Glossary

A survey case is a unit for which values are captured. Typically, surveys use individuals, families/households or institutions/organisations as observation units (cases). In survey datasets, cases are usually stored in rows.

Within a data catalogue, a catalogue record provides essential metadata for the dataset(s) and access to the accompanying documentation. These records typically include a title, details about the data creators, a descriptive overview of the dataset content, information about the sample, and details about the data access conditions, facilitating efficient data discovery and understanding.

A variable that can take on one value from a set of discrete and mutually exclusive list of responses. For example, a marital status variable can include the categories of single (never married), married, civil partnership, divorced, widowed etc. and respondents can be assigned only one value from this list.

A technique that improves Large Language Model (LLM) performance on complex tasks by prompting them to produce intermediate reasoning steps before giving a final answer. By dividing problems into sequential, logical steps like “showing your work”, CoT improves accuracy in arithmetic, commonsense, and symbolic reasoning.

A change log is a document that records all modifications made to a project, software, or document over time. It functions as a historical record of changes, aiding teams in tracking updates, recognising improvements, and ensuring transparency.

Choropleth maps colour or shade different areas according to a range of values, e.g. population density or per-capita income.

Online platforms that provide version control capabilities, allowing code and project files to be stored, shared, and collaboratively edited from any location. Common examples include GitHub, Google Cloud Source Repositories, and Azure Repos.

The process of dividing a population into groups, then selecting a simple random sample of groups and sampling everyone in those groups. An example of this is geographical clustering, which is often efficiently applied in face-to-face surveys. Clustering of addresses limits travel for interviewers and so allows survey producers to sample more respondents for a given budget.

Sources: An Introduction to Statistical Methods and Data Analysis.

Groups of data points that appear closer together than the rest of the data in a dataset because they share similar characteristics or patterns. Clusters are often discussed alongside outliers, which are data points that differ substantially from the broader patterns in the data.

A codebook describes the contents, structure, and layout of a data collection. Codebooks begin with basic front matter, including the study title, name of the principal investigator(s), table of contents, and an introduction describing the purpose and format of the codebook. Some codebooks also include methodological details, such as how weights were computed, and data collection instruments, while others, especially with larger or more complex data collections, leave those details for a separate user guide and/or data collection instrument.

A group of people who share a characteristic, usually birth year. See also: cohort study.

Source: Cambridge Dictionary

Cohort studies chart the lives of groups of individuals who experience the same life events within a given time period.

Source: Closer Learning Hub

In version control, the action of recording a set of changes to your project’s history. When you commit, you are telling the version control system to record exactly what has changed since the last save, creating a permanent entry in the project’s changelog that you can return to at any time. (e.g., git commit).

Encompasses all the hardware, software, and network settings in which a computer program operates, including the operating system, CPU, and libraries.

An interdisciplinary field that uses mathematical algorithms, advanced data analysis, and computational modelling to investigate and predict human behaviour and social patterns.

The discipline of designing systems that deliver the precise, relevant information and tools a Large Language Model (LLM) needs at the right moment. It goes beyond static prompt engineering by dynamically selecting, organising, and inserting data such as retrieved documents, user history, or structured API results into the context window to enhance the AI agent’s reliability and effectiveness.

The amount of text a large language model can read and process at one time. Think of it as the model’s working memory, it can only consider what falls within this window when generating a response. Information outside the window is not visible to the model.

A control variable is a variable that is included in an analysis in order to control or eliminate its influence on the variables of interest. For example, if we are looking at the relationship between having a university degree and smoking prevalence, we might need to consider the impact of age at the same time. Older generation respondents are more likely to smoke than a younger generation. If we control for age, we can see whether graduates are less likely to smoke than non-graduates once age has been accounted for.

Source: SAGE Research Methods.

Copyright is the exclusive and assignable legal right to control all use of an original work, such as a book, data etc., for a particular period of time.

Source: Cambridge Dictionary.

Cross-sectional data are collected from a sample at a single point in time. It is often likened to taking a snapshot. Cross-sectional studies are quick and relatively simple, but they cannot provide information about the change in the same individuals or units over time. Repeated cross-sectional data can however be used to look at aggregate changes in the population as a whole.

Source: SAGE Research Methods.