Karen Dennison Collections Development Manager The UK Data Service Karen Dennison Collections Development Manager Presentation to Statistics User Forum

What is the UK Data Service? Funded by the ESRC Single point of access to a wide range of secondary social science data Made up of the former services ESDS, Census.ac.uk and the Secure Data Service Delivered by staff based at universities across the UK (Essex, Manchester, Leeds, Southampton, Edinburgh, UCL) UK Data Archive – manages the UK Data Service and curates the data

Key activities Selecting data according to Collections Development Policy Acquiring data Long term preservation Providing access Data and documentation Providing support Data management Data use – help desk, user guides Training, workshops, user groups

Who is it for? Academic researchers and students Government analysts Charities and foundations Business consultants Independent research centres Think tanks

Main data types Aggregate Survey data Other data International macrodata 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001, 2011 census data Survey data Government surveys Census (1991, 2001 SARS) Other important UK surveys International comparative surveys Other data Mixed methods Qualitative

Benefits of depositing Long-term safekeeping Data have high visibility/are searchable Records include rich and structured content Administer access and queries on your behalf Increased use and acknowledgement of data in publications and collaborations Foster dialogue e.g. feedback, user groups Usage reports and impact

Preparing your data for sharing Identify suitable place of deposit Consent Copyright Anonymisation Access control Documentation Technical reports, user guides, questionnaires Variable and value labels Formats

Offer your data If your data are ESRC-funded, upload them to our data repository ReShare Otherwise, email collections@ukdataservice.ac.uk to offer any data you think might fit into our collection Describe your data and documentation Our Data Appraisal Group will assess your data according to our Collections Development Policy criteria We will either accept the data into our core collection or advise you to use our/an institutional repository

Collections Development Policy criteria These criteria are driven by the UK Data Service’s governing board, the ESRC’s Research Data Policy and the National Data Strategy. The data should be suitable for: re-use for research purposes teaching and learning use replication and validation of research Should the data fulfil one or more of the above, we consider additional criteria such as whether the data: fill a gap in the collection and / or have been requested by users complement or enhance existing data are of high quality have international, scientific or historical value have been recommended for acquisition by e.g. the governing board or the National Data Strategy

How to deposit with us Complete Send Data deposit form – feeds into online data catalogue record Licence Agreement – authorises us to preserve and distribute your data under the terms and conditions specified (or consider a ‘Concordat’ to cover any data) Send Data and documentation

Data access spectrum Open Safeguarded End User Licence Special Conditions Online agreement Depositor permission Special Licence Controlled – secure remote access Possibility for multiple versions UK Data Archive - certified for its secure data handling procedures under the international ISO 27001 standard for information security

Data and documentation processing Pre-processing check Data and documentation materials complete and usable Identifies any obvious problems early in the process Confidentiality issues Quantitative data Variables and values checked, metadata added where necessary Alternative formats created: SPSS, STATA, tab-delimited ASCII Qualitative data Usually interview transcripts, occasionally audio/video RTF format, occasionally PDF

Data and documentation processing PDF documentation files created where possible Most PDF documentation attached to the catalogue record, provides good information for users When processing complete, materials archived, catalogue record created and download packages created (one for each data format). Digital Object Identifier (DOI) allocated. Some studies added to online browsing tool – Nesstar Secure Access studies – processing techniques similar, work carried out within specialised environment

Prepare and manage data http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/manage-data.aspx Deposit data http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/deposit-data.aspx Karen Dennison kdenn@essex.ac.uk collections@ukdataservice.ac.uk