Understanding Society and the UK Data Service have launched a teaching dataset to give students a foundation in using longitudinal data for research.
The dataset – Understanding Society: Ethnicity and Health Teaching Dataset Wave 1, 2009-2010 – came out in May, and is available through the UK Data Service. It gives an overview of the data available to lecturers who teach and supervise students in quantitative social science subjects.
The dataset comes with two worksheets: one introduces undergraduate students and new data users to Understanding Society, a household panel survey of 40,000 households, and the second one takes them through the process of using the data to analyse ethnic differences in health.
The new teaching resource was devised and written by Dr Alita Nandi, a Research Fellow at ISER and Associate Director (Outreach) for Understanding Society, and Dr Deborah Wiltshire, Senior User Support and Training Officer at the UK Data Service.
Both the UK Data Service and Understanding Society are promoting the new dataset at events around the country, and there are now plans to devise a course for lecturers and supervisors to teach longitudinal data analysis with Understanding Society which will be aimed at Masters and PhD students, and involve hands-on lab work.
Dr Nandi said: “Understanding Society – the UK Household Longitudinal Study – is one of the largest panel studies of its kind, and an incredibly rich resource for researchers across different disciplines. Both our organisations want to encourage students to learn about how to get the most out of using data for research, and to nurture new generations of researchers for the future.”