Welcome to the UK Data Service

The UK Data Service has released a new film that explains the value of its key services to researchers around the world and how it supports their work to make positive changes to people’s lives. With over 10,000 datasets in our collection, we help over 52,000 researchers worldwide to drive impactful social and economic research.

The UK Data Service has hit a significant milestone in its history, with the number of data collections we make available reaching the 10,000 mark. Over the past six decades, the UK Data Service and its forerunners have supported research by simplifying findability and access to social, economic and population data.

We were pleased to join forces with the team at CLOSER again this year to produce another informative podcast featuring several high-profile experts from the world of data, including our own Director, Dr Steve McEachern. In this new production, we explore how research data can be used by government policymakers to make positive influences to our society.

This new Impact Case Study looks at the Gender Equality Index UK: the first index to systematically measure and analyse the socioeconomic outcomes of women and men across all 372 local authorities in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Professor Alison Park, from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), discusses the importance of UK social science data infrastructures and outlines some of the opportunities and challenges they face.

This year, the UK Data Service reached an incredible milestone — over 10,000 data collections are now discoverable through our Data Catalogue. But what is the journey to this milestone? What does it matter? And how does it set the stage for the next chapter of data innovation and impact?

Watch and learn all the latest data skills from our free webinars, training and video tutorials.

This free workshop will take you through the research process of a secondary analysis project, including an overview of the methodological and ethical issues. Includes a guided walk-through of some of our data catalogue pages, and get to explore a downloaded dataset and test your knowledge of the research cycle.

Social Network Analysis is an exciting computational method that allows us to study social systems by visualising and interrogating the relationships among individuals or groups. This technique allows us to answer questions about the ins-and-outs of social interaction and information flow, such as how ideas or behaviours spread through a population.