Childhood disability, social class and social mobility: A neglected relationship

Disability theorists have long highlighted the role of institutional, social, and environmental barriers in constructing disability, emphasizing its parallels with other socially constructed axes of stratification. However, despite theoretical developments toward sociological understandings of disability, social stratification and life-course research have largely neglected childhood disability as a social division. As a result, we still know little surrounding the socio-economic attainment of disabled children and young people. Drawing on Next Steps data, this research note highlights stark overlooked inequalities between disabled and non-disabled young people's activity status and social mobility in early adulthood. We specifically focus on the importance of social class for disabled young people's outcomes, emphasizing the need for intersectional analyses of disability inequalities. We also outline longitudinal survey data enhancements necessary for life-course research on childhood disability and its intersections.

Changing Times Together? A Time-Diary Analysis of Family Time in the Digital Age in the United Kingdom

Objective: This study examines the impact of digital mobile devices on different aspects of family time in the United Kingdom. Background: Recent years have witnessed increasing concerns surrounding the consequences of the widespread diffusion of Internet-enabled mobile devices such as smartphones for family well-being. However, research examining the extent to which mobile devices have influenced family time remains limited. Method: Using nationally representative time-diary data spanning a period of unprecedented technological change (U.K. 2000 and 2015 Time Use Surveys), the authors construct a set of novel family time measures that capture varying degrees of family togetherness and examine changes in these measures over time. Novel diary data are also analyzed to explore the occurrence of mobile device use during different aspects of family time in 2015. Results: Children and parents spent more time at the same location in 2015, and there was no change in the time they spent doing activities together. However, there was a marked increase of alone-together time, when children were at the same location as their parents, but did not report that they were copresent with them. The results show that children and parents used mobile devices during all aspects of family time in 2015, but device use was notably concentrated during alone-together time. Conclusion: This study provides an empirical basis for documenting the impact of mobile device use on family time.

Disability differentials in educational attainment in England: primary and secondary effects

Childhood disability has been largely overlooked in social stratification and life course research. As a result, we know remarkably little about mechanisms behind well-documented disability differentials in educational outcomes. This study investigates educational transitions of disabled youth using data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. We draw on social stratification literature on primary and secondary effects as well as that on stigma and labelling in order to explain disabled young people's educational outcomes. We find that disability differentials in transition rates to full-time academic upper secondary education and to university are largely the result of primary effects, reflected in differences in school performance between disabled and non-disabled young people. However, we also find evidence for secondary effects, with similarly achieving disabled young people less likely to pursue full-time academic upper secondary education compared to their non-disabled peers. We examine the extent to which these effects can be explained by disabled youth's suppressed educational expectations as well as their experiences of being bullied at school, which we link to the stigma experienced by disabled young people and their families. We find that educational expectations play an important role at crucial transitions in the English school system, while the effect of bullying is considerably smaller. By drawing attention to different social processes contributing to disability differentials in attainment, our study moves beyond medical models that implicitly assume a naturalized association of disability with poor educational outcomes, and demonstrates the parallels of disability with other ascriptive inequalities.

Using New Technologies for Time Diary Data Collection: Instrument Design and Data Quality Findings from a Mixed-Mode Pilot Survey

Recent years have witnessed a steady growth of time-use research, driven by the increased research and policy interest in population activity patterns and their associations with long-term outcomes. There is recent interest in moving beyond traditional paper-administered time diaries to use new technologies for data collection in order to reduce respondent burden and administration costs, and to improve data quality. This paper presents two novel diary instruments that were employed by a large-scale multi-disciplinary cohort study in order to obtain information on the time allocation of adolescents in the United Kingdom. A web-administered diary and a smartphone app were created, and a mixed-mode data collection approach was followed: cohort members were asked to choose between these two modes, and those who were unable or refused to use the web/app modes were offered a paper diary. Using data from a pilot survey of 86 participants, we examine diary data quality indicators across the three modes. Results suggest that the web and app modes yield an overall better time diary data quality than the paper mode, with a higher proportion of diaries with complete activity and contextual information. Results also show that the web and app modes yield a comparable number of activity episodes to the paper mode. These results suggest that the use of new technologies can improve diary data quality. Future research using larger samples should systematically investigate selection and measurement effects in mixed-mode time-use survey designs.

Doubly Disadvantaged? Bullying Experiences among Disabled Children and Young People in England

Bullying among school-aged children and adolescents is recognised as an important social problem, and the adverse consequences for victims are well established. However, despite growing interest in the socio-demographic profile of victims, there is limited evidence on the relationship between bullying victimisation and childhood disability. This article enhances our understanding of bullying experiences among disabled children in both early and later childhood, drawing on nationally representative longitudinal data from the Millennium Cohort Study and the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. We model the association of disability measured in two different ways with the probability of being bullied at ages seven and 15, controlling for a wide range of known risk factors that vary with childhood disability. Results reveal an independent association of disability with bullying victimisation, suggesting a potential pathway to cumulative disability-related disadvantage, and drawing attention to the school as a site of reproduction of social inequalities.

Class, gender and time poverty: a time-use analysis of British workers' free time resources

Free time, that is, the time that remains at one's own discretion after conducting daily work and personal care activities, has been previously recognized as a 'primary good' and an important welfare resource that provides opportunities for participation in social life and leisure. However, recent years have witnessed an increasing preoccupation with the phenomenon of time poverty, drawing attention to the distribution of free time and its relationship to structural and family circumstances. In this article we propose a novel approach to the measurement of time poverty and document its occurrence amongst British workers. In line with previous literature, a conceptualization of time poverty as a relative lack of free time resources vis-à-vis other members of the community is adopted. However, unlike previous empirical studies, we investigate the differential configuration of time poverty on weekdays and weekend days, alongside indicators of the quality of free time, taking into account insights from theoretical and empirical work within the field of the sociology of time. Our analysis of the 2000 UK Time Use Survey highlights class and gender inequalities that have been missed by previous measurement approaches and demonstrates that, overall, working women experience multiple and more severe free time constraints, which may constitute an additional barrier for their leisure and social participation.