ABSTRACT
The social sciences in Britain are large: the community includes about 30,000 university staff and many thousands more practitioners. Social sciences now inform and underpin a large measure of public policy-making. Various government departments have accepted that the social sciences can bring important insights and evidence to bear on intractable social and economic challenges; this has been manifested in above-average increases for research funding of the social sciences. The social science industry in academia alone in the UK is about a £2.8 billion one. Most of the social science statistical databases available to researchers are, however, assembled from national datasets compiled to national specifications. New developments inside ONS — such as the Neighbourhood Statistics Service, created as a direct response to a need identified by the Social Exclusion Unit seem a major step forward. Research activity in the social sciences is, by comparison, a cottage industry.
