Who is the course for?
This course is for users who would like to learn how to make more efficient use of the extremely rich but complex Understanding Society datasets. The course provides guidance on extracting a multifunctional longitudinal ‘data spine’ from the various survey datafiles. Users are then shown how their data spine can be adapted and enriched with information from other Understanding Society datafiles to help answer a wide range of longitudinal research questions.
The course is suitable for users who have some knowledge of running statistical analysis using R and who also have at least a little familiarity with Understanding Society.
Prerequisite:
Before enrolling on this module you must have completed the Introduction to Understanding Society course and have at least a little experience of working with Understanding Society data.
This course assumes that you already have access to R and R Studio on your computer and that you know how to download, install and open these pieces of software. At a minimum participants should feel comfortable:
- Setting the working directory and reading in datasets
- Understanding functions, objects and how to write basic R code
- Working with scripts
- Generally navigating the R Studio interface
What will I learn?
In this course users will initially learn how to assemble a multifunctional longitudinal ‘data spine’ from the various Understanding Society datasets. This ‘data spine’ records basic information about each person who has ever been part of the survey, as well as their interview history. Building a ‘data spine’ is a very efficient way to work with Understanding Society as the spine can easily be enriched with additional variables and/or filtered to answer a very wide range of research questions.
Users will then learn how to enrich their data spine with information from individual and household interviews, as well as relationships between household members. Along the way users will be given handy tips about data cleaning, variable recoding and will learn how to build some basic data visualisations using R’s powerful ggplot2 package.
In the final exercise users will explore the data to answer the research question: to what extent do younger adults’ homeownership transitions vary with the socio-economic status of their parents? Some basic methods for running longitudinal analysis of Understanding Society are introduced and users will also be given a brief practical introduction to using survey weights.
The course consists of four exercises which users must tackle in order:
- Building an Understanding Society data spine
- Working with data about individuals
- Household and relationships
- Data exploration
Software and technical requirements
Participants should have access to a computer or laptop with the following software installed R version 4.2.2 or above; R Studio version 2022.7.2 or higher.
How to register for this course?
This course is available online as a Moodle course via Open Essex (Moodle).
How to sign-up to Open Essex (MoodleX)
- Go to https://open.essex.ac.uk/
- If you are at the University of Essex or at a UK Federation institution then click on “Single Sign-On” and follow the prompts to log in using your institutional login and password.
- If you are not at the University of Essex or a UK Federation, click on “Create new account” to create a Open Essex (MoodleX) account and then log in using that account.
- After you have logged in click on “Courses” in the top menu bar and then click on “All Courses” from the drop-down menu. Next click on “Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER)”. This will display a list of our online courses.
- Click on the course you want to enrol and then click on “Enrol me” to enrol.
Having problems?
If you have any problems enrolling on the MoodleX course please email usersupport@understandingsociety.ac.uk.
If you are a University of Essex user please contact the IT help desk.