The following UK Data Service events are free to attend:

Webinar: The Fly in the Ointment? Investigating Demographic Representation on Twitter

Workshop: Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey

Webinar: Data review and publishing standards

Workshop: Hands on with Data - the why and how of getting students using data

Webinar: The Fly in the Ointment? Investigating Demographic Representation on Twitter

6 September 2016, 15.00-16.00

The fly in the ointment for any social scientific research using Twitter data is that we do not know who tweets.

Twitter does not require users to publish demographic information such as gender, age, location, occupation. This lack of data on who is represented on the social media platform makes it difficult for researchers to explore how social phenomenon manifest online in relation to demographic characteristics.

In this free webinar Luke Sloan, Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University and Co-Director of Cardiff Q-Step, will explore demographic representation on Twitter. He will discuss recently developed methods for deriving demographic proxies from Twitter metadata for age, sex and social class and for comparing the characteristics of UK Twitter users with Census data on the UK population.

To book a place please go to https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/news-and-events/eventsitem/?id=4617

Workshop: Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey

21 September 2016, 09.30 - 16.00

Jisc, Brettenham House, London

This free full-day workshop will introduce the British Social Attitudes survey, a nationally representative survey commissioned by the UK government that collects information about people’s attitudes and opinions to living in the UK. The BSA interviews around 3,000 people and has run most years since 1983. The data are collected by NatCen Social Research.

The BSA data can be downloaded from the UK Data Service and can be analysed using a statistics package such as SPSS or Stata. You can find information about the BSA 2014 on the UK Data Service website.

Organised by the UK Data Service and NatCen, this workshop will cover data collection, research case studies using the BSA, and practicals using the BSA with SPSS covering opening the data, exploratory data analysis (frequencies, basic graphs, crosstabs), and how to weight the data.

The programme will be available soon. Please book a place at https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/news-and-events/eventsitem/?id=4668

UK Data Service Open Data Dive

24 September 2016, 10.00 – 18.00

Manchester Metropolitan University

The UK Data Service and Digital Innovation are running an intense all-day hackathon on Saturday 24 September at The Shed at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). The UK Data Service Open Data Dive aims to bring together coders, data enthusiasts, graphic designers, project managers and pizza lovers into the same room to hunt down, crunch and beautify open social and economic data.

The Open Data Dive is free to attend, open to everyone and we'll lay on free lunch and drinks all day. Newcomers are welcome and there will be data specialists and programmers from the UK Data Service on hand to provide support and help. During the day, short parallel workshops will run on finding and understanding data, using APIs and big data.

The data

All projects must use open social and economic data about people, places and society. There are tons of open datasets made available through the UK Data Service.

Don’t worry if you’ve not accessed data through the UK Data Service before. We’ll be running parallel drop-in workshops during the day to introduce newcomers (and old hands) to the data, the platforms and the APIs.

The projects

Bring your own project - we’d love you to bring your own ideas for projects. Here are some ideas:

Do you have a favourite open dataset? Mash it in with one ours to create something new and amazing. Join datasets by time, join by geography. Do the daily commutes in the census match with bus routes? Do political upheavals impact patterns of global trade?
Feeling creative? Design a 3D visualisation of the data and the guys at 3D Print Services at MMU will print out the best idea!
Or how about data as music?
Dig into the data with exploratory data analysis and visualisations to find new features and patterns
Design an API for data access or add widget to one of ours!
Create a new feature for the UK Data Service to make the data easier to find and use
Invent a puzzle or game to distract us all at work

There’ll be prizes for the best projects, the most innovative project, the most useful project, the most fun project – and many more! Tell us about your idea for a project on the registration form or bring it with you on the day. There will be a chance to pitch your project and build a team at the start of the dive.

Follow the event on Twitter: #UKDSDataDive | #ODDHack | @UKDataService | @DiginnMMU | #MMUShed

To book your place and find out more about the Open Data Dive, see the event page.

Webinar: Data review and publishing standards

27 September 2016, 15.00 - 16.00

The UK Data Service holds the UK’s largest collection of socio-economic digital research data. This webinar is for anyone with an interest in social science research who wants to know more about how we assess and review data we receive before curating and disseminating them. The webinar will also cover the publishing standards we utilise at the UK Data Service.

Participants will learn about how we ingest and curate collections through our two depositing routes: ReShare - our self-deposit online repository where researchers deposit their data - and our main collection of large-scale social surveys and government data series which are processed in-house. We will demonstrate how we assess and review the data and then prepare them for publication, whilst also identifying and explaining the differences in procedures for the two routes.

This is an introductory webinar; therefore, we do not expect attendees to have any experience in working with data to attend this session.

The webinar will consist of a 30 minute presentation followed by questions and answers. To book a place please go to https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/news-and-events/eventsitem/?id=4653

Workshop: Hands on with Data - the why and how of getting students using data

28 September 2016

University of Manchester

This free half-day workshop, organised by the UK Data Service, is aimed at early career researchers, lecturers and university teachers of all levels who teach quantitative methods to undergraduate and postgraduate students within the social sciences. The workshop is also aimed at stakeholders as well as those working in developing quantitative resources within data services’.

Data is at the heart of applied quantitative methods teaching. The right choice of dataset, and the way in which it is used, can affect student engagement greatly. The workshop aims to:

• share experiences in how best to use data in teaching

• share information about where data and associated resources can be obtained

• inform the further development of teaching resources available through the UK Data Service

To view the programme and book a place please go to https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/news-and-events/eventsitem/?id=4657

Introductory webinars

Introduction to the UK Data Service, 12 October 2016, 15.00 - 16.00

Finding and accessing data in the UK Data Service, 19 October 2016, 15.00 - 16.00

Key issues in reusing data, 26 October 2016, 15.00 - 16.00

Data management basics, 3 November 2016, 15.00 - 16.00

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Gill Meadows

Programme Administrator, User Support and Training