on almost any subject under the sun with only the most basic of instructions. You should have a go. Reactions so far focus on pred…