An analysis of health status, mobility, demographic and socio-economic characteristics by occupational group.

This project aims to look at health status, mobility, demographic and socio-economic characteristics by occupational group with a specific focus on the characteristics of workers in the health and social care sector in Northern Ireland.

The NILS database provides information on sample members’ Census 2001 characteristics such as occupation, health status and other socio-demographic and economic traits. In addition, the NILS provides the opportunity to look at mobility patterns between 2001and 2010: this includes events such as emigration, immigration and internal migration. Contextual information can also be linked to members’ residences to provide information on area-level deprivation and changes between settlement classification types over time.

An analysis of these factors, in relation to health and social care workers, will develop a comprehensive picture of the workforce. This is needed due to changing health service delivery demands within Northern Ireland, as a consequence of as reform, modernisation and organisational re-structuring. In addition, this occupational group has been associated with pervasive workplace stress and concerns have also been highlighted over future staffing resources and ‘hard-to-fill’ long-term vacancies. This research will help to inform health service workforce planning as it will provide information on health issues and mobility trends and will also enable comparison across all occupational groups to identify any demographic and socio-economic patterns and variations for health and social care workers.

A secondary output will be an analysis of educational attainment levels for all occupational groups – this will help inform educational policies where a key priority is a commitment to widening participation in higher education.

Publications and Outputs:
The DEL co-investigator was responsible for the direction of the research in relation to public policy. Due to competing Departmental priorities, completion of the project became unfeasible and no final outputs were produced within the required timeframes.