Paul Bradshaw is Director of the Scottish Centre for Social Research (ScotCen) which is the Scottish arm of NatCen.

As a child what did you want to be when you grew up?
I remember at one point when I was younger, I definitely wanted to be a fighter pilot in the RAF.

When did you first turn towards a social research career?
It wasn’t really until towards the end of my undergraduate degree. I had been studying for a Joint Honours in Sociology and Theatre Studies at Glasgow and was quite set on a career in theatre production. However, I had taken a course in Criminology in my final year and found it truly fascinating to the extent that I went on to study for a Masters in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Edinburgh. The Masters had a strong research methods element which I really enjoyed.

During my time at Edinburgh I also worked part-time as a survey interviewer for the Transport Research Institute at Napier and for System Three (which subsequently merged into TNS and then Kantar) as a data collector on a project extracting data from paper court records in the Sheriff Court. These experiences set me firmly on course to a career in social research.

What was your first professional job? And first project there?
My first professional job was as a Researcher at the Scottish Consumer Council. I think my first project was a report on e-commerce and consumer protection - quite an emerging topic at the time!

Where did your career go next? What motivated that/those moves?
I went from the Scottish Consumer Council (SCC) back to the Law School at Edinburgh University to work as a Research Associate on the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime (ESYTC). Whilst the SCC covered a huge number of policy areas and undertook some very interesting and important work, I really wanted to be researching crime. My time at the ESYTC - a longitudinal study incorporating self-complete questionnaire data collection, extraction of administrative data from education, social work, Children’s Reporter and police records and geo-mapping data - proved to be hugely significant both in terms of developing my research skills and influencing my future career.

I went from ESYTC to Research Officer at Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration, continuing my interest in youth offending but widening the focus to take in issues of child protection - which had also been a feature of some work at the Edinburgh Study - and of course a position more oriented to policy and practice-related research. In 2005, I was lucky enough to obtain a Senior Researcher position at ScotCen working on a new longitudinal study called Growing Up in Scotland which was just about to go into field for its first sweep of data collection. I’ve never looked back. The opportunities and experience that ScotCen and Growing Up in Scotland - a study I’m still working on today - offered have been fantastic.

What has been your best professional moment?
I think probably having the opportunity to travel to Wellington, NZ to participate in a symposium concluding an international comparative project on early childhood health and development using cohort studies from Scotland, the Republic of Ireland and New Zealand.

...and worst?
Let’s just say some slightly dodgy data analysis early in my career may have, for a very short period and for a limited audience, suggested an intervention was much more effective than it actually was…

Do you have a social research hero/heroine?
I have great admiration for the researchers who have taken one-off, cross-sectional studies, seen the opportunity and value in adapting them into longitudinal projects and worked incredibly hard to make that happen. This has been the foundation of some of our most important and influential longitudinal projects.

Do you have a favourite quote?
No.

What would you say to encourage a young person today considering a social research career?
If you’re interested in the different ways people live, behave and think, why they live, behave and think in different ways, and what can help change people’s lives for the better, social research will give you an unrivalled opportunity to satisfy these interests.