Help define the UK Data Service identity: User Survey

The ESRC are establishing a new UK Data Service which integrates several existing services including the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS), the Census Programme and the Secure Data Service.

 

Work is now underway to establish an identity for the new service. To make it a cohesive and meaningful brand, we’d like to hear from data users – those who currently use digital research data, and those who might use it in the future.

 

Below is a link to a short survey designed just for data users. It’s a quick and fun questionnaire – not a research study, but a way to get some initial indications of what you think should characterise the UK Data Service’s ‘brand’. It should take less than 10 minutes of your time, and all responses are anonymous.

 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/UKdataservice_users

 

Please complete the questionnaire by Sunday evening, 16^thSeptember.

 

Webinar - Employment and the Labour Market Data: A Brief Tour

Monday 24 September 2012
Online, 15:00-16:00

Short on time but want to know more about data available to research employment and the labour market?

This free hour-long webinar on individual-level data from government surveys and censuses will introduce you to the main datasets and their use. The session will be presented by Jen Buckley and Jo Wathan of ESDS Government, it will cover basic issues for new users and provide an opportunity to ask questions from your own desk.

The webinar is free to attend but registration is required. Please book a place at www.ccsr.ac.uk/esds/events/2012-09-24/booking.html. Queries are welcome at govsurvey@esds.ac.uk

Teaching Secondary Analysis of Qualitative Data: a workshop for qualitative methods teachers.

On 18 September the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) is hosting a half-day workshop at the UK Data Archive aimed at best practices in teaching qualitative analysis of secondary data.

ESDS Qualidata has pioneered archiving, sharing and methods of reuse of qualitative research data, and is incorporating some of the great materials for secondary analysis advanced by the Timescapes team.

The workshop is aimed at those with and without experience in teaching in this area and provides an opportunity for participants to share current strategies and ideas on how to promote skills in reusing data. This event is free of charge, but numbers are limited and booking is essential.

http://www.esds.ac.uk/qualidata/news/eventdetail.asp?id=3306

Consultation on EU-SILC

Eurostat is currently evaluating the usefulness of the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), and examining the options for the future of the survey. They have commissioned a small team at ISER to write a report on one aspect of the EU-SILC, namely the design of the longitudinal component of the survey.

As part of this exercise, ISER have prepared a survey for the research community, asking researchers about their experiences with the EU-SILC data, and what they think about the different options for changing the design.

The survey can be found here https://essex.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_eQC5D4XtnOmzE0t

Consultation on the Health Survey for England

The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) has launched a public consultation to seek feedback from users of the Health Survey for England (HSE) on the proposed changes to the smoking module.

The HSE is a series of annual surveys about the health of people living in England. It is a major study in the ESDS (recently refunded as UKDS) catalogue, sponsored by the Department of Health to provide better and more reliable information about various aspects of people's health and to monitor selected health targets.

The modules and questions within the HSE are reviewed on a regular basis to ensure they are of most benefit to users. As part of this process, the smoking module was reviewed in 2012, with a view to making changes for the HSE 2013.

The consultation will run for 6 weeks and close on Wednesday 3 October 2012.

Following the consultation period, all comments received by the HSCIC will be considered and decisions will be made on the content of the Smoking Module for HSE 2013 onwards.

·         Full details of the consultation

Funding call: Google Data Analytics

ESRC and Google are making funds available for research projects that demonstrate how publicly accessible online data, analytical and presentational tools can be used to further social and economic research.

The Google Data Analytics Social Science Research call is seeking proposals that showcase how academics can use online data analytical tools in creative and intellectual ways. Projects should:

·         Transmit best practice in use of such tools for social science
·         Show how the tools can be used to test social science theories
·         Suggest possible improvements or innovations to help integrate analytics – and open source data tools in general – into the teaching and learning community

Applicants can apply for a maximum of £125,000 from the ESRC towards the total project costs. The ESRC has allocated a total of £600,000 budget to the call and will fund up to a maximum of six projects.

 

The deadline for proposals is 2 October 2012. Full details are available on the ESRC website.

·         ESRC Google Data Analytics Social Science Research call

New 27 country model of EUROMOD announced

The first-ever all-EU version of the microsimulation model, EUROMOD, has been released to the research community.

EUROMOD is a tax-benefit microsimulation model for the European Union (EU) that enables researchers and policy analysts to calculate, in a comparable manner, the effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes and work incentives for the population of each country and for the EU as a whole.

EUROMOD is managed, maintained, developed and updated by the Microsimulation Unit, a team of researchers in ISER. This is done in collaboration with national experts.

The current version of EUROMOD represents the accumulation of technical developments and expertise over a number years and involving a large team of people. For more information about EUROMOD’s design and development, including a current project, go to EUROMODupdate2.

Some simple statistics showing the redistributive effects of taxes and benefits in the EU, calculated by EUROMOD, can be viewed here: EUROMOD statistics