Wendy Olsen | The University of Manchester (original) (raw)
Papers by Wendy Olsen
Data Collection: Key Debates and Methods in Social Research
Seminar on Comparative methods for the Advancement of Systematic Cross-Case Analysis and Small -N Studies, 2007
Labour force participation in India is found to respond to a plurality of causal mechanisms. Empl... more Labour force participation in India is found to respond to a plurality of causal mechanisms. Employment and unpaid labour are both measured using the 1999/2000 Indian National Sample Survey. Mens labour-force participation stood at 85 % and womens at 35%. The overall rate of labour force participation among women had fallen since 1989. Regression reveals a U curve of female employment by education levels. Many women at the bottom of the U are doing extra-domestic work, so a detailed measurement of both domestic work and other unpaid work is provided. Women in the Muslim cultural group do more extra-domestic work (and are more likely to be inactive) than women in other cultural groups. Economic poverty causes employment to be more likely. We use retroduction to interpret the regressions of labour force participation. We provide a number of reasons which could explain both the work patterns and the housewifisation pattern.
Decent Work or Decent Income, 2021
We want to thank all the people in the various teams in both India and Dhaka who helped in the pr... more We want to thank all the people in the various teams in both India and Dhaka who helped in the projects, notably the Gender Norms project 2014-7. This book chapter is one of the synthesising write-ups. The projects listed are all promoting and innovating in mixed methods of analysis as well as multiple methods of data collection.
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2015
Those aiming to respond to the recognised shortage in quantitative skills within the UK social sc... more Those aiming to respond to the recognised shortage in quantitative skills within the UK social sciences have increasingly focused on the content of undergraduate degree programmes. Problems occur when 'quantitative methods (QM)' are generally confined to a dedicated module, detached from substantive topics. This model makes it hard for students to understand or engage with the contribution of quantitative research to their discipline and can perpetuate negative perceptions of quantitative training. We suggest a solution to this problem is 'quantitative embedding', in which quantitative evidence and methods are incorporated into substantive teaching in the social sciences. We illustrate quantitative embedding with case studies from an ESRC funded project based in The University of Manchester, where teaching partnerships have developed curriculum innovations in Sociology and Politics. The paper then discusses the challenges of disseminating quantitative embedding, highlighting the need to bridge separate 'communities of practice' that can isolate quantitative specialists.
Data Collection: Key Debates and Methods in Social Research
Applied Research in Quality of Life
In recent years, improving work autonomy as an important priority in the UK labour market has bee... more In recent years, improving work autonomy as an important priority in the UK labour market has been shown to enhance employee mental health and well-being. However, previous theories and empirical studies have paid little attention to the intersectional inequalities in the mental health benefits of work autonomy, preventing us from gaining a comprehensive understanding of the mental consequences of work autonomy. By integrating literature from occupational psychology, gender and social class, this study develops theoretical hypotheses regarding whether and how the mental health benefits of work autonomy vary alongside the intersectional axes of gender and occupational class and tests these hypotheses using long-term panel data in the UK (2010–2021). Overall, we find that those from higher occupational class and male employees acquire significantly more mental health benefits from high work autonomy compared with those from lower occupational class and female employees. Moreover, furt...
Contemporary Philosophy and Social Science
Systematic Mixed-Methods Research for Social Scientists
This is a report on research undertaken by Professor Wendy Olsen, Dr Vanessa Gash, Sook Kim, and ... more This is a report on research undertaken by Professor Wendy Olsen, Dr Vanessa Gash, Sook Kim, and Dr Min Zhang on behalf of the Government Equalities Office. The primary aim of this research is to identify the factors that influence the gender pay gap in the UK. The work uses decomposition techniques to analyse the main predictors of the gender pay gap using waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS) relating to 2014 to 2015. The gender pay gap is the difference between men’s and women’s average hourly earnings.
Sociological Methodology, 2014
Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) opens up two new forms of knowledge: (1) knowing about alt... more Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) opens up two new forms of knowledge: (1) knowing about alternative pathways to one outcome (equifinality) and (2) perceiving nuances of necessary cause and sufficient cause. Several misunderstandings of QCA occur in the article by Lucas and Szatrowski (this volume, p. 1). First, there are minor problems with expressions. Second, there are differences between their philosophy of science (arguments 1, 2, and 3 below) and a realist approach. Third, they misinterpret what was meant by sufficient and necessary cause (arguments 4 and 5 below). The minor problems with expressions arise in sections 2.2 and 3. In section 2.2, the authors define consistency, but here they miss out on two key points. First, they neglect to say that this particular measure of consistency is a measure of sufficiency of cause, not of necessary cause. Second, they ignore the way that the consistency level exists for each possible configuration of characteristics. A configurat...
Data Collection: Key Debates and Methods in Social Research
Seminar on Comparative methods for the Advancement of Systematic Cross-Case Analysis and Small -N Studies, 2007
Labour force participation in India is found to respond to a plurality of causal mechanisms. Empl... more Labour force participation in India is found to respond to a plurality of causal mechanisms. Employment and unpaid labour are both measured using the 1999/2000 Indian National Sample Survey. Mens labour-force participation stood at 85 % and womens at 35%. The overall rate of labour force participation among women had fallen since 1989. Regression reveals a U curve of female employment by education levels. Many women at the bottom of the U are doing extra-domestic work, so a detailed measurement of both domestic work and other unpaid work is provided. Women in the Muslim cultural group do more extra-domestic work (and are more likely to be inactive) than women in other cultural groups. Economic poverty causes employment to be more likely. We use retroduction to interpret the regressions of labour force participation. We provide a number of reasons which could explain both the work patterns and the housewifisation pattern.
