 Okay, so hopefully Ellen's given you a flavour of what's available and all the sort of things that you know potentially you could do with the data. Now I know some of you who are here this afternoon have already gone through the application process and have projects up and running already so it's really good to see you all here this afternoon but some of you won't have gone through that process so this will potentially be all new to you. So I thought it would be useful just to talk through the application process so what you need to do if you want to to work with these data and before I get started about talking about the practicalities of applying for these data I want to just situate it in the context of data access policy because I think it's important to have a little bit of an understanding of this before you access these data. So essentially data access exists on a spectrum and you've got open data where you know the data is not that detailed might be aggregate data and there is no considered risk that any participants in that data could be re-identified and generally there won't be any restrictions on the reuse of these data. Then you have this middle section of the spectrum which is safeguarded data and this is where there might be potentially a risk of re-identification but it is very very low or even zero and this is data that's available under our end user license or perhaps our special license so there's a little bit of paperwork to do so you need to have authentication and authorization and you might already be very familiar with that process if you've worked with data through the UK data service before but the third group which is what we're going to talk about for the rest of this webinar is the control data access. Now this is where the data is very much more detailed there is a risk of re-identification within it so we require again the authentication and the authorization but there are additional steps to go through and that requires approval of project, the vetting and training of researchers for example and I'm going to talk about that a little bit more detail but I just wanted to set that context before we get going so accessing control data involves a secure access agreement now I'm not going to talk about the legislation in detail because I'm not a lawyer at all but I and I don't think you need to know the legislation in huge detail but I think it's important to realize that these controlled data the secure data are only made available for access through specific legislative acts and this legislation allows us to provide access to personally identified data identifiable data under a legal gateway now those legal gateways vary there will be different legislative acts depending on the the data source but essentially they all do the same thing they determine who can access what data for what purpose under what conditions and for how long and I think that's really the take-home message here that I want you to have so under these legal gateways researchers access data and they undertake their analyses in a safe setting and sometimes you might hear those calls safe havens secure labs all there's different terms but essentially it's a secure setting and researchers agree to conditions for handling personal data they agree to reach penalties they agree to be trained and to become an accredited researcher and I'm going to explain that in more detail and they agree that their research projects will be accredited as well and there is the need for the institution to come to sign on behalf of the researcher as well so that's kind of a really really top level explanation just to set set the scene but I'm going to move on and I'm going to talk about the application process in detail now so the application process is a multi-stage process you need to be allowing time for this process so you know it's not an overnight job you need to really allow a couple of months researchers have got to be based in the UK whilst they're accessing these data so just bear in mind that if you are based in in multiple locations access to secure data has to be done whilst you're based in the UK you need to apply to become an accredited researcher which means you have to meet the data owner's criteria and you have to attend a short training course and again I'll explain a little more about that in a second and the next stage is to submit a research proposal and your research has got to have a valid statistical purpose and it has to be feasible and again I'm going to talk about that a little bit more but first I want to explain what we mean by accredited researcher now this isn't actually a very complex process you need to submit an application form and you will then need to complete the safe researcher training course so it's it's not a particularly complicated process but you do have to spend a little bit of time completing that form fully that's probably my number one tip and you will need to meet the accreditation criteria now just to give you a little background on the accredited researcher status now the Office of National Statistics the ONS have been given the authority to manage this accreditation process now this is something that you only need to do once every five years so it's not something that you have to do every project or every year it's just do it your status lasts for five years at the end of that five years you'll need to refresh that status the good thing about having the AR status is that you can use it across all accredited digital economy at processors now we at the UK Data Service are one such processor there are others for example the ONS and the HMRC so if six months a year down the line you decide you want to go off and do some research with the HMRC you don't have to reapply for the AR status okay just one other little thing to know as an AR you will need to agree to your name being added to the UK Statistics Authority website they are keeping a list of all AR researchers