Summary information

Study title

Creating Citizen-Consumers: Changing Relationships and Identifications, 2003-2005

Creator

Clarke, J., Open University, Faculty of Social Sciences

Study number / PID

5590 (UKDA)

10.5255/UKDA-SN-5590-1 (DOI)

Data access

Restricted

Series

Not available

Abstract

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.This project was situated in a number of significant political, policy and academic debates. Citizens and consumers are typically thought of as antagonistic terms, reflecting the institutional oppositions between state and market, public and private, collectivism and individualism. As a result, addressing citizens as consumers of public services implies a shift from the collectivist and state-centric formations of post-war welfarism to the individualist and market-centric formations associated with neo-liberalism. Although it derives from the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s, Labour governments since 1997 have placed the citizen-consumer in a central role in the modernisation and reform of public services in the UK. A model of consumer choice has increasingly been identified as the means of empowering the citizen-consumer. The project centred on two key propositions. Firstly, policies on consumerism and choice are likely to produce shifting relationships between the providers and users of public services, but these may be service-specific. Secondly, the figure of the citizen-consumer may not capture the complexity of service user identifications. Also, the project had four main objectives: to trace the development of consumerist relationships in British social policy; to explore the forms such relationships take in different services, sectors and political cultures; to examine how consumer identities articulate with other identities among service users and service providers; and to situate the shift to consumerist relationships in social policy in the UK in an international context. Further information about the project and links to publications may be found on the Creating CitizenConsumers: Changing Relationships and Identifications project web pages.Main Topics:This mixed methods data collection contains three elements; semi-structured individual interview transcripts,...
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Methodology

Data collection period

01/11/2003 - 01/01/2005

Country

England

Time dimension

Cross-sectional (one-time) study

Analysis unit

Individuals
Subnational

Universe

Police, health care and social care service staff and users in England, during 2003-2005.

Sampling procedure

Convenience sample

Kind of data

Text
Numeric
Semi-structured interview transcripts; Focus Group transcripts; aggregate questionnaire data.

Data collection mode

Face-to-face interview
Self-completion
Focus group

Funding information

Grant number

RES-143-25-0008

Access

Publisher

UK Data Service

Publication year

2007

Terms of data access

The Data Collection is available to UK Data Service registered users subject to the End User Licence Agreement.

Commercial use of the data requires approval from the data owner or their nominee. The UK Data Service will contact you.

Related publications

Not available