Last November, the government social research profession published its new 2025-29 strategy. It sets out five goals, focusing on skills, evidence, AI, multidisciplinary working, and a commitment to better reflect and represent UK society. The strategy defines what kind of analytical power GSR professionals could and should have to contribute to evidence-based policymaking.
The danger at the heart of the strategy is not weak ideas or bad intentions – who can really argue with their five goals? Well, perhaps the question is more about what is not covered in the strategy. Our research, based on 43 interviews with GSR members across departments and agencies in the UK, points to an unaddressed problem: leadership. Indeed, the profession hasn’t clarified what authority its leaders should have as part of policymaking processes.
For us, authority means GSR leaders in the senior civil service with real levers: control over standards and publication, a mandate to say “no” to bad evidence, and a seat in the room early. We heard from many social researchers who describe routine resistance when evidence challenges political preferences and a wider lack of understanding, among many policy officials, of what social research can offer them.
Unless that changes, the strategy risks becoming a wish-list without a clear route map to delivery.
A big strategy, weak foundations
GSR is a sizeable profession – over 2,600 people – but only around 30 are in the SCS, compared with around 180 economists. Most social researchers are at SEO and grade 7 level, and nearly 70% of the profession are women. In contrast, 60% of the economics profession are male. Interviewees spoke of this as a system-wide gendered status hierarchy. As one interviewee we spoke to told us: “Economists are treated as the clever ones; we’re just asked to add a story at the end." Others told us that policy makers and ministers “just want numbers”, briefings that foreground “short, sharp numbers” and “not the fluffy stuff” (that’s code for ‘qualitative research’). Moreover, the new GSR strategy does not speak to the felt sense of gender disparity between analytic professions.
When social research becomes optional
Our research points to an imbalance in how policy is done. Social researchers described being brought in late to evidence decisions already taken or turn shaky evidence, gathered by policy officials, into something that looks robust. One interviewee told us policy officials would whip up their own questionnaires, send them out, then drop the data on a researcher’s desk with the instruction to turn it into a report. By contrast, economists get agenda slots; social researchers get one if there is time.
What social researchers bring
GSRs have significant capabilities to shape important government decisions. Social researchers are good at the things the system says it wants more of: a person-centred perspective on policymaking and operations. GSR members can frame and reframe issues so policies can be grounded in evidence about how and why they will affect people’s lives, not just in what a model predicts. They design evaluations that explain not only whether a programme works, but why, for whom and in what context. They connect statistics, economics and frontline experience into stories that ministers and officials can use.
Leadership that can lead
The GSR profession heads and departmental heads of profession can become drivers of change, yet many sit at grade 6 with little grip over careers or publications. To make the strategy real, they need to see leadership with organisational power and dedicated time built into grades and job descriptions. This would translate into more social researchers promoted to the SCS with mandates to challenge poor practice and build research into policy design, and a model for multidisciplinary evidence-based policy where social research is not the junior partner to economics or data science. Authority gaps need to be owned, monitored and fixed by civil service leaders.
Leadership beyond London
Leadership is not just a London story. Outside the capital, grassroots analytical networks do much of what the strategy describes. The Manchester Analytical Community, for example, brings together hundreds of analysts across the region for seminars, mentoring, conferences and work with universities on pipelines into government. The strategy should treat these regional communities as core infrastructure, with time and modest budgets to match.
The big prize: Hearing “the social”
By 2029, the real test against which this strategy should be judged is not be whether GSR has ticked off its five high-level goals. It will be whether government is any better at grasping the social consequences of government action. This means understanding policy from people’s points of view and connecting political decisions with people’s lived experiences. For analysts and leaders, that is not academic; it should shape who is in the room and what evidence is on the table.
If GSR leadership is strengthened – with clearer authority, more senior roles, stronger heads of profession, and AI that supports rather than replaces judgement – the profession can help government see around corners, giving ministers earlier warning of what might go wrong and a more honest account of trade-offs. If not, we’ll continue to have leadership without power: another strategy with the right words, landing on a system that still struggles to listen to its own social researchers – the people who can inform us about ‘what works’.
Julian Molina is a senior lecturer in public policy at the University of Bristol's School for Policy Studies. Professor John Connolly is interim pro vice chancellor (research) and vice dean of the Glasgow School for Business and Society, Glasgow Caledonian University