Monday 3rd October 2016, 13:00 – 14:00, DECC, 3 Whitehall Place, London
Presenter: Peter Davis
Seminar Overview:
As practitioners of “public social science” we all wish to contribute to the evaluation and development of policy. For over 30 years I have engaged with health sector agencies on the evaluation of policy options using largely conventional statistical analyses drawing mainly on administrative and secondary data. For the last ten years, however, our group has developed a series of micro-simulation models in the belief that these can contribute to a more analytical approach to evaluating and scoping scenarios for policy.
In this talk I will first outline the basics of micro-simulation, illustrating from established models used by agencies such as the OECD and the EU. I will then share our experience with our own, more home-grown, models in the New Zealand setting.
Such models do indeed provide a real opportunity to evaluate and scope realistic policy options in a way that is almost impossible with conventional techniques. However, whether such techniques then influence the policy process depends largely on the fortuitous alignment of research activity with openings in a dynamic external political and policy environment.
Presenter Biography:
Peter Davis is Professor of Sociology, specialising in health and well-being, at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, with cross-appointments at that university in the Department of Statistics and in the School of Population Health. He is also founding Director of the COMPASS Research Centre, a grant-funded centre that has promoted the application of advanced methodological techniques in the social sciences for over a decade.
Peter has a doctorate in community health from the University of Auckland, as well as masters degrees both in sociology and in statistics from the London School of Economics. The common theme to his research is the use of quantitative and other advanced methodological techniques in the analysis of social data – particularly secondary and administrative data – for applied and policy purposes. At present Peter is supported by a two-year James Cook Fellowship funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand, and until recently he was Health Policy Senior Editor at Social Science and Medicine.
How to Join:
*Refreshments available, please bring your own lunch.