1. Microdata sources for research on the Economics of Tobacco Control Lynn Woolfrey Economics of Tobacco Control Workshop University of Cape Town 25 June 2015

2. Around 100,000 teenagers start smoking each day Photo: Copyright: WHO

3. Researchers Need to know what data sources exist and how to access and appraise them

4. ACCESS RELEVANCE COMPARABILITY TIMELINESS SUPPORT

5. ACCESS RELEVANCE COMPARABILITY TIMELINESS SUPPORT

6. Exercise 1 Find tobacco related data for your country Use the following data discovery tools: DataFirst’s data portal The World Bank’s microdata catalog Data portal of your National Statistics Office Open Access? Research Access Only?

7. ACCESS RELEVANCE COMPARABILITY TIMELINESS SUPPORT Does the dataset provide the data we need?

8. Exercise 2 Check the following to see if the data is relevant to your research: Survey metadata Questions in the survey questionnaires Variable names and labels

9. Example Demographic and Health surveys for your countries: question text: Do you currently smoke cigarettes? In the last 24 hours, how many sticks of cigarettes did you smoke? Do you currently smoke or use any other type of tobacco? What (other) type of tobacco do you currently smoke or use?

10. ACCESS RELEVANCE COMPARABILITY TIMELINESS SUPPORT Can we compare the data across countries? over time? Between different surveys for the same country?

11. Exercise 3 Examine the metadata provided with the data to see how this helps you to compare datasets Look at data from a survey series for one country to determine what data collectors have done to ensure comparable data

12. ACCESS RELEVANCE COMPARABILITY TIMELINESS SUPPORT How recent is the tobacco research data we can access?

13. Exercise 3 Check the reference dates of all datasets for your country that contain data useful to researchers on the project Data reference date (date of collection, not date of production of the dataset) Are data producers providing current statistics? Why the time-lag in access?

14. ACCESS RELEVANCE COMPARABILITY TIMELINESS SUPPORT Can we get help with data analysis?

15. Exercise 4 Open a data file and tabulate the relevant variables How easy is the data to use? Check to see that all the supporting documentation has been provided Can the metadata help here? Log a query on DataFirst’s support site

16. Questions?