ESDS Resources for EFS Users

Jo WathanESDS Government

Centre for Census and Survey ResearchUniversity of Manchester

In this presentation…

• Who we are• EFS resources• Keeping in touch• Where next?

ESDS Government

• Specialist service supporting users of the large, continuous, cross-sectional surveys collected (largely) for government purposes

• Supports EFS, NFS and FES as well as other large surveys such as FRS, LFS, GHS...

• Part of the larger Economic and Social Data Service led by the UK Data Archive– ESDS Longitudinal– ESDS Qualidata– ESDS International

What are we here for?

• Archiving and dissemination of the surveys (UKDA)

• Other functions at CCSR– Promoting and supporting the use of the

data– Value added materials– Training– Facilitating communication between data

depositors and users

How are data made available?

• EFS Data deposited in 2 parts – Main EFS deposit – Household Form and

Diary expenditure data as derived summary variables. Available in SPSS, Stata and Tab formats

– Food diary information including nutritional values in Microsoft Access (single file) or Tab format (multiple files)

• EFS is also available in Nesstar, but may not contain the derived and food data!!!

Current EFS Resources

• Web pages dedicated to EFS contains:– Relevant links (e.g. to published reports

and methodology)– FAQs– Registered uses for the data– Variable search tool– Resources include

• Publications• Links to relevant useful documents

Variable search • Variable search based on

the names and labels of variables

• Based on SPSS (therefore does not currently search on the food diary data)

• Start from the EFS page to search on EFS alone

How have the data been used?

Registered uses

...and publications

In production...Consumption Theme Material

• EFS Teaching Dataset– Household Level dataset– Single file – Reduced number of variables

• Consumption theme guide– Identifies the main datasets used for consumption

research– Compares key features of the data

• Consumption theme research conference– Held last year– Presentations on the events page

Workshops and Events

Introductory workshops (inc. those joint with SARs workshops)Joint workshops with other ESDS servicesMethodsResearch conferencesDataset user groupsOther presentationsPosters

Help-desk

• C.250 Queries in the last year• Range of different ranges of complexity:

– How do I get access to the HSE?– What are social classes written as roman

numerals?– Should I apply weights if I’m modelling?– The household identifiers are missing from a file

• Help desk involves collaboration with UKDA, ONS, NatCen etc

Keeping in touch

• Website contains news & information about consultations/data developments

• JISCmail esds-govsurveys list• Newsletter

– Biannual– Contains news

• Survey news from ONS etc• New ESDS resources• Summaries of meetings• Focus on researchers

– Available on website

The important last (but one) slide…

Helpdesk:govsurveys@esds.ac.uk

(0161)275 1980

Website:http://www.esds.ac.uk/government

Jisc list:esds-govsurveys@jiscmail.ac.uk

Some questions for you...

• What can we do to help users with their use of the EFS?

• Would you a subsetting tool help?• Can you suggest how we can better

reach new users?