An analysis of patient register data in the Longitudinal Study - what does it tell us about the quality of the data?

This article uses data for members of the ONS Longitudinal Study (LS) from both Census 2001 enumeration and patient registrations "frozen" on census day 2001 from the National Health Service Central Register (NHSCR) to examine potential sources of difference in area of usual residence.Overall 95.7 per cent of ONS LS members enumerated at census resided in the same area as recorded on the NHSCR data. Where areas differed, or the ONS LS member was not on the NHSCR on census day, subsequent NHSCR records were examined. Records flagged on the NHSCR as ONS LS members in England and Wales on census day but with no census record were also investigated.     

The UK population: how does it compare?

This is the fourth demographic report for the UK, providing an overview of the latest statistics on the population. This year's article compares the UK with other European countries and a range of nations from around the world. Statistical comparisons are made for fertility, mortality, ageing, migration and population density. The UK has an ageing population, but one that is not ageing as rapidly as some other countries such as Germany, Italy and Japan. Although life expectation in the UK is improving in line with most western European countries, relatively high levels of fertility ensure that the proportion of the population that is young remains high. Around one in ten residents of the UK are foreign born, a lower proportion than many developed countries. UK population density has increased steadily and is the fourth highest in the EU.     

Is it Safe to Talk About Systems Again Yet?

The following article makes a case for the social sciences to renew their interest in systems, drawing on ideas circulating in organisational and community psychology, industry, engineering, biology and ecology, the new physics, management, evaluation, religion and spirituality, policy-making, human services professions, and service-user and community movements. It charts a different kind of systemic thinking in striking contrast to traditional mechanistic social systems theory. Sociology’s current resiling from systems theory is explained as a legacy of its loyal service in the ‘battlefield’ of the post WW2 critique of authoritarian structural-functionalist positivist systems and the hard-won interpretive turn to issues of process, diversity, conflict, change and a critical and ‘qualitative’ epistemology. A new transdisciplinary mental architecture of self-organising processes for complex living systems is offered which integrates understandings of both ‘structural systems’ and the ‘processual systemic’ in individual psychology, organisational sociology, and in action research as its epistemology.

Ethics of a Sustainable Enterprise—and the Need for it

In the modern global economy, new criteria are needed to describe the most modern enterprises: Sustainable Enterprise (SE) and Sustainable Enterprise Ethics (SEE). Long-term existence and development of humans and organisations depend, largely, on application of the sustainable development (SD) concept. Already, some enterprises consider the modern conditions and apply the requisite synergy of economic, ecological, social and ethical aims. They can be called Sustainable Enterprises (SEs). Suitable activities of SEs depend on their ethics even more than on their knowledge—Sustainable Enterprise Ethics. Attainment of SEE demands innovation of values, culture and behaviour of all critical SEs’ participants for them to understand, achieve and use SEE as a more/requisitely holistic practice, based on ethics of interdependence (EI). We offer some new suggestions on why humans need SE and SEE and suggest ways to create and implement EI as SEE in and for SEs rather than the traditional one-sided business behaviour.

Mortality of the 'Golden Generation': what can the ONS Longitudinal study tell us?

It is well documented that the generations born around 1930 are consistently exhibiting higher rates of mortality improvement than the generations either side of them. There is currently no evidence that these differentials are declining. In current ONS National Population Projections, it is assumed that these cohorts will continue to experience higher rates of improvement. However, it is not yet precisely clear why this is so. This article details preliminary research carried out using the ONS Longitudinal Study to try to understand better why the members of the generation born around 1930 have been enjoying higher rates of mortality improvement throughout their adult life.