Research

Sunshine Project tackles social isolation

The University is helping to evaluate a project set up to improve the quality of life of elderly people living in residential care homes.

The Sunshine Project was set up by Help the Aged in the Clacton area to provide befriending and IT training for elderly residents. The aim was to reduce the social isolation of residents, which often affects health and well-being.

The scheme recruits local volunteers to visit and befriend the residents, providing companionship and community interaction. The IT training enables residents to communicate with family and friends via e-mail, as well to use the internet.

With the scheme already established in two care homes, the researchers will be evaluating its effectiveness, enabling Help the Aged to guide other care homes setting up similar projects.

Jennie Todd from the Department of Health and Human Sciences will undertake the research in partnership with the Tendring Primary Care Trust. The project team will interview residents to establish how beneficial the initiatives have been. They will also assess whether they have had any impact on the use of local health services by the residents.

Jennie said: 'With an ageing population, the challenge of promoting good mental and social health is an important one. People in residential homes can have a low quality of life and can also use a lot of local health resources. This is a small study, but it could have important implications.'

Help the Aged are keen to recruit more volunteers for befriending, as they roll the project out to seven more homes in Tendring. Mums with young children and people with pets are particularly welcome, and volunteers will receive training. For more information call 01255 477939.

Picture caption: Jennie Todd

Conference explores eBay phenomenon

A conference at the University is to discuss the exceptional success of the internet auction site eBay.

The UK's first social science conference about the e-commerce phenomenon will examine and make sense of the cultural, social and economic aspects of eBay, and consider its social and business implications.

It aims to bring together academics and practitioner groups from both business and the voluntary sector on the two conference days, 24 and 25 August at the Colchester campus.

The organising committee from Chimera, the University's institute for socio-technical innovation and research, received abstracts from eBay scholars around the world.

The themes include eBay and identity, collecting in an e-society, and eBay and the development of social capital.

'We've been extremely pleased with the quality and variety of submissions, and are looking forward to a very stimulating conference,' said Dr Rebecca Ellis and Anna Haywood, who are undertaking a two-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded project on eBay, at the University.

Although the deadline for registration has officially closed, the organising committee is still accepting registrations on a case by case basis. For more information, see www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/culturesofebay.html.

Our changing Sundays

In the early 1960s, household chores, a shared lunch and some work around the house were high on the agenda, nowadays a sleep-in and outside leisure dominate the shape of our Sundays.

These are the findings of a major study by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER). Professor Jonathan Gershuny compared 10,000 recent time diaries with 3,500 diaries written in 1961.

The most striking changes, he says, concern the gap between the sexes. 40 years ago women spent their Sundays catching up on chores and preparing a roast with occasional leisure breaks in the afternoon. Today, they spend as much time as men on leisure activities considerably reducing their overall volume of unpaid work on Sundays.

Moreover, not only has the amount of leisure time changed, but also the way in which it is used. Shopping emerged as a major activity, extra sleep is important and being out drinking or visiting friends has become an activity that both sexes equally indulge in.

These findings suggest that traditional gender roles are increasingly in retreat. If however a married couple sticks to the traditional roles, the husband achieves a 3 per cent higher salary than an otherwise similar single man. This result is derived from another newly published ISER study which analysed the hourly wages of 3,500 employed man using data from the British Household Panel Survey. The researchers concluded: 'It is important to point out that the man benefits from his wife not working, but the household benefits when she does work.'

Also in the printed July edition of Wyvern:

• Collaboration with police on hate crime
• New study to investigate impact of litigation
• Local experts educate on eating disorders
• Researchers launch air pollution forecasting tool
• World record wireless transmission
• New project to ease road congestion