 So, in this section, I'm going to cover how you can access the labor force and the annual population survey data through the UK data service. Okay. So, in this section, I'm going to cover the UK Data Service Catalog and how to access data which is under the end-user license data. I'm also going to explain a little bit of the difference between end-user license data and secure access data. Then, I'm going to cover what you need to do if you think you need access to secure access data. Finally, some info about remote access to control data through the UK Data Services Secure Lab. So, I'm going to start off with what is the UK Data Service. So, it is a comprehensive resource which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. It's made up of the former services of the ESDS, censusac.uk, and the Secure Data Service. At the UKDS, we provide a single point of access to a wide range of social science data, and as well as support training and guidance for those wanting to access and use this data. So, sessions like this one today. So, access to our data is through the UK Data Service Catalog. All of the labor force survey and the annual population survey data are available through both what we call series pages and also individual catalog records. So, I'm going to give a bit of a brief introduction to that now and explain the difference. So, each series has a series page that contains information about the series as a whole and then links to all the datasets grouped by type. So, for example, all of the labor force survey datasets grouped as a series and all of the APS datasets grouped as a series. Each dataset, individual dataset, also has its own catalog record, which is held on its own page. And the catalog record contains a bit more detailed information about the individual dataset. So, an abstract and details of the study. Documentations, such as the user guide and the variable lists, links to access the data, and also citation information, which I'll cover a bit more later. Another important thing to note is that different datasets are available under different licenses and the annual population survey and the labor force survey are both available under both the end user license and also through secure access as secure access data. And if you're looking to find the access level for a dataset, if you're on the catalog page and you look under the detail section, you will see there's a little box that says access and right there it will say end user license or secure. So, you'll be able to find out that way if you need to know. So, we kind of mentioned earlier, I think Martina and Simon briefly covered this. The EUL and the secure access versions of the data are different. So, the key thing to be aware of is that the secure access datasets usually contain extra variables that can't be found in the EUL data. And these tend to cover sort of topics that we define as personal, defined as personal by the ONS, such as more detailed geography, education details such as specific courses people have undertaken, household details such as the number of family units, health related work problems, nationality and disability. So, more personal information like that. So, if you want to access EUL data, you need to undertake the following steps. So, first you need to register with the UK data service and you can do this by creating an account or logging in through your institution. Once you've found a dataset you want to use, you then need to create a project into your account to record how the data will be used. So, this is just, so we have an idea how the data is being used. And then from here, you'll be able to download the data in your preferred format. So, this will either be Tab, SPSS or R format. Yes, that's right. No, sorry, Tab, SPSS or Stata format and the data will be downloaded in a zip file containing the data and the documentation. So, if you need any more information about kind of how to go through that process, there are videos on the website as well that walk you through the registering and the creating a project too. The thing to note is, if you want to explore the data before downloading it, a good option is the Nest R tool online. And this allows you to see the variables that are available and produce some simple tabulations. So, this can kind of just give you a bit of an idea about the variables before you download the dataset. So, you can see if it would be suitable for what you want to do with it. So, that's EUL data. I'm now going to move on to what happens if you need secure access data. So, I'm going to talk through some of the background and the application process because it can seem quite mysterious. So, before we get started, it's useful to understand some of the technical background. So, access to secure access data sets is through the Digital Economy Act 2017 or the DEA for short. And in short, the DEA requires both researchers and their projects to be accredited and researchers must be accredited before they can have access to their project. The point of access also needs to be accredited as a processor and the UK Data Archive was accredited as a processor by the Statistics Authority in 2020. How do you apply for accreditation? So, I'm going to talk through this process as it would apply if you were a researcher who was new to using our secure lab, if you were working alone and if you'd never applied for ONS-owned data before. So, the first step is to apply for accredited researcher, AR for short status. Applications are managed by the ONS's Secure Research Service and researchers must attend and pass safe researcher training before they can be awarded AR status. There are a number of safe researcher training courses. If you're applying for access