now I mentioned that you have to meet the AR criteria and this is really what it is so the first two bits are ensuring that you have the expertise and the experience to actually do the analysis and work with these data so they ask for information about whether you have an undergraduate degree or higher which includes a significant proportion of maths or statistics or alternatively you can demonstrate at least three years quantitative research experience then the other parts of the criteria is that you have to complete the safe research training course agree as I say to your inclusion on the list of AR researchers there is the criteria that you need to agree to publish the results completed through this scheme and you have to sign and adhere to a formal accredited researcher declaration so that's kind of it now the safe researcher training is designed around the basis that using sensitivity of control data is pretty much all about common sense so if you've got a bit of common sense you're going to be absolutely fine however there are some bits of specific knowledge that you will need around disclosure risk and how to mitigate it and a lot of researchers unless they've had this experience of working with control data will not have that specific knowledge so that's why we train you it's a short course at the moment thanks to covid it's online and it lasts about three three and a half hours and that kind of depends on the group really if we have a larger group and we get a lot more questions it will last a little bit longer the course itself will introduce you to the wider context so looking at understanding data access looking at the five safe framework which you may or may not be familiar with how things might go wrong with data access and we talk about this concept of safe people and then we'll introduce the technical knowledge and this is all around statistical disclosure control which is the process of ensuring that survey participants are not identifiable in the publication of research outputs attendees need to take and pass an online test afterwards now the good news is we have an extremely high pass rate so it's not anything to really get too concerned about but you do need to pass this test okay so that's all about you as a researcher and then the second stage of the process is to have your research project accredited now as Ellen mentioned all project applications have to be approved by the data governance board and i'm going to introduce you to the board and what they do in just a second i'm going to cover some top tips about completing project applications but i will say this off the bat they have to be thoroughly completed and i'm going to dig into that a little bit more um in just a few minutes in particular you will need to play close attention to how you're meeting the public good and also providing evidence of ethical approval now you should all be doing this at your institution level anyway so this should be familiar territory but i am going to just cover ethics a little bit more right at the end now sir has its own data governance board and they are a group of highly experienced researchers and data professionals with a vast amount of expertise and it is their job to review and approve applications and their aim is to do that through transparency and fairness now data governance boards sometimes they're also referred to as data access committees but they tend to follow a very similar design so they'll have a panel membership that will have experienced researchers stakeholders they'll have a secretary out some will have lay members some won't but they will all meet periodically and it's most commonly monthly now some of the data access committees that i sit on have been going for many years and some of them will have a system of precedence for common project types so some will have a system where projects may not need to go to a full board review but that tends to be only committees and boards that have been going for a considerable period of time and their job essentially is to consider this is what you're proposing an appropriate use of the data is it legal is it ethical is it feasible and that's kind of it now you will have to provide a set of materials for the panel which as a minimum will consist of your project application and your ethics assessments it may be that there are other supporting materials that are appropriate but that's not in every case the outcomes that are possible from a review by the data governance board is full approval it might be that they give you a conditional approval but they will come back and ask for a little bit more information or clarification or some amendments they do also have the option to reject applications that's not a very common option the majority will go through either with full approval or conditional approval now the uk data service we have a role in this process and our role is to triage all of your applications before they go to the data governance board and our role our aim is to make sure that every single application that goes to the board is of the highest possible quality so that they all get through with full approval at first review that's kind of our aim so when you're applying you will deal with with us at the uk ds and we will guide you through the application process we'll give you any guidance on whether you can improve your application whether there's anything missing so you know we'll work with you throughout that process so my top tips for a successful project application which is approved at first review and i alluded to this earlier but my number one tip above all else is detail detail detail i see a lot of applications where researchers miss sections of the form and unfortunately we can't submit incomplete project applications to the board they would be rather annoyed with us if we did that it's important to realise that you're the board will very very closely scrutinise what you plan to do because