Research

A summary of my research interests

Organisations, Work and Care

Current work considers how staff engagement in organisations may enhance morale and potentially reduce absence and turnover.

There are a number of projects in the research programme, Organisations, Work and Care. These include:

International collaborative work is on-going:

In 2005/6 there were two related ESRC Seminar Series of related interest: The Ethics of Care: Implications for Research, Policy and Practice (McKie, Bowlby, Hopkins, Hughes, Watson and Wilkinson) and Public Policy, Equality and Diversity in the Context of Devolution (Riddell, McKie, Arshad, Rees, Meehan and Lynch).

Evaluation

Evaluation

The current project which runs to 2013, Personal Development Project (PDP) offers outdoor based activities for the target group of 14-17 year olds who have a ‘significant’ risk of offending. The evaluation draws upon contribution analysis and allows for the identification and consideration of which elements of potential outcomes the PDP project has under direct control and which can be achieved through direct and indirect influence. Funded by the Scottish Government (£145K) the evaluation is run through the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships.

I have worked as a sole evaluator, or as part of a team, to evaluate a range of social and health projects. This has built upon and developed skills in qualitative research and multi-method projects. Research and evaluation work has informed the development of The Evaluation Journey, a resource pack for those with no prior experience of research or evaluation (the Scottish Executive funded this development and the publication of 4,000 copies; www.ashscotland.org.uk. In 2005 work included a consideration of the feasibility of an evaluation service for small grant projects in Scotland. Theoretical work on evaluation has considered evaluation as a 'code of presentation' and the manner in which language, and the workings of evaluations, exclude many of those crucial to the running and sustainability of projects (see Evaluation, 9, 3, 307-324).

Violence and Violation

Grove Network

Funded by the Moray Endowment Trust and colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, work is under way with a range of charities with service providers to identify the needs of veterans of UK armed forces and examine the impact of conflict on returning service personnel and their families.

Parallel work has considered Gendered Policy and Policy on Gender: The Case of "Domestic Violence" with a co-authored paper (Hearn & McKie) published in 2008 in Policy and Politics, 36,1,75-91. Jeff Hearn and I are co-ordinators of the virtual research network, GROVE: Global Research on Organisations, Violations and Everyday Life. Through this network we draw across our research on organisations, work and care, and violence and violation.

Much of the work on this topic is explored in the book, Families, Violence and Social Change, Open University Press, published in 2005.


Prior to moving to Glasgow Caledonian University in 1999 I undertook sociological research in the Department of General Practice and Primary Care at the University of Aberdeen. Projects included the dietary beliefs and practices of older people, smoker's beliefs about the benefits of smoking, smoking cessation services in primary health care, and the process of disclosing domestic abuse in the context of primary healthcare.