Government Social Research

Last updated - 29th January 2010

Information for GSR members

Interactive content for members of GSR, including discussions, documents for consultation and job vacancies, is posted on the GSR community pages in Civil Pages.

Publishing research in government - GSR publication guidance

This new guidance from GSR aims to ensure a more consistent approach to research publication practice across government, giving clarity to the public, contractors and the wider research community.

Publishing research in government - GSR publication guidance (PDF 213KB)

For GSR and GES members only: Seminar on agent based modelling

Tuesday 9 February from 12:00-14:00, HM Treasury

Our two key speakers are Nigel Gilbert and Paul Ormerod. To wet your appetites, here are some of the things that agent based modeling promises, and a brief example of how agent based modeling may be used to inform policy decisions.

To date, agent based modeling has been little used within government, however, there is significant potential for this technique to help us address some of the challenges posed by the complexity of social phenomena. Agent based modeling can also provide insights into how institutions or macro level phenomena can emerge from the actions of individuals. In this way, it can provide insights into the actions that might be taken to regulate behaviour.

Drawing on this potential, Paul Ormerod explores the phenomena of binge drinking in the UK, concluding that the spread of imitative behaviour across friendship networks is a sufficient condition to account for current patterns of binge drinking and should therefore be taken into account by policy makers in devising strategies to combat the problem (Ormerod and Wiltshire, 2008).