they have to make it an informed decision so make sure everything is completed if there's something that's not applicable to you make a note of that that's absolutely fine but don't go leaving chunks of the form blank the second and third tip really go hand in hand and this again is about detail and about clarity please make sure that you have outlined a clear research proposal whether that's having a set of specific research questions or a very clearly defined aim the more detail the better is the watch word here the same goes for the methodology you will be asked to to outline your methodology now you may not have worked out all the details but you should at least have a plan of how you're going to get started and both of these need to apply the first tip detail detail detail the next tip is to make sure you've included details of all of the data you need a common error I think is for somebody just to put something very broad like cell data you need to be more specific so if it's data from the UKDS catalogue put the study number so that'll be SN and four digits the clearer you are here the easier it is for us to process your application let's talk about public good now this is absolutely fundamental and it's something that the the board will pay close attention to my top tip here is don't over promise we are not expecting to solve the world's problems so don't promise that you're going to do that it's more likely that what you're going to be doing is adding to the existing evidence base or extending our understanding of a particular issue and they are absolutely perfectly valid you know we've we see the odd application form where somebody might put I'm going to solve this issue and and the board tend to be a little bit unsure about whether that's really feasible for a research project so be realistic and don't over promise the other thing is allow enough time and I mean this in two ways the first is don't try and throw out the application forming five minutes again you know don't spend day in day out but make sure you spend a little bit of time doing it well first time the other thing is you are asked to say when you think the project is going to finish and it's a common it's a common habit to be a little bit over optimistic about how long you think your project will take always allow a little bit longer than you think because life happens and you know deadlines get pushed back my final top tip again is take time over your ethics form and I'm going to talk about ethics now and ethics forms can be surprisingly tricky I think now you will be used to doing institutional ethics forms and that is part of the application process so we need to see evidence that you have gained institutional approval we also need to see a UK statistics authority ethics self-assessment form now the UK stats authority are really pushing forward with their ethics agenda now and they've developed a fantastic self-assessment tool and their hope is that they have designed an easy to use framework which enables you as researchers to review the ethics of your project for yourself there are six main principles and we can see public good training legal gateways all of the sort of things we've talked about this afternoon they're all part of this ethics assessment each of these six principles are broken down into a number of items and there are 22 in total if you haven't had to complete one of these before it is essentially an excel spreadsheet which looks a little bit like this screenshot you can see on the screen and essentially what you have to do is for each of the 22 items you have to give your project a score and then you have to provide a justification for why you've given it that score and the spreadsheet will automatically calculate an overall score and the data governance board will pay close attention to this I have to say that some of the items are more self-explanatory than others others are a little less clear I think and they tend to catch researchers on the back foot so the first one we can see on the screen is public benefit and I think most people will find that fairly self-explanatory but some of the others like potential harm can catch people off guard so my top tips here is read the guidance given by the UK stats authority and I've put the link to that at the bottom of this slide so when you make when you access the slides after the event you can just click on that link and go to the guidance if you are unfamiliar with this framework I would recommend you have a scan through the guidance first the reason being is it will explain each of the items and it will also give you suggestions of the sort of things that you can write for your justification and I can't stress that enough and I think once you've done one or two of these they become you know quite a straightforward process but they can be a bit tricky first off I think the common errors that I see with these are that people are not really understanding what the item is getting at so their justification doesn't quite address the right issue you will need to demonstrate careful consideration of each item you don't have to write an essay for each one you know a sentence can be more than sufficient but you have to demonstrate this careful consideration the other thing I want to mention which I think is is unique to the cell project to a degree is that we have researchers who work on the cell project with the data collection as well as working on the analysis of the data and it's a common thing that the researchers when they're complete in the ethics form will conflate the two and they'll answer the the items on the ethics form about the data collection and they shouldn't it's just focusing on the analysis of the data so that's really all I want to cover this afternoon hopefully that will break down the process and and take some of the mystery out of it and help you to put together an application which whizzes through review on the first first go