Decent Work or Decent Income, 2021
We want to thank all the people in the various teams in both India and Dhaka who helped in the pr... more We want to thank all the people in the various teams in both India and Dhaka who helped in the projects, notably the Gender Norms project 2014-7. This book chapter is one of the synthesising write-ups. The projects listed are all promoting and innovating in mixed methods of analysis as well as multiple methods of data collection.
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2015
Those aiming to respond to the recognised shortage in quantitative skills within the UK social sc... more Those aiming to respond to the recognised shortage in quantitative skills within the UK social sciences have increasingly focused on the content of undergraduate degree programmes. Problems occur when 'quantitative methods (QM)' are generally confined to a dedicated module, detached from substantive topics. This model makes it hard for students to understand or engage with the contribution of quantitative research to their discipline and can perpetuate negative perceptions of quantitative training. We suggest a solution to this problem is 'quantitative embedding', in which quantitative evidence and methods are incorporated into substantive teaching in the social sciences. We illustrate quantitative embedding with case studies from an ESRC funded project based in The University of Manchester, where teaching partnerships have developed curriculum innovations in Sociology and Politics. The paper then discusses the challenges of disseminating quantitative embedding, highlighting the need to bridge separate 'communities of practice' that can isolate quantitative specialists.
Data Collection: Key Debates and Methods in Social Research
Applied Research in Quality of Life
In recent years, improving work autonomy as an important priority in the UK labour market has bee... more In recent years, improving work autonomy as an important priority in the UK labour market has been shown to enhance employee mental health and well-being. However, previous theories and empirical studies have paid little attention to the intersectional inequalities in the mental health benefits of work autonomy, preventing us from gaining a comprehensive understanding of the mental consequences of work autonomy. By integrating literature from occupational psychology, gender and social class, this study develops theoretical hypotheses regarding whether and how the mental health benefits of work autonomy vary alongside the intersectional axes of gender and occupational class and tests these hypotheses using long-term panel data in the UK (2010–2021). Overall, we find that those from higher occupational class and male employees acquire significantly more mental health benefits from high work autonomy compared with those from lower occupational class and female employees. Moreover, furt...
Contemporary Philosophy and Social Science
Systematic Mixed-Methods Research for Social Scientists
This is a report on research undertaken by Professor Wendy Olsen, Dr Vanessa Gash, Sook Kim, and ... more This is a report on research undertaken by Professor Wendy Olsen, Dr Vanessa Gash, Sook Kim, and Dr Min Zhang on behalf of the Government Equalities Office. The primary aim of this research is to identify the factors that influence the gender pay gap in the UK. The work uses decomposition techniques to analyse the main predictors of the gender pay gap using waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS) relating to 2014 to 2015. The gender pay gap is the difference between men’s and women’s average hourly earnings.
Sociological Methodology, 2014
Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) opens up two new forms of knowledge: (1) knowing about alt... more Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) opens up two new forms of knowledge: (1) knowing about alternative pathways to one outcome (equifinality) and (2) perceiving nuances of necessary cause and sufficient cause. Several misunderstandings of QCA occur in the article by Lucas and Szatrowski (this volume, p. 1). First, there are minor problems with expressions. Second, there are differences between their philosophy of science (arguments 1, 2, and 3 below) and a realist approach. Third, they misinterpret what was meant by sufficient and necessary cause (arguments 4 and 5 below). The minor problems with expressions arise in sections 2.2 and 3. In section 2.2, the authors define consistency, but here they miss out on two key points. First, they neglect to say that this particular measure of consistency is a measure of sufficiency of cause, not of necessary cause. Second, they ignore the way that the consistency level exists for each possible configuration of characteristics. A configurat...
International Journal of Population Data Science, 2021
Introduction Length of Stay (LoS) in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) is an important measure for plan... more Introduction
Length of Stay (LoS) in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) is an important measure for planning beds capacity during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, as the pandemic progresses and we learn more about the disease, treatment and subsequent LoS in ICU may change.
Objectives
To investigate the LoS in ICUs in England associated with Covid-19, correcting for censoring, and to evaluate the effect of known predictors of Covid-19 outcomes on ICU LoS.
Data sources
We used retrospective data on Covid-19 patients, admitted to ICU between 6 March and 24 May, from the “Covid-19 Hospitalisation in England Surveillance System” (CHESS) database, collected daily from England’s National Health Service, and collated by Public Health England.
Methods
We used Accelerated Failure Time survival models with Weibull and log-normal distributional assumptions to investigate the effect of predictors, which are known to be associated with poor Covid-19 outcomes, on the LoS in ICU.
Results
Patients admitted before 25 March had significantly longer LoS in ICU (mean = 18.4 days, median = 12), controlling for age, sex, whether the patient received Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, and a co-morbid risk factors score, compared with the period after 7 April (mean = 15.4, median = 10). The periods of admission reflected the changes in the ICU admission policy in England. Patients aged 50-65 had the longest LoS, while higher co-morbid risk factors score led to shorter LoS. Sex and ethnicity were not associated with ICU LoS.
Conclusions
The skew of the predicted LoS suggests that a mean LoS, as compared with median, might be better suited as a measure used to assess and plan ICU beds capacity. This is important for the ongoing second and any future waves of Covid-19 cases and potential pressure on the ICU resources. Also, changes in the ICU admission policy are likely to be confounded with improvements in clinical knowledge of Covid-19.