Sources of socio-economic data

This session is part of the Doctoral School Skills Development programme and is open to postgraduate research students at UCL only. To book a place please login via the programme website.

Socio-economic data cover a wide variety of:

• themes e.g. wealth, governance and health
• content e.g. political boundaries, demographic information and economic statistics
• formats e.g. spatial, tabular and textual
• scales e.g. individual, household, enterprise, local, regional and global. 

Indeed, many research projects require data in order to answer a proposed research problem, hypothesis or set of objectives.  In addition, the quantity of data, their qualities and how they are sampled and measured have implications for the choice and effectiveness of the data analysis techniques used in subsequent analysis.  Therefore, it is very important that you have the correct data for your specific research project.

By the end of this course you will be able to:

• Access a wide variety of datasets from a number of different sources.
• Navigate and find data in the UK Data Service, plus the range of support materials and guidance available.
• Use UKDS.Stat to access, export and chart international macrodata.
• Know how to seek further help and advice when it comes to sourcing relevant secondary data.