Introduction to using linked administrative data for social and health research
The course will offer a theoretical and practical introduction to accessing and working with linked administrative data, covering topics including: ethics and confidentiality, public engagement, the access process, researcher accreditation, working within a safe setting, and potential issues.
Audience
Interested in using linked administrative data in your research but don’t know what data is out there, how to access it, or if you have the skills to do this type of analysis? If you are a social researcher with experience of analysing survey data, or if you already work with administrative data but want to analyse multiple administrative datasets linked together, then this course is for you.
Course Outline
The course will give an introduction to administrative data, describing what it is, some of the particular problems in working with this type of data and how to deal with this. Theoretical sessions will be backed up by hands-on practical sessions, using R or Stata to write syntax to prepare linked data files for analysis, document workflow, identify data quality issues, and deal with missing data.
There will be sessions on: indexing, linking and joining datasets; working with dates and times; an introduction to descriptive and inferential statistics for administrative data; and methods for dealing with missing data. There will also be sessions on how to apply for access to linked data, and secure data access within a safe setting, as well as the ethical, confidentiality and disclosure issues around using this type of data. A data showcase session from data controllers will give a flavour of the type of data that is available. Current researchers will highlight their research using linked administrative data and describe the advantages of this approach, as well as the problems they have encountered and the lessons learned.
By the end of this course participants will have the skills to identify, access and prepare linked administrative data for analysis.
Cost
- Researchers/academics/analysts/ADRN/other: £500
- PhD student: £250