Dr Meg Carter

BA (University of Melbourne), PhD (Swinburne)

Meg is a sociologist who works mostly with qualitative methods. She joined ISR in 2006 as a Research Fellow working on an ARC-funded project entitled 'Out of the Institution: Evaluating a Model of Housing and Support'. This project compared the experiences of people who were discharged from psychiatric institutions in Victoriain the 1990's with those of people discharged from GlensideHospitalin Adelaidesince 2005. The research considered the views of people living with mental illness, their carers or family members, and the workers who support them, including those from disability support agencies and from clinical outreach teams. It also considered the views of staff working at Glenside. That project was completed in 2008.

Meg is currently working on a study called ‘Explaining the Census: Investigating Reasons for Non-Response to the ABS Census of Population and Housing’. This study forms part of an ARC linkage project based in the disciplines of Statistics and Information Technology, that aims to develop a statistical model that can explain patterns of response and non-response in the 2006 census and predict patterns of response that appear in 2011. After early analysis from that project identified unexpectedly high levels of dwelling non-response in affluent inner-city areas in Melbourne and elsewhere, the Institute for Social Research was engaged to do a qualitative study to find out why this might be so. The statistical project and the qualitative study are proceeding concurrently, and findings from detailed analysis of census data will inform our work as they become available.

Before taking up sociology Meg worked for 20 years in federal government agencies concerned with implementing social policies related to families; in particular child care, education, income support and housing. Her particular interest is research methods, and the ways in which some forms of information come to be accepted as evidence in a policy setting, while others do not.

Publications in the Swinburne Research Bank

Office: EW102
Telephone: +61 3 9214 4420
Email: mcarter@groupwise.swin.edu.au