This document summarizes a presentation about supporting quantitative methods teaching with large survey data. It discusses the UK Data Service, which provides access to social science data. Understanding Society, a large longitudinal survey of 40,000 UK households, is highlighted as a potentially useful teaching resource. The presentation describes creating short videos, guides, teaching datasets and materials to make Understanding Society more accessible for teaching. These resources aim to introduce students to large datasets and quantitative analysis in a straightforward way, providing a stepping stone to working with larger "Big Data" sources. Case studies show how other universities have successfully used survey data for methods teaching.

1. Stepping Stones to ‘Big Data’:
Supporting Quantitative
Methods Teaching with the
Understanding Society
Survey
Dr Sarah-King Hele
Dr Hersh Mann
Manchester, 3-4 April 2014

2. Agenda
Stepping Stones to ‘Big Data’ 3-4 April 2014
• A quick intro to the UK Data
Service
• The importance of methods
training in an age of ‘Big Data’
• The UK Data Service experience
of supporting teaching
• Creating teaching resources
based upon Understanding
Society data

3. What is the UK Data Service?
• a comprehensive resource funded
by the ESRC
• a single point of access to a wide
range of secondary social science
data
• support, training and guidance

4. Who is it for?
• academic researchers and students
• government analysts
• charities and foundations
• business consultants
• independent research centres
• think tanks
ukdataservice.ac.uk

5. UK Data Service
http://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk

6. Types of data collections
• Survey microdata
• Cross-sectional
• Panel / Longitudinal
• Aggregate statistics
• International macrodata
• Census data
• Aggregate data for 1971 -2011
• Microdata for 1991and 2001 (2011 data are forthcoming)
• Qualitative and mixed methods data

7. The challenges of Big Data
• We support traditional survey microdata
• researchers typically download data to their desktop and use
software like Stata or SPSS to conduct their analyses
• they do this under an End User Licence or some other contract
that governs things like further sharing of data, citation,
intellectual property and preservation of confidentiality
• licensing agreements and modes of access are evolving
• What impact will Big Data have on this?
• Skills?
• Technology?
• Methods?

8. The challenges of Big Data
• Legal and ethical
• Who owns the data? Commercial or ‘public’? How is access
licensed? How do you apply to use it? Is there consent to link to
adminstrative data? What about confidentiality? What sanctions
are there for misuse? What is misuse? Do researchers need
special training to understand their obligations?
• Technical
• Highly sensitive survey microdata are accessed remotely. This
requires a specific technical set-up. Could access to Big Data
require a similar environment?
• New skills
• Will Big Data be accessed using traditional software?

9. Providing training in research methods
• The teaching support that we currently offer provides a
grounding upon which students can build
• how to access data
• how to use data
• understanding obligations as data users
• Our teaching datasets are an introduction to quantitative
analysis. They are a ‘stepping stone’ to Big Data.
• Our experience tells us that methods teachers in the
social sciences can struggle to engage their students

10. Case Study 1: International macrodata
• Paul Turner, University of Loughborough
• ‘Using real-world data to understand econometrics’
• IMF International Financial Statistics were used in a
course with 150 undergraduates. The aim is for students
to understand both basic and more advanced techniques
that will allow economic theories to be tested using
econometric applications and tools.
• “I always start the econometrics course off by telling
them that if there's one course they may actually make
use of when they leave- it's probably going to be this
one.”

11. Case Study 2: Survey microdata
• Rob Johns, University of Essex
• ‘Introducing students to politics through real data’
• British Election Study and British Social Attitudes Survey
data were used to teach a variety of statistical concepts
and research methods to politics undergraduates.
• “When I was a student, I didn’t like the teaching method
where you were just shown some output and how to
interpret it, or where every week it was a different data
set and you did not get a chance to really work with and
understand the data.”

12. Case Study 3: Longitudinal data
• Ruth Salway, University of Bath
• ‘Using data in practice and in theory’
• The Longitudinal Study of Young People in England
(LSYPE) was used to teach an undergraduate course on
applied statistics. The students were grounded in the
necessary theory and in statistics practice but were yet
to use data beyond their textbook examples.
• “I remember the UK Data Archive as a source of a lot of
survey data all together and once I’d narrowed it down I
didn’t look anywhere else as I knew I would find what I
wanted there.”

13. Teaching with Understanding Society
• US is a very valuable and widely used research dataset
but is less well-used by teachers and students because
the structure of the data is complex.
• The survey:
• 40,000 households in UK
• Approx. 3 billion data points of information
• Participants are aged 10 and over
• Builds on 18 years of the BHPS
• Adults are interviewed every 12 months either face to face or
over the phone
• 10-15 year olds fill in a paper questionnaire

14. Survey scope
• Understanding Society is a survey with a wide scope and
its many topics can form the basis for discussion about
issues of interest to social sciences students
• Topics include:
• Personal background: family, migration, fertility and children
• Finances: tax and benefits, bills, money worries and debts,
Expectations and aspirations: retirement, leaving home, children
and marriage
• Employment: working conditions and job satisfaction,
harassment and discrimination
• Health and happiness: disability, health, life satisfaction, diet,
Family and friends: relationships and networks, child
development
• Other: time use and leisure, politics and religion

15. Making US accessible: videos
• Short 2-minute videos about various aspects of
Understanding Society: e.g.
• introduce the scope of the survey, who pays for and creates the
data and its research potential
• how to weight the survey
• the ethnic boost
• starting analyses
 Available on YouTube and the UK Data Service website
 Designed to appeal to undergraduates
 Bite-sized information

16. Helping dissertation students get started
with US
• A concise written guide to explain in simple terms:
• the structure of the data
• its content
• sampling and weighting
• other important features
• to address the needs of students who wish to use the
microdata for dissertations
• to explain the key points of US in simple terms so that
dissertation students can get started with the data more
easily – not intended to replace the US documentation

17. Helping methods teachers to use US
• a teaching dataset based on Understanding Society for
teachers and students to use in a computer classroom
setting with a short user guide
• worksheets around basic data description and
manipulation using the teaching dataset
 aim to include variables around a number of topics likely
to be of interest to undergraduates to engage their
interest
 worksheets as exemplars of what can be done using the
dataset
 raise awareness among teachers and students about US
and its potential for methods teaching

18. Discussion materials
• discussion materials incorporating tables from
Understanding Society for teachers who wish to
incorporate evidence into their discussions but who do
not wish to use or teach using the microdata.
 to encourage the use of tables and graphs in substantive
teaching
 to give students relevant examples of data and what can
be done with it
 to start discussion about the properties of data

19. What is the relevance of teaching materials like
these to Big Data?
• raise awareness of and encourage contact with a large
secondary dataset
• starting point for discussion about how to decide whether
the data are good and whether they can be sensibly
used to answer your research question
• encourage a good grounding in basic statistics before
moving on to more advanced stats

20. Other help and resources
• Have a query? See our help pages and FAQs
• Contact us / follow us
http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/about-us/contact.aspx
https://twitter.com/UKDataService
https://www.facebook.com/UKDataService
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-
bin/webadmin?A0=UKDATASERVICE

21. Questions?