1. Research and teaching with the SHS data Gillian Raab Professor of Applied Statistics Napier University

2. Welcome to SHS lite! Lots of good points An excellent start But it could go even further

3. Summary Some recent research projects Some thoughts on the present state of survey research An introduction to a web resource being developed at Napier along with the National Centre for Social Research

4. Research projects using SHS Older people Training in the workplace Income distributions –SHS compares favourably with the FRS –Sample size is larger –This results in an improvement by a factor of two in precision –BUT questions less detailed and not everyone is asked –Something COULD be done about this

5. Differences between Scottish surveys and FRS

6. Possible need to improve the weighting of the SHS age distribution for single person households

7. SHS features Complicated design Uses several design features to get a better sample Needs to be analysed with weighting Do we do all of this justice in the way we analyse the data?

8. We do need to weight

9. But we should really do more than this Methods for designing surveys were developed in the 1950s There were a parallel developments in survey analysis at the same time But most of the expertise for this (at least in the UK) stayed within survey organisations

10. Packages for survey analysis Until recently general packages pretty limited and had few methods Now much better SPSS complex surveys was launched this year with version 12 of SPSS –But it will have more facilities –It costs a little extra –And is not very easy to use

12. PEAS project Funded under the ESRC research methods programme to develop a Practical web-based resource which will take the survey analyst through Exemplars of the use of different methods that are currently available for the Analysis of complex Surveys The web site also contains a guide to survey design and analysis linked to the exemplars

14. What will these procedures do? Design effects – design factors –Tell you how precise your survey estimates are Can get them from tables –But tables are limited –They are a nuisance to use –Don’t work for anything but the simplest cases Much better if your analysis package will give you the answer right away including –Tables with chi square tests –Confidence intervals –Correct regressions

16. Design factors vary from close to 1.0 in cities to over 1.6 in Orkney Largely due to clustering in rural areas

17. Site is still being finalised We would welcome constructive feedback Temporary site is http://www.napier.ac.uk/depts/ fhls/CommHealth/staff/gillianr/peas/home.htm