This online course is run by the Researcher Academy

The Researcher Academy courses are very popular and the majority are run in both semesters to give you the opportunity to attend at a time of the year that suits you. 

Target Audience: This online course is for Researchers only.

Description:

Do you want to use data from large national surveys? National and cross-national surveys are key sources of research data. They give easy access to data from large representative samples on a wide range of topics.  

Through presentations and practical activities, these two workshops are designed by the UK Data Service to get you more confident working with these valuable sources of data.  

The sessions will include examples from real social surveys accessed from the UK Data Service such as British Social Attitudes survey, Labour Force Survey and Family Resources Survey. They will also highlight further resources from the UK Data Service and other organisations to help you continue to develop your data skills.  

The sessions are designed for those with no prior experience of large survey datasets or for those who would like to refresh their knowledge.  

Materials and support for the practical activities will be for SPSS and R – please indicate which software you will use on registration. The workshops are accessible to new users of software, but some familiarity will be useful. For those with no prior experience, we will send some preliminary resources to help you participate.  

1. From questionnaire to dataset: getting started with survey microdata  

This session introduces features (and quirks) of survey data and includes practical skills for making sense of these valuable datasets. Through practical sessions, the aim is to get familiar with a large dataset, reviewing topics such as measurement and missing data. Finally, the session looks at issues around surveys weights and precision.  

1. Recoding, filtering, and linking: getting data ready for your analyses  

This session focuses on getting real datasets ready for analysis. There is often more work involved in preparing data than analysing the data. Through practical examples, the session looks at how we recode and compute variables and how to select population sub-groups for analyses. Finally, since datasets can also have complex structures with multiples files, the session will look at examples of merging and linking.    

Course Accessibility

The following table shows a summary of what is needed to participate in the course. 

If you feel you will experience any difficulties participating, please let us know via the ‘special requirements’ tab, providing as much information as possible. The special requirements tab can be completed when you book your place. Alternatively, you can contact us directly at ra-training@nottingham.ac.uk. 

Access MS Teams
Attend the course at the specified date and time
Work from multiple windows and files open at one time on laptop/ PC
Use MS Teams chat box function
Engage with online materials
Watch and listen to the course tutor(s) and/or other attendees
Follow presentation slides during the course
Take part in group activities/ discussions (within online breakout rooms)

Booking Conditions:

Our webinars/ online courses are very popular, especially in the current period and we are experiencing large volumes of people on our waiting lists.  

Please do let us know if you would like to cancel your place on this course so we can offer your place to another delegate. 

Please note, attendances for courses will be recorded. There are no training points associated with courses run by the Researcher Academy.