Newsletter

Lockdown update

Features

UK Data Service confirmed as an accredited data processor under the Digital Economy Act


The UK Statistics Authority has accredited the UK Data Service as a processor of data under Part 5, Chapter 5 of the Digital Economy Act 2017.

This accreditation will allow the UK Data Service to provide research access to personal data using the legal gateway of the Digital Economy Act.

It provides standardised access to secure government data via a single, simplified process with the aim of speeding up the approval process for researchers and the approval of data for research purposes. Full story

COVID-19: Keeping research going at the UK Data Service


The team at the UK Data Service has been adapting the way it works to ensure its users can continue working through the COVID-19 lockdown crisis.
 

In March, the Service gained early agreement from data owners for its staff to process data at home.

It was also able to relax some of the rules around researchers needing to access data from their on-site workstations, by allowing remote access  - only where data owners agreed, and where they could meet a number of additional conditions.

Early April saw the Service conduct its first online training session to enable continued delivery of its Safe Researcher Training (SRT).
More details.


Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

Events and Webinars

Upskill during lockdown with our training webinars


Take a look at our free online training programme of regular introductory webinars

These introduce different aspects of the UK Data Service and explain our key datasets. 

We also provide a wide programme of training and events, including specialist and one-off webinars. For example:
Webinar: Web-scraping for Social Science Research: APIs as a Source of Data (April  30th), Webinar: Being a Computational Social Scientist (12 May), and Coding Demonstrations: Programming for Social Science Research (6-27 May). To find out more, please visit our events pages.

News

Monthly data on the impact of COVID-19 on UK population to be made available to researchers


The UK Data Service is working with the Understanding Society team to make monthly data on how the UK population is dealing with the COVID-19 emergency available to researchers.

Understanding Society is launching a monthly web survey on the experiences and reactions of the UK population to the pandemic. The survey will be an integral part of Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study and will provide researchers with vital evidence on the changing impact of the pandemic on individuals, families and communities.

The processing team at the UK Data Service is committed to releasing this data to researchers in a timely manner, providing valuable longitudinal data at a time of national crisis. Read more about the questionnaire and call for content.

 Making COVID data available to researchers


If you are undertaking COVID-19 related data collection, our depositor services are fully open for business. We can publish your data rapidly in our self-deposit system, ReShare or our curated collection, where it will get a DOI.

Contact us at: https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/help?id=depositingData.

What were the UK's homeworking trends pre-lockdown?


One major impact of the COVID-19 crisis has been the dramatic shift in working patterns as many people have been forced to work from home.   

UK Government announced on March 23 that the country was going into lockdown and that, key workers aside, employers should take every possible step to facilitate their employees working from home..

As yet, reliable data on how many people in the UK are now working from home during this time is unavailable but a recent statistical release from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) provides details of how the trend towards homeworking was developing prior to lockdown.   

The data comes from the Annual Population Survey (APS) 2019 which covers the 12 month-period from January to December 2019. Read on.

  Funding Opportunity


The Department for Health and Social Care, through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) on behalf of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), invite applications for the COVID-19 Rapid Response Rolling call. Further details are in the call.
Read more news from the UK Data Service

In the news: data in the UK Data Service collection

Are ethnic minorities being hit hardest by coronavirus?

 
 From www.bbc.co.uk - 22 April, 15:49

The UK government has announced a review into the impact that coronavirus is having on ethnic minorities.

This comes after statistics, from the UK and overseas, have appeared to show that the virus has a disproportionately large impact on people from ethnic minority backgrounds.

This article references research which uses data available in the UK Data Service collection:


2011 Census
 
Photo by Zhang Kenny on Unsplash

Now We're Spending All This Time Indoors, The Cost Of Poor Housing Becomes Clear

 

We are nearly three weeks into an enforced lockdown due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Our living spaces today have become makeshift classrooms, workspaces and places to exercise. That’s a lot of time at home.

As the bank holiday weekend is upon us and the lockdown is likely to continue, possibly into the summer, the substandard conditions that so many of us live in have never been so starkly apparent.

This article references research which uses data available in the UK Data Service collection:


English Housing Survey
Read more Scoops

Data Impact Blog

How web-scraping for COVID-19 data could inform policy

 
We have all been inspired by the work of medical staff on the front line of the COVID-19 crisis but there is also a push for social scientists to play a role in analysing some of the datasets being generated because of the outbreak.

Diarmuid McDonnell discusses how social scientists can access real-time datasets on the COVID-19 outbreak, and how this data might be used to inform policy relating to the crisis.

Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash

Revised deadline and the full judging panel: update on the UK Data Service 2020 Dissertation Award

 
Our UK Data Service Dissertation Award aims to encourage undergraduate students to think about using some of the rich secondary data sources available.

Jen Buckley introduces the judging panel for the UK Data Service 2020 Dissertation Award and updates us on a revised deadline for applying.

British Red Cross COVID-19 Vulnerability Index Map

 
The British Red Cross have pulled together a really interesting and relevant index to attempt to focus help on people who are most vulnerable to contracting COVID-19.

Using data from the Labour Force Survey and 2011 Census (among others) researchers have created maps at different local authority levels and identified additional vulnerabilities which could be considered as part of the index. Read on to explore the code used.


Photo by Matthias Zomer on Pexels

Let us showcase your work


Write for us: the Data Impact Blog is a hub for anyone interested in maximising the impact of social, population and economic data in research and policy. If you would like to contribute to the blog, please contact victoria.moody@jisc.ac.uk
 
Case studies: every day, data from the UK Data Service collection are used to inform research, influence policy and teach the next generation of social scientists. If you would like to submit a case study, simply download the form.
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