to LFS data in secure lab, you might find it most convenient to book onto one of our safe researcher training courses because we cover material specific to the secure lab environment. But if you attend training with the ONS or another organization, there is additional training to cover secure lab specific material. So, once you've passed the training, the ONS will then send your AR number to you and once you've sent this, please keep a copy of this safe as you'll need to quote it on your project application. So, after you've completed all of that training, you will then need to locate the dataset that you want to use through our online catalog and as with the EUL data, you will once again add it to a project. Once you've done that, you'll be able to download application documents for your project and the application form contains guidance on how to complete it. So, there's help available with that. You will also need to provide some other supporting information such as information about ethical approval, a secure access agreement, which needs to be counter signed by a legal representative from your institution and then us at the UKDS will review your application, checking for feasibility and public benefit and this could involve some back and forth with you discussing the application and any questions we have, but once it's passed our checks, we then send it back to the ONS for data owner approval. With the ONS approval, your application goes to the Statistics Authorities Research Accreditation Panel or RAP for short and there's two options here. Your application might get reviewed through the precedent process, which means it's considered by a subgroup of the panel rather than being sent to the full panel for scrutiny and in these cases turnaround could be quite quick and a decision could be reached in a couple of weeks. Alternatively, applications could be presented at the next full RAP meeting. So that's just a quick overview of the application process. Us at the UKDS will then be informed whether your project can be accredited or not. We'll then check to see if we're missing any of the documentation that we require from you and our technical support team will finalize their checks and then set you up with a secure lab account and project. So our access team who handles the secure lab applications have given the following tips for a good application. So most of them are fairly straightforward. So the first one is to just follow the application guidance and if you're not sure, you can always contact our help desk and that's through the help pages on our website and we'll be able to give you a bit more information on anything you're stuck with there. The next thing is to just complete all of the sections fully to avoid us having to go back and forwards with you to collect the required documents. But if you are delayed getting some information from your institution, this can come through later. Also, your applications are reviewed by non-specialists. So please make it easy to understand and importantly, under the DEA, projects must have a clearly defined scope. So please make sure your application has set out specific research questions and hypotheses. Oh, once you've set up and you've got approval, how does it all work? So the first point is that the secure data is not downloadable. So unlike the EUL data, you can't download it to your own machine. Instead, you access it remotely from your organization desktop or through the UK Data Archives safe room. And remote access is through a web-based interface that uses a secure VPN. So you work within this controlled environment and before you can get any outputs, they are subject to statistical disclosure control processes. In the secure lab, you get access to software, including all of the main data analysis software and documents for working on outputs. So any software that you might want to use is available and if there's software that you need that isn't available, our team can usually look into installing that for you so you can do the analysis that you need. And also there's notes in places where you can take notes of your own research and save them to keep everything, your syntax and everything all together. So it's a really well-set up environment to make this as easy as possible for you. You are also able to import external data and link it to secure LFS data, but you do need approval of all of the data owners. So that's just a brief introduction to the secure lab. My final point on this is for any data set that's used in research, we do encourage people to cite the data. So for individual data sets, you can find a recommended citation on the catalog page. So this will be found under the little section that says citation tool, you can select the format that you want for your citation and then you can download it in the most appropriate format for however you're reporting. However, if you've used more than one data set, it can be tricky to know how to report your data use. So I've included here an example of how you can cite use of the LFS in general by using the series page. So if you've used multiple data sets, you can just cite it using the series page and please cite your data. It's really important so we know how it's being used. Great, thank you everyone. So I'm going to move on to the next section. I'll just check, I can share my screen again. Sasha, can you see that? Is we all clear? Yeah, it's perfect. Wonderful, thank you. Just sorting that out. Great, so in this session, we're going to have a look at how to make sense of the documentation and use all of the documentation that comes with the labor force survey. So first of all, why are we having a session just on the documentation? Well, this is because the documentation for the labor force survey is some of the most detailed and extensive of any survey. So the user guide has 11 volumes and there's also additional reports and documents such as data dictionaries. And this is both a blessing and a curse. It means it can take a while to get your head around all the different documentation, but it also usually means that if you have any questions and you know how to use the documentation correctly, you should be able to find the answers to them somewhere. So what is the documentation for? The documentation provides details about the study design, weights and different data sets, the kind of things that Simon and Martina covered in their presentations earlier. There is also a lot of information about how to understand the specific variables in the data set. So for example, which questions are asked when in which specific waves, if anything's changed over time. So for example, if the variables change name or you know, been recategorized or if anything like that's happened, how the variables have been derived. So if they are derived from other questions, the process for how that's happened. And finally, which variables are in which data set. So like the question that we just had, the documentation will be able to tell you which variables are available where. And in this session, I'm gonna focus specifically on how to use the documentation to find out about variables. So the first question is, where can you find the documentation? So you can access the documentation in a number of different places. First of all, you can find it in the catalog pages where you can access the documentation for a particular data set. So on the catalog pages, we have a documentation tab and you can look under that to find a list of all the documentation and you can just click to download it. Also, when you download the data, you'll receive copies of all the documentation within the zip file that you get containing the data as well. And if you've had a look in the folders that we've put online for the practical session later, you'll see that the folder also contains one that contains the documentation as well. And if you're just interested in how that looks, you can also go and have a look at the Dropbox in the lunch break to sort of see how all that sits together. And you can also find a user guide on the ONS website and it comes up better if you Google it in a search engine. So I've put there just Google LFS user guide and you should be able to find it. So when it comes to looking at information about variables, there are four main documents you'll want to consult, three main documents, sorry. Volume two, which is the questionnaire and this shows you the full questions and the routing for those questions. Volume three, which is the details guide. This shows you details of all of the variables including the derived variables. And finally, volume four, this is the standard derived variables document and details how all the variables have been derived. So let's start looking at volume two. So this is the questionnaire and in this document, you'll find details for each question in the survey, the full questionnaire wording and any possible response options. There's also lots of other information. So if you look at the bottom there, you can see how often the question is included, any routing and details about data sets where the variables can be found. So those little ticks there next to ONS Gov and EUL tell you where the variables included in particular data sets. Also, another thing to note is that at the beginning of this document, you'll find a guide to help you decipher all the information provided. So it can be a good idea to have a look at this first before you get into looking at the individual variables sections just so that you have a bit more of an idea of what you're looking at. Front of volume two, you'll also find the contents page and this gives you a really useful insight into the ordering of the questions in the survey. And it can help you again, find questions relevant to you or your research. So you could pull down this, pull open this document, control effort and maybe look for a particular things such as maternity or wellbeing or religion and that would come up. So one thing to flag about using control effort though is some searches may be more useful than others because sometimes occur quite frequently when we search through all the response options. So for example, the term training can be found, I think about 134 times in this document. And sometimes that's in reference to education and training. Sometimes it's to workplace training. So it can take a bit of work to get where you want to go but if you combine the info in the contents page with using control F, you should be able to find what you need. So next we have volume three, which as I said, offers all of the information about all of the variables. It's different from the questionnaire document because it also contains the derived variables and information about any changes over time. So for example, when questions were introduced, where they were placed and things like that. The details you can find in the frequency coverage and note sections at the bottom down there as well are also really useful in helping you understand again where you'll find the variable and also what it does and doesn't capture. So for example, this variable shift work is included in the spring quarter only from spring 99 and it applies to all persons in employment but not those in college based government schemes. Oh, sorry, I'm reading the wrong section. Yes, the shift work one was in the spring quarter between 92 and 98 and it applies to all persons in employment excluding college based schemes. And then here we can see that this was replaced by shift work 99 in the spring quarters from spring 99. So yeah, that's a little lesson there in how to read the documentation and make sure you're reading it properly. So in volume four, you can find the details of the derived variables. So for each one, you'll find a flow chart that looks something like this and this shows you how the variable has been derived. So this is really useful if you want to know who a particular variable kind of applies to or who it captures or just the formulation behind the variable. And finally, the UKDS also produces data dictionaries. So this can again be found as part of the documentation and these detail all of the variables that are present in a particular data set. And these are really useful for checking whether the variables you want are actually present in the data set before you download it. So we generate these from the data set. So if your variable isn't in the data dictionary then it's not going to be in that version of the data. And this is super helpful because it's not always 100% clear whether a variable has been removed from an EUL data set or included in a particular quarter and also very useful in particular for the longitudinal files and the APS because this can be a little bit confusing in the documentation. So always check that if you think a variable might be missing. So before we move on to the little practical that I've got about documentation I just wondered if we had any more questions about documentation in general. Yeah, as far as I can see we've only got one question which is where are the dictionaries accessed from? Great, thank you. So the dictionaries are accessed like I say from the catalog page under the documentation section they're usually the last one in the list right at the bottom and it should say data dictionaries next to it. I think it's also usually, well it is also usually included in the folder that you download so you can download the data and access it through there as well. And yeah, the data dictionaries I've just seen a follow up question. So yes, on the UKDS website. So if you go to the catalog page on the website you'll find the data dictionaries there. Great, thank you. So if there are no more questions and if anyone has any more questions that pop up while we're doing the next section again please just pop them in the chat. But if there are no more questions I think we're gonna move on to a little bit of a practical and this is, this activity has been designed to help you get familiar with how to use the documentation and how to find out about the variables like I've just talked through. So what we're gonna do is we're going to be exploring what variables are available to examine zero hour contracts. So looking at which variables you can use what's the difference between the different variables and when are they available? So these are questions that you can just answer by looking at the documentation and going to the website so you will not need any software at this point. And I've got some step by step instructions with pointers of what to look for and I will pop that in the chat in just a second. This document also contains some additional questions about whether certain research questions are possible to examine with the data that's available but if we don't get to that in the time available there's no worries and you can always do that in your own time afterwards if you would like. The answers to the questions that I'm asking in this handout are at the end of the document and you can check those whenever you want. And again, just feel free to ask any questions as you go. So we'll spend about 15 minutes doing this now. So I'm just going to pop the handout link in the chat for everyone. So if you just follow that that should open the PDF link and also we'll come back together at about 12, yeah, about 12ish to discuss the answers and I've got a little catch up review activity. Great, I can see that some people have completed the task so no rush if you haven't yet but if that is the case I've got a link to a Google form with a little bit of just a few recap questions. So if I send this in the chat you should be able to follow that and answer the they're just some questions to recap your understanding of the documentation and then when we do our recap just before the lunch break I'll discuss through the answers. So if you finished and you want to check your understanding further the link is in the chat. Okay, so let's have a look. I'm going to go through the responses here now. So I'm just going to go through these recap questions now. So the first question that we had is what is stored in the variable flex 101? And the correct answer is the green option. So the first response is given for the type of agreed work arrangement. So the server contains a question labeled flex 10 that asks about flexible working but respondents can give up to three responses on this and the first, second and third responses are all held in different variables which have the suffixes one, two or three. So therefore flex 101 is the variable that records the first responses. I can see that some people are still answering. So no worries, do carry on. The next question, should flex seven and flood 10 always give the same number of people on zero hour contracts? The correct answer for that which most of you have put is no. And this is because flex seven comes from the answers to flex 10. So it's a dichotomous variable, yes, no. Indicating all mentions of whether a person has had a zero hours contract whereas flood 10 records the main type of work arrangement and it has 10 categories with zero hour contracts being one of them. So the numbers having zero hour contