Posts Tagged ‘Research’
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Failed by short-termist politics, 16-25 generation needs an injection of political capital
The upcoming election will bypass Britain’s 7.4 million 16-25 year olds because of a focus on short-term vote winning rather than the long term problems facing younger generations, according to a major report published by Demos.
An Anatomy of Youth, which was produced with v, The National Young Volunteers Service, says that the failure of the current political debate to adequately discuss problems like long term economic recovery, climate change, the care gap and communities under strain is turning youngsters away from politics altogether, despite evidence that many are passionate about politics and social issues.
Demos’ Celia Hannon, co-author of the report, said: “The idea that our young people don’t care about society or serious issues is wrong, but they don’t feel that politicians are speaking about the issues that will affect them in future. And they’re right about that. As we head into an election, the campaign won’t get near the debates young people need to have about our future. We’re going to see serious generational injustice on a number of issues unless we tip the scales towards young people.”
One interviewee Babatunde, the 21-year-old founder of think tank New Turn, said: “Politicians talk about ‘young people’s issues’ but they’re only trying to push young people on ‘young people’s issues’. By letting them do that we alienate ourselves and allow politicians to patronise us. If we fail to challenge thought on wider issues we will just be affected by those very same issues we choose to ignore now, tomorrow.”
Stereotyped by newspapers, sensationalised by marketeers and pigeon-holed by politicians, our cultural narratives about young people are not fit for purpose. The report looks at what young people have to say about world they find themselves in and how they are meeting the challenges they face.
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Robot enters House of Commons to Show MPs what Young People Care About
As MPs go back to work at Parliament today, v’s new research has shown that just 10% of young people believe politicians are best able to change the country. The data collected through Voicebox shows that young people are caring, considerate, articulate and passionate. We hope our interactive robot in the Houses of Commons is an innovative way to make MPs sit up and take notice.
At a time when only 3% of young people have ever contacted their MP, the robot – nicknamed Voicebot - is a very modern twist on writing a letter to your MP. Until Thursday, young people can visit a website, put in what they care about and the robot will write it out, stroke by stroke, word by word, directly to the politicians.
Voicebot has been collecting comments from 1000s of young people.
The study and robot come at a time when respect among the public for the political classes is at an all time low. A study published earlier this year by Hansard Society indicates that currently only 24% of 18 to 24 year olds are certain to vote in the next general election - the lowest of all groups by a long way. And, contrary to some images, young people are the least likely of all age groups to be politically active - just 4%.
The full results of the Voicebox are also being fed into even more detailed work with the think tank Demos, looking at young people and their relationship with power and politics. This project, titled An Anatomy of Youth will review: young people’s portrayal in media, their presence in recent policy debates and existing information on young people’s behaviours and their attitudes.
Voicebot is part of v’s proactive research campaign called Voicebox, with over 5,000 people having taken part so far. The project is live and constantly evolving. The more young people that participate the more accurate picture we’ll create of young Britons today. Over the coming months, Voicebox will continue to collect and share data about lifestyles, attitudes and behaviours of young Britons. In an age when young people are using social media more and more, Voicebox uses new and interactive social media to engage young people.
Want to find out more about the data we’re collecting? Have a look at the results here.
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The Goodie Hoodie - young people fight back about negative stereotypes of youth
The negative stereotypes of today’s youth as ‘violent’, ‘disrespectful’ or ‘apathetic’ were challenged head on today by the results of our innovative youth insight project Voicebox. At an early hour this morning, Terry Ryall, v’s Chief Executive, appeared on BBC Radio 4 Today Programme challenging the general public and politicians to re-consider their views of today 16 – 25 year olds.
The results show that while 82% of young people who participated in the research might own a ‘hoodie’ this does not equate to anti-social behaviour. Voicebox shows 85% of young people or their friends don’t carry a knife, 86% have never shoplifted, and 69% did not agree drugs were ok for recreational use.
The messages young people are submitting to the Voicebox robot demonstrate their frustration about the widely held negative perceptions of young people today. The emerging results from Voicebox blow apart the idea that the young generation are disengaged.
Results from the online polls support this showing that 78% of young people do, in fact, respect their elders, 75% are happy with the relationship they have with their family, and 68% are content living at home.
Voicebox will continue to collect, use, and share data about life styles, attitudes, and behaviours of young Britain’s. In a modern day twist on writing a letter to your MP, the Voicebox Robot will be appearing in the Houses of Parliament from 12 – 16 October. The robot will directly articulate the care of a generation directly to politicians. We want as many young people to have their voices heard. All they need to do is visit Voicebox to write what they care about and it will be written out by the robot.
For further information on the Voicebox results, download the press release or visit the Voicebox website.
