Insights
Knowledge is Power, but Understanding is Everything
Recent Posts

Partner highlight: Monitoring, evaluation and learning for cohesive social impact – from ends to means
Social Surveys Director Dr Tara Poltzer is featured in this months’ edition of the Democracy Works Newsletter.
Read her full articleEducation
From ECD to higher and further education, we measure the quality and quantity of learning, continually adapting the assessment and measurement methods required
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Social Cohesion & Protest
We study social cohesion at the community level, seeking to understand the underlying causes, triggers and responses to unrest and the ways in which communities organise and govern themselves.
Trends and Black Swans
Trends matter a great deal, especially for research and planning. And so what happens in a time of crisis, when all standards seem to change? What is the point of a trend if there is a sudden and unpredictable disruption – like COVID-19 – altering the best-laid plans...
Bridging the Gap between South Africa’s Lofty Ideals and Violent Reality
Freedom House South Africa Director Paul Graham writes that an informed solution to South Africa’s chronic gender-based violence and collective violence against foreign nationals must take into account insights from research into the nature of this violence, including...
Measuring South Africa’s National Trajectory
Where is South Africa headed over the next ten years? Beyond the emotional ups and downs of the daily news cycle, what underlying indicators do we need to track to assess the long-term stability of the country and the probably trajectory in terms of social cohesion?...
Poverty & Inequality
To reduce both absolute and relative deprivation, it is crucial to understand how individuals, families and communities experience deprivation in all its dimensions, and how different people and communities experience and respond to it in different ways.
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Land & Housing
Land and housing are economic assets, spaces of social interaction, and points of identity and belonging. These dimensions, and more, inform our thinking about land tenure systems, housing needs assessments, settlement planning, infrastructure impacts, urbanisation & labour mobility, informal settlement upgrades and farm worker evictions.
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Social Issues in Mining
Social Surveys has a 30-year track record in the mining sector, advising communities, mining houses and civil society partners on labour migration, housing needs, relocations, employee safety and productivity, protest risk and environmental impacts.
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Civil Society, Philanthropy, Giving & Volunteering
How do you understand the nature of civil society organisations, community-level philanthropy and the practices of giving and volunteering in African contexts characterised by informality, collectivism and deep mutual support networks?
The NPO Study
The NPO Study “First nationally representative study to determine size & scope of the NPO sector in SA – part of the Johns Hopkins NPO Project” Book: “Size & Scope of the Non-profit Sector in South Africa” by Mark Swilling & Bev Russell-Rice...
Health
from behaviour change communication to health facility capacity assessments, and from in-depth local pilot studies to large-scale multi-method impact evaluations, our work in health spans many subjects and methods
HIV-prevention clubs in primary school reduce HIV prevalence 10 years later
An evaluation of the Soul Buddyz Club intervention, looking at the long-term effect of participation among youth aged 18-24 ten years after being club members, found that young women who were members of a Soul Buddyz Club ten years ago were 2.92 times more likely to...
Youth & Employment
We seek to understand the full spectrum of ways in which people participate in the economy
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Methods and Field Notes
Quality in, quality out. Excellence in data collection and processing is fundamental to interpretation and insight with integrity.
Field Workers or Field Researchers?
In all large-scale studies, and many small or medium-scale studies, primary data is not collected by the researchers who design and analyse the research but by ‘field workers’. In conventional research publications and methodology text books, this crucial group of...
Rethinking rural development planning
Bev Russell, Social Surveys CEO, presented a paper at the 9th Rural Development Policy Conference (24-25 May 2018, Durban, South Africa) entitled “Rethinking rural development planning: Mainstreaming economic development in rural communities through user-friendly...
Gender and Sexuality
To challenge homophobia, it is important to understand sexuality and gender issues
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Events
Events give us the chance to talk to new people. Talking is good! New people are good!
8th South African AIDS Conference
Social Surveys Africa Research Director Tara Polzer Ngwato presents at the 8th South African AIDS Conference in Durban, presenting methodological innovations in a study conducted with Genesis Analytics for the Soul City Institute on the long term impacts of...
Democracy Works
As part of our 30th anniversary celebrations, Social Surveys Africa co-hosted a debate with the Democracy Works Foundation entitled DEFENDING DEMOCRACY - INSTITUTIONS AND THE PEOPLE (7 May 2017, Women’s Jail, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg). The speakers were Dr...

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