Every year, Love Data Week invites us to celebrate the role of data in our lives and the people who work tirelessly to make it accessible. This year’s Love Data Week, which takes place from 9-13 February, will feature a vast number of events hosted by universities, non-profit organisations, government agencies, businesses and individuals across the world.
All these events will be dedicated to the theme of “Where’s the data?” And as an organisation that provides trusted access to the UK’s largest collection of economic, population and social research data, we think there’s an easy answer to this question. Where’s the data? The data is at the UK Data Service!
Here’s the data
Last year, the UK Data Service hit a key milestone, with the number of data collections we make available reaching 10,000. We also recently implemented a major update to our data catalogue that makes finding and working with data faster and easier than ever before.
Our data collections include surveys, longitudinal studies, UK census data, international macrodata, qualitative data and mixed data. This is all carefully curated, with standards-compliant metadata.
Our approach supports the FAIR principles: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. You can find everything you need to know about registering to access our data collections at our registration page.
Resources for Love Data Week 2026
Love Data Week is the ideal time to engage with other data users and learn new skills. There’s no better place to start than with the comprehensive programme of training events, workshops and conferences that we hold across the year. You can find a full listing at our events page.
During Love Data Week 2026, we’ll be hosting the following events:
· An overview of survey data linkage, 10 February
· Computational social science drop-in, 10 February
· Perspectives on Engagement and Impact: a UK Data Service event for Early Career Researchers, 11 February
Recordings of UK Data Service events are published on our YouTube channel and on our past events pages. You can also find online training resources at our Learning Hub.
Interesting new datasets
If you are looking to find interesting new datasets, we are pleased to share news about a few new datasets that have been released in our collection recently.
They include:
This is a new qualitative study, which explores the women survivors’ journeys through accommodation and support systems across England.
It includes their experiences of accessing domestic abuse support in England, including their feelings of safety, and support needs during and after accessing accommodation. Additionally, it examines how intersectional characteristics and personal circumstances affect accommodation experiences, and how survivors experience “moving on” from accommodation.
From January to April 2023, Interventions Alliance conducted 40 in-depth interviews with women who have survived domestic abuse across England on behalf of the Office for National Statistics. The Office for National Statistics also conducted four interviews with experts by experience between June and July 2023.
The study finds that accommodation pathways varied considerably, with some survivors experiencing complex and non-linear journeys involving multiple moves and different forms of provision. Differences in pathways may have been influenced by how survivors accessed help, who they received it from, and individual characteristics and circumstances.
The study also notes existing evidence that a higher proportion of women than men experience domestic abuse and that women seek refuge-based accommodation at a higher rate. It highlights that men’s service needs differ and that further focused research is needed to explore the experiences and needs of men and people of other gender identities.
By making this study available, the data can now be used for secondary reuse, enabling researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to engage with survivors’ accounts, explore new research questions, and undertake further analysis of accommodation experiences after domestic abuse.
People are increasingly using generative artificial intelligence (AI) for emotional support, creating trust-based interactions with limited predictability and transparency. The creators of this study addressed the fragmented nature of research on trust in AI through a multidisciplinary conceptual review, examining theoretical foundations for understanding trust in the emerging context of emotional support from generative AI.
Through an in-depth literature search across human-computer interaction, computer-mediated communication, social psychology, mental health, economics, sociology, philosophy, and science and technology studies, they developed two principal contributions.
First, they summarised relevant definitions of trust across disciplines. Secondly, based on their first contribution, they defined trust in the context of emotional support provided by AI and presented a categorisation of relevant concepts that recur across well-established research areas.
Their work equips researchers with a map for navigating the literature and formulating hypotheses about AI-based mental health support, as well as important theoretical, methodological, and practical implications for advancing research in this area.
Contact us
If you have any questions about the UK Data Service or need some help accessing our data collections, then please get in touch and we’ll be happy to assist. We’re always keen to hear from data users and those interested in joining the wider community of researchers interested in learning about, teaching about and using data!