Introduction to Understanding Society using R - 2 day workshop (F2F)

This course is the full version of our Introduction to Understanding Society training, which includes a 3-hour lecture followed a 1.5 day hands-on practical workshop. If you have previously attended the 3-hour lecture training, you only need to attend the practical hands-on session; however, you are welcome to attend the lecture again if you choose.

This course is aimed at new users of Understanding Society and those who have explored its basic characteristics. You will learn about the key features of Understanding Society, how to access the Study information online and how to manage and use the data for cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis, and make effective use of Understanding Society for your own research projects.

This course is free to attend, but you will need to pay for your own travel and accommodation.

Prerequisite:

• Participants are expected to have some basic understanding of quantitative data.
• Participants are expected to have some basic understanding of the software of choice.

This course has two elements: a lecture and a practical hands-on session.

This course starts with a series of lectures over a 3-hour period, during which participants will learn about Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study, specifically they will learn about:

• Design of the survey and research possibilities
• Who is interviewed, and when, how often?
• What information is collected, and from whom?
• How is the information collected? What questions are asked?
• How the information collected is stored (file structure and content)?
• What other information can be linked with the survey data, and how?
• How to access these datasets

Understanding Society is a longitudinal study that collects comprehensive information about the lives of individuals, and their households, at one-year intervals enabling inter-disciplinary research across multiple topics. Participants will also learn how to effectively and efficiently search and find the variables/questions that they are interested in analysing.

The lecture is followed by a 1.5-day hands-on workshop (practical session) that builds on the lessons learnt in the lecture, participants will learn how to combine the survey information provided in multiple hierarchical datafiles into a single datafile that can be used for specific types of analysis.

Participants will be expected to work through a series of worked examples, each highlighting a separate data management task, at their own pace. Instructors with expertise in the survey, data management and the statistical software packages will be present throughout the course to answer questions about the survey, the data and the software.

During the hands-on sessions, each worked out example is introduced by the course instructor with a short lecture about what the participant is expected to learn from completing the example. List of examples to be worked on in the hands-on sessions are:

• Understanding Society online documentation in a nutshell
• Matching data from respondents at two waves into wide forma
• Matching data from respondents at two or more waves into long format
• Distributing household-level information to respondents
• Aggregating individual-level information to the household
• Working with weights and complex survey design
• How to match information of two household members
• Using “egoalt” file

The worked-out examples will be provided in R.

Course materials
Participants will be provided handouts of the presentation slides, worksheets and syntax files to accompany the worked-out exercises.

Software and technical requirements
Participants should bring their own laptop with R version 3.6.1 or above; R studio version 1.1.4 or higher installed.

Course format

This is an intensive two-day workshop taking place at the University of Essex.

You will recieve a fully detailed programme & instructions on how to download the data in May 2025

Location, catering, travel & accommodation

The course takes place, in-person, at the University of Essex, Colchester. The course is free of charge and lunch and refreshments will be provided. You only have to arrange (and pay for) your travel, your accommodation and your evening meals (if applicable).

Accommodation is available on campus or in nearby Colchester or Wivenhoe. You will receive more information about the location, travel and how to book your accommodation nearer the time, but if you have any queries, never hesitate to message Jay James ([email protected])

Host or Publisher Understanding Society