New funding just announced by ESRC will allow the successful Lancaster-Warwick "node" of the National Centre for Research Methods to expand in three ways: into the future, into a third partner university, and into a further substantive research field.

The next phase of the node's activity will extend from 2008 to 2011, will include a new group of researchers at the University of Stirling, and will develop statistical methodology and training materials for the additional research area of education (Steve Strand and David Firth, Warwick; Damon Berridge, Lancaster; Vernon Gayle, Stirling) alongside ongoing collaborations in criminology, psychology and sociology.  The node's methodological theme "Developing Statistical Modelling for the Social Sciences" will be more wide-ranging than ever, but will maintain its core emphasis on statistical approaches to longitudinal studies.

Professor David Firth of the Warwick team says: "We are tremendously excited by the many new possibilities for collaboration, both within the expanded Lancaster-Warwick-Stirling node and more broadly with the other newly funded NCRM groups elsewhere."