Mapping and measuring civil society: insights from TSRC’s programme of

quantitative research

John Mohan

©Copyright TSRC 2011. Please do not reproduce illustrations or material presented here without permission.

Median growth of income, 1998-2008, by initial (1998) income

Probability of survival to 2008 by income in 1998

Establishment dates of charities, 1963-2006: England and NE compared

Civic core

• the subset of people who collectively provide over 2/3 of at least ONE of the following:– Unpaid help– Donations to charity– Participation in a range of civic

organisations

(after Reed and Selbee, 2001)

Components of civic core: shares of volunteering, participation and giving to charity

Distribution of core and non-core groups by IMD

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

IMD - deciles

% o

f g

rou

p

Distribution of core and non-core groups by IMD

Civic core

Non-core but engaged

Not engaged

0

.2

.4

.6

.8

1

Org

anis

atio

ns/

pop

ulat

ion

: R

ate

ratio

0-5 5-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25-30 30-35 35-40 40-45 45-50 50-55 55+Deprivation [score]

No public income Public income

Distribution of organisations working at the neighbourhood scale, by IMD

Modelling and mythbusting

• Exposure to public funding streams

– is it where you are or what your organisation does that matters?

– or is it both?

• Social capital and volunteering

– strong association but disappears once you introduce controls for local economic conditions

• Cohort variations in participation

– distinguishing effects of age and cohort

– is there a cohort decline in engagement?

Volunteering rates and social capital by level of deprivation

Long term developments in data environment

• Deposit of data created is an ESRC requirement BUT some sources are proprietary

• UK wide – depends on resources• Open data, e.g. COINS database• Technological developments – scraping etc.• Administrative datasets – those generated by organisations

themselves, e.g. volunteer characteristics.

Forthcoming working papers

• Regional and local authority estimates of third sector workforce

• Classifying and counting the non-charitable third sector

• The “civic core”: disproportionality in giving and participation

• Volunteering as unpaid work or unpaid help: survey methods and their effect on reports of voluntary activity

• Patterns of participation: the mix of activities individuals undertake when they engage with the voluntary sector

• Estimates of volunteer numbers in the regulated third sector

• High pay in the third sector

• Long-run trends in the establishment of new voluntary organisations

Further details

• General overview: TSRC working paper 62• Tescoisation papers: TSRC working papers 38

and 39• Trends in establishment dates of organisations:

link to relevant paper here• Civic core: conference paper available here• Social capital and volunteering: conference

paper available here• Neighbourhood-scale organisations: TSRC

working paper available here

Further details:

John Mohan

TSRC

Social Sciences

Southampton SO17 1PN

jfm1@soton.ac.uk or j.mohan@tsrc.ac.uk

www.tsrc.ac.uk