UK Data Service events at the 2021 Research Methods e-Festival

NCRM is delighted to bring you the 2021 Research Methods e-Festival in collaboration with methods@manchester. The event will be a celebration of research methods with an interdisciplinary social science flavour.

There will be more than 80 sessions run over five days, with more than 130 speakers offering diverse perspectives on the festival’s theme: innovation, adaptation and evolution of the social sciences.

The UK Data Service is running four events at the e-Festival. Slides and recordings, were available, will be added to the resources below.

Monday, 25 October

Working with Twitter Data
Twitter has recently been a fantastic source of data. Never before has an individual been able to so trivially access historic opinions and watch them develop over time. In this talk Joe Allen will cover:

• why social media data is useful
• why Twitter is a great data source
• data collection from Twitter

Wednesday, 27 October

UK Data Service Data Drop-in
Meet the data experts from the UK Data Service for help and advice in accessing, finding, managing and getting started with data.

Placing Covid-19: towards a spatial analysis of the pandemic
This workshop introduces ecological analysis to explore demographic characteristics of places and explain uneven patterns of social phenomena. We model the association between Covid cases, and deprivation, occupation, ethnic diversity, housing conditions and age profile to illustrate the power of ecological analysis. On completion of the workshop, you will appreciate the statistical geography of England, the data available from standard census tables and be able to extract relevant indicators from them, explore their spatial distribution and develop a statistical model for the rate of Covid cases by local area in England. The workshop uses the GeoDa software, a user-friendly interactive tool to analyse spatial data. The skills and knowledge you develop will inform future spatial analyses of social phenomena using data from the 2021 census when this becomes available.

Speakers
Nigel de Noronha, UK Data Service, University of Manchester
David Rawnsley, UK Data Service, Jisc

What is reproducibility and why it matters
Open science requires transparancy and clarity so that ideas and methods are clear and reproducible. It is not always obvious how social sciences can be made open, but this session illustrates several possibilities. The session also lays out the implications of making social sciences more open and potential consequences of failing to do so.

Speaker
J. Kasmire, UK Data Service, University of Manchester

Neil Dymond-Green, Director of Impact, and Vanessa Higgins, Director of User Support and Training, also took part in panel sessions at the e-Festival.

Monday, 25 October

'That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt' (Kant 1781): The Role of Experiential Learning in Methods Training
This panel, chaired by Jackie Carter, author of 'Work placements, internships and applied social research' (Sage, 2021), will discuss the value of experiential learning in teaching and training of methods to social researchers.

The discussion will reflect the experiences of all the panellists in working with industries across different sectors (outside of academia). The aim of the panel is to showcase experiential learning at different career stages, debate the question 'who pays?' (for work-placed experiences) and discuss with the audience how we can collate evidence of the value of experiential learning to create more programmes that benefit early and mid career researchers and the talent pipeline into social research careers.

Panel members
Jackie Carter, University Of Manchester
Bobby Duffy, King’s College London
Vanessa Higgins, UK Data Service, University of Manchester
Holly Bathgate, Office for National Statistics

Tuesday, 26 October

Accelerating impact and public good from research
This panel session brings together members of the civil service and statistics community to discuss their experiences of working with Government, Academia and public, private and third sector organisations to support and promote their research which benefits the economy and society. With expertise covering the full lifecycle of research using linked administrative, business and survey data, this panel will cover topics including understanding public good, the importance of qualitative and quantitative impact, supporting early career researchers and engaging with policy makers and government.

Panel members
James Spurr, Office for National Statistics
Neil Dymond-Green, UK Data Service, Jisc
Mary Cowan, Office for Statistics Regulation
Nick O'Donnell, Office for National Statistics
Rob Davies, CLOSER (UCL Social Research Institute)