using esds government resources for health research vanessa higgins esds government centre for...

Using ESDS Government Resources for Health Research

Vanessa HigginsESDS Government

Centre for Census and Survey ResearchUniversity of Manchester

ESDS Government

• Specialist service supporting users of the large, continuous, cross-sectional surveys collected (largely) for government purposes

• Supports large scale (typically repeated cross-sectional) government datasets

• Part of the larger Economic and Social Data Service led by the UK Data Archive– ESDS Longitudinal– ESDS International– ESDS Qualidata

What is ESDS Government here for?

• Archiving and dissemination of the surveys (UKDA)

• Other functions at CCSR– Promoting and supporting the use of the

data– Providing extra ‘value added’ materials– Training– Facilitating communication between data

depositors and users

Key supported datasets• General Household Survey• Labour Force Survey• Health Survey for England/Wales/Scotland • Family Expenditure Survey• British/Scottish Crime Survey• Family Resources Survey • National Food Survey• Expenditure and Food Survey • ONS Omnibus Survey • Survey of English Housing • British Social Attitudes• National Travel Survey• Time Use Survey• Vital Statistics for England and Wales

Overview: ESDS Government Health Resources

www.esds.ac.uk/government

• Web pages dedicated to each dataset:– HSE, SHS, WHS etc

• Introductory Guide to Using the Large-Scale Govt Surveys for Health Research

• HSE Teaching dataset

Introductory Guide to Using Large-Scale Govt Surveys for Health

Research• General introduction to what’s available for health

researchers • Strengths of different sources• Links to other appropriate sources• Updated annually

HSE teaching dataset

• Cut-down data for teaching• Excludes boosts• Simplified weighting variable• 60 variables • 2002 data• User guide

ESDS Government General resources

• Publications database

• Variables search

• Introductory user guides (SPPS, Stata, Weighting)

• Keeping in touch: Workshops/events/newsletter

• Helpdesk

Publications Database

Variable search • Variable search based on

the names and labels of variables

Keeping in touch

• User Meetings• Annual Conference• Website contains news & information

about consultations/data developments• JISCmail esds-govsurveys list• Newsletter

– Biannual– Contains news

• Survey news from ONS etc• New ESDS resources• Summaries of meetings

– Available on website

The important last slide…

Helpdesk:govsurveys@esds.ac.uk

(0161)275 1980

Website:http://www.esds.ac.uk/government

Jisc list:esds-govsurveys@jiscmail.ac.uk