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.
Empowering researchers
The film also highlights how the UK Data Service enables access to the largest collection of economic, population and social research data in the UK, with the data in our collection including large scale government surveys, longitudinal studies and UK census data.
This makes our collection an invaluable resource for researchers. As Alison Park, Deputy Executive Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) states in the film, the UK Data Service is “your place to begin when you want to see the data that’s there already… you are then in a much better position to get a sense of ‘what’s my research going to need to take it into account?’”
But the UK Data Service is much more than just a collection of data. In the words of Debora Price, Co-Investigator and Deputy Director of the UK Data Service: “Our strategy has to encompass ways of connecting data, making data more standardised, making data more interoperable and allowing us to bring some of these very important sources of information together.”
And as she explains, the UK Data Service also focuses on upskilling people: “teaching people how to use [data], giving them the facility to use these more complex forms of data, but also confronting the philosophical and ethical issues that these new data environments are bringing us.”
A partnership for impact
The film highlights the five key partnerships that make up the UK Data Service:
- The UK Data Archive, based at the University of Essex
- The Cathie Marsh Institute, based at the University of Manchester
- The Department of Information Studies at University College London
- EDINA, based at the University of Edinburgh
- Jisc, which is a national organisation that supports higher and further education
As hosts of the largest trusted digital archive of its kind, our expertise in the collection, preservation and dissemination of quality data is the culmination of nearly 60 years of sustained investment by the ESRC in the UK’s research data infrastructure.
Meticulously curated over this period from trusted data providers including governments, the Office for National Statistics, the ESRC and diverse other funders and data owners, our digital collection comprises nationally and internationally significant datasets such as the Census, Understanding Society, the UK Cohort Studies, the Labour Force Survey, the Family Resources Survey and many more.
Further Resources:
UK Data Service Data Catalogue