What is the UK Data Service? A beginner’s guide

David Martin

Deputy Director

ESRC Research Methods Festival

St Catherine’s College, Oxford

9 July 2014

Overview

• welcome and introduction

• a brief introduction to the UK Data Service

• an infrastructure for social science data access

• range of services and data

• innovations and developments

• brief overview of rest of this session – three “sample” data collections

UK Data Service

• ESRC has invested substantially in social science datasets, seen as an “infrastructure” for social science

• previous investments included ESRC’s Census Programme, Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) and Secure Data Service (SDS)

• in summer 2012, all combined into a new integrated UK Data Service

• overarching aim: to provide users with seamless and flexible access to data resources to facilitate high-quality social and economic research

UK Data Service

• place of deposit for data arising from ESRC-funded research• an obligation for award holders to offer data for access by other

researchers

• includes ReShare self-deposit facility

• Census Support provides access to UK census datasets

• major collections of UK and international survey datasets

• Secure Lab for sensitive data access

• training, support and guidance

• free to users• different access conditions apply to different datasets, from

source

Innovations and developments…

• Ongoing data acquisitions

• Continuous working with national statistical organisations and other key data providers on behalf of the social science research community

• Innovation projects – enhancing the service

• Data enhancement projects such as Enhancing and Enriching Historic Census Microdata

• Integration with ESRC’s new “big data” initiatives such as business and local government data research centres

Questions

David Martin

D.J.Martin@soton.ac.uk