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The science of happiness study concludes: “Perhaps we are a selfish nation”
Depressing news for altruism today, with the news that The Science of Happiness study has concluded that altruism has a negative effect on happiness compared to the control group.
Some 26,000 people participated in last week’s online study, testing one of four, commonly-used happiness techniques: expressing gratitude, smiling, recalling a pleasant event from the day before and carrying out an act of kindness. Each was instructed via a YouTube video - here’s the kindness clip:
All groups recorded an increase in happiness, but the “acts of kindness” group achieved -8% less happiness than the control group. In an article in today’s Guardian, Dr Wiseman concludes: “Perhaps we are a selfish nation.” This conclusion will come as a surprise to people working in the voluntary sector, where there’s an abundance of case studies, anecdotes and research showing how volunteering can make people feel more confident, healthier and happier.
Francesca Borgonovi’s 2008 paper, Doing well by doing good. The relationship between formal volunteering and self-reported health and happiness, concludes that people who volunteer report better health and greater happiness than people who do not, a relationship that is not driven by socio-economic differences between volunteers and non-volunteers. A study published in the Journal of Research in Personality in 2008 showed that students who engage in virtue-building activities such as volunteering report being happier than their more hedonistic counterparts. And ICM Research findings commissioned for CSV (Community Service Volunteers) and Barclays in 2004 found that 71% of volunteers offering their professional skills and experience said volunteering helps combat depression.
So what’s going on with The Science of Happiness? There are obvious differences between Wiseman’s study and the altruism we see in volunteering, including motivation, community impact and level of commitment. Maybe doing things for others with the sole objective of making yourself happier just doesn’t amount to true altruism.
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Visualising the views of young people with Voicebox
As this blog demonstrates, there’s a lot of excitement around social innovation right now. At the beginning of July myself and my colleague from Sidekick Studios went along to Nesta’s Reboot Britain conference, which was all about how we make the plethora of social tools now available to us all online more useful. Can we start to create a more open dialogue between the public and the government through social media? Can the public provide feedback from the service-user viewpoint and help the government make better decisions? And will the government listen?
What’s massively interesting is the fact that people really do think change is possible, it might not be an almighty revolution as the idealists (or is that anarchists) predict but it looks certain that a shift is on the horizon. Finally the government and policy makers have cottoned on to the fact the internet can provide a cost efficient way of getting closer to the real issues for public services and perhaps more importantly that participation in these conversations will make them more popular with their constituencies!
A couple of interesting examples of service-user platforms we’ve recently heard about are Patient Opinion and MyPolice. The latter of which was born at the most recent Social Innovation Camp in Glasgow, a series of events that facilitate face to face brainstorming and problem solving between service users, web developers, producers, social entrepreneurs and creative marketeers. With all that talent and experience in one room, people are coming up with some really smart ideas.
With this kind of stuff going on as the back drop, Sidekick believe that it’s extremely timely for v’s Voicebox project. We know that v is committed to being youth-led and empowering young people, so when presented with the brief to create an open research project that would not only engage young people but create a useful youth insight tool for the voluntary sector, we jumped at the opportunity.
What we have created for v is a platform that facilitates youth representation. Our hope is that through interactive opinion polls, a growing community blog space to discuss social issues and data visualisations that bring the survey results to life, we will bring people closer to young people’s views.
Not only this but we will help young people get their views heard by the government and policy makers and we will be developing our work further in this area. And by finding out about the causes and issues that most affect young people, v can ensure its programmes are creating volunteering opportunities which are relevant to them.
Voicebox is an open project, anyone of any age can complete the survey and anyone can download the data or play around with the filters on the results page so they get a visualisation specific to their own queries, there’s even an Application Programming Interface (API) so that the real geeks can take the data and create their own data visualizations.
More than anything we think its fun, but with a very serious back bone - it’s an experiment in using social media to inform public policy. The more people that take part in the surveys, the more meaningful the results become - so spread the word.
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Strong foundations for homeless young volunteers
This week Crisis released a report on engaging young homeless people in volunteering. The report captures good practice from Crisis experience of running a one year v funded programme providing volunteering opportunities for homeless young people. The report is an excellent example of the type of information we need to be widely available to enable us to get better at involving disadvantaged young people in volunteering.
As Angela Ellis Paine, Director for the Institute of Volunteering Research, spells out in her introduction to the report ‘rather than providing (more) ‘good’ practice advice and guidance in the traditional sense … the report tells it as it was or at least how it was for one organisation … in an honest and engaging way’.
As part of v’s 2009/10 research programme we will be looking at engaging disadvantage young people in volunteering with the aim of providing practical information to support organisations. A literature review will be a key part of this work, if you have relevant reports or documents please get in touch.
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Nice piece, yourself.
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