A few months ago, we had the great pleasure of spending a day with our new #DataImpactFellows at Chetham’s Library in Manchester – one of the oldest public libraries in the world. During the day we asked some of them how and why they use data from the UK Data Service and why the Service is so important to their research.
Anne Alarilla (@alarillaanne) is a Data and Research Analyst in the Cancer Intelligence Team at Cancer Research UK. She explores smoking, overweight and obesity prevalence in the UK and individual nations of the UK with a particular focus on prevalence trends.
She said:
Working in the charity sector, it is very important because we don’t have a lot of access to data. So having this place where we can get freely available data is really valuable for us.
James Cockett (@JamesCockettIES) is a Research Economist at the Institute for Employment Studies (IES), a research institute based in Brighton.
He said:
I’ve used data from the UK Data Service for a variety of projects. Currently I’m working on a project for the Low Pay Commission on the effect of the National Living wage on employment and hours including the impact on younger workers.
David Kingman is the Senior Researcher at the Intergenerational Foundation. He is responsible for day-to-day management of IF’s research projects, including research design, accessing relevant data sources, undertaking data analysis and producing insightful, newsworthy research reports.
He said:
Nearly all of our research, in one way or another, uses data which is archived by the UK Data Service.
Christian Reynolds (@Sartorialfoodie) is a an early career researcher working in roles at the University of Sheffield and for the sustainability charity WRAP. His main research focus is quantifying the impacts of shifting to a healthy, sustainable diet.
He said:
The UK Data Service is really important because it offers one central repository, an expertise hub for the UK’s data.