In an increasingly globalised and technological world, job market success in developed countries such as Australia depends on the attainment of post-secondary qualifications. However, young Australians do not all have an equal opportunity to attain this necessary level of education. As it currently stands, approximately two-and-a-half years of schooling separates the achievement scores of students in the highest and lowest socioeconomic quartiles, and student achievement differs significantly according to location (e.g. rural or metropolitan) and cultural background. All Australian governments have recognised the need to increase quality and equity in Australian schooling and one of the key ways in which they are currently seeking to achieve this is through improving parent-school partnerships and parent engagement in child learning.The critical importance of engaging parents in their child's learning and building parent-school partnerships has been established in the international literature but research in the Australian context is limited. It is well documented that disadvantaged parents, which in Australia would include Indigenous parents and those from lower socio-economic statuses, tend to have lower levels of engagement in their child's school and learning, and face additional barriers to engagement when compared to more advantaged parents. Our results are consistent with these previous findings.Although Principals from disadvantaged schools were just as likely as those from more advantaged schools to report using a range of engagement strategies, they were significantly less likely to find many methods effective in involving parents in their school. Furthermore, a less positive culture of parent volunteerism was reported by P&C Presidents from disadvantaged schools. This suggests that those schools in which the children stand to gain the most from increasing levels of parent engagement, are the same schools finding their efforts to engage parents the least effective. These findings highlight the need to identify what does work in disadvantaged schools and to ensure that interventions are tailored to the specific needs of these schools, as applying uniform strategies across all schools may only compound the advantage of those already doing well. Principals in this study emphasised different barriers to parent involvement according to the school's level of advantage. Time-pressure factors such as work and family responsibilities were more likely to be identified in more advantaged schools, whereas parent factors such as a lack of interest and a lack of confidence, along with transportations problems, were more likely to be identified in disadvantaged schools. This information can be used to guide the future development of interventions.

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While academics can do more to communicate the key messages of their research, the organisational cultures and information infrastructure of policy-related work units also play a large part in influencing the extent of research uptake in government agencies. Data from a large Australian survey (N 2084) of policy-related officials in government agencies is examined to provide insights into how certain preferences, constraints and organisational factors influence the ways in which policy personnel seek out and use academic social research.

This paper reports results from a survey of academic social scientists in Australian universities on their research engagement experience with industry and government partners and end-users of research. The results highlight that while academics report a range of benefits arising from research collaborations, there are also significant impediments to research translation and uptake, including organisational processes within universities. Using the scale of research utilisation, we examine research transfer and uptake and explore a range of variables to understand factors influencing the use of academic social science research by policy makers and practitioners.

This article reports results from a survey of academic social scientists in Australian universities on reported levels of research utilisation by non-academic users. Using the scale of research utilisation we examine levels of research impact and explore a range of variables to understand factors influencing the use of academic social science research by policy-makers and practitioners.The results indicate that research uptake is enhanced through mechanisms that improve research transfer and the intensity of interactions between academic researchers and users. Our findings provide insights into how the impact of social science research can be improved and draws attention to factors that need to be considered in efforts to evaluate and enhance the impact of academic social research.

Recent research has suggested that income, while playing a part in quality of life, may have only a limited impact on a multi-faceted concept such as social wellbeing. Using data from an Australian household survey (Living in Queensland Survey), a composite Wellbeing Index was created that covered objective circumstances, with known associations to wellbeing, evaluated from the individual's subjective viewpoint. The importance attributed to each dimension added to the robustness of the measure. The measure was then used to explore the impact of income on wellbeing using various specifications of income. The results indicate that while income is a statistically significant predictor, its effect on wellbeing is small compared with other sociodemographic variables such as health, marital status, employment status and age. The study contributes to the contemporary debate on social wellbeing and adds new evidence to a body of research that has been mainly based on European and American data.

Acknowledgments:This study was funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (LP0775040), "The development and application of a conceptual and statistical framework for the measurement of nonmarket factors affecting social inequality and social wellbeing". The study was also supported by the Queensland Public Sector Union. Neither the Australian Research Council nor the Queensland Public Sector Union were involved in decision-making about the research and publication process. AbstractThis paper aims to extend our understanding of the impact of management practices and employment conditions in the contemporary workplace on the broader social realm. The study provides an analytic account of how these employment conditions impact on the social wellbeing of a representative sample of individuals and households. We assess the propensity of working arrangements that are manifested in various high performance work systems either to enhance or to diminish quality of life.The paper indicates that certain management practices and employment conditions have impacts that extend beyond the workplace and influence the broader wellbeing of individuals and families. KeywordsSocial wellbeing, employment conditions, high performance management practices, job security; quality of life 2

Social science disciplines generate diverse forms of research utilization, given the various contexts in which disciplinary knowledge is produced and translated for the fields of policy and practice. We examine this issue from the perspective of academic researchers in the social sciences across education, economics, sociology, political science, and psychology. We use survey data from a study of university-based social science researchers in Australia to examine factors that influence perceptions of the policy uptake of social research. Our results show that disciplinary and methodological context matters when it comes to understanding the translation, dissemination, and utilization of academic social research.