A presentation from the HEA's Research Conference: Promoting Equity in Higher Education 2010.
The overarching aim of the workshop will be to explore the question of social class measurement in the context of widening participation. Three specific questions will be addressed: How helpful are geo-demographic proxies (e.g. Index of Multiple Deprivation) for locating socio-economic groups? How accessible and reliable is socio-economic data gathered from young people? Do the socio-economic categories used by policy makers practitioners and others usefully reflect the purposes of widening participation? The workshop will aim to draw on the real-life experience of practitioners in the audience coupled with the presentation of recent research in the field.
