ESPA Social Surveys Event

23 Oct 2014
Start Date/Time: 09:00, 23 October, 2014
End Date/Time: 17:00, 24 October, 2014
Venue: Bingham Room, The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, London

ESPA’s research is truly interdisciplinary combining the natural and social sciences.  It is also often data intensive with many projects requiring substantive new field campaigns.  The new data for much of ESPA’s social research is underpinned by social or household surveys.

ESPA’s research agenda is both challenging and innovative.  The programme seeks to go beyond correlating poverty with environmental characteristics to build an understanding of the links between ecosystem services and human well-being.  ESPA research needs to answer the question of how ecosystem services contribute (or do not) to poverty alleviation, for whom, under what conditions and if there are any particular enabling conditions, such as key assets, institutional structures or markets.  Social surveys are one of the most important research tools used by projects to provide the information to start addressing these questions.

A significant number of ESPA projects have now designed and implemented their surveys.  The methods used, the intensity and frequency of sampling, and even the main themes covered vary significantly between projects.  As a result, ESPA projects have experience and results that can be shared, compared and potentially synthesised.

The event combined presentations and workshop sessions to review the way that ESPA’s research has used social surveys to build up methodological lessons learnt from the programme.  The event provided the first opportunity to contrast the results from surveys which span the globe with a range of social and environmental contexts.  As well as any initial findings emerging from the workshop sessions, the event helped to identify opportunities for further synthesis and analysis linking the work of a number of ESPA projects.

The meeting agenda is available here

Presentations

Thursday, 23rd October 2014

Friday, 24th October 2014