The annual Labour Force and Annual Population Surveys User Conference took place on Friday 20 November at the Royal Statistical Society in London #LFSAPS17.
The
day was a great success, and gave researchers a chance to come together
to present and get feedback on their own research. It was also an
opportunity for researchers and organisations to meet data owners and to
both hear about developments in, and future plans for, the surveys and
to raise any questions, concerns or suggestions they might have.
We’ve captured the day on Storify, including links to the presentations.
The programme included presentations from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on the latest developments on the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the Annual Population Survey (APS), and from researchers who have used the data.
The ONS also presented work on the Data Collection Transformation Programme. This is a 3-4 year project that aims to explore how the ONS can improve data collection methods using:
- Online collection of data, and
- Using administrative data in combination with data collected via surveys
The project is at its early stages: see the presentation on Storify for an update of this work.
There
were also a number of talks from researchers across the UK and Europe,
including Anh Dang from the Toulouse School of Economics, France. The
range of topics covered included:
- Wage and over-education
- University selectivity and relative returns
- Trade union membership among the migrant community
- Earning distribution and low pay
- Social inequalities and smoking prevalence
- Wellbeing of doctors and implications for labour supply
Participants
covered a broad spectrum of users, including representatives from the
Office for National Statistics, academic researchers, PhD students and
researchers from businesses and third sector organisations.
The UK Data Service currently runs five annual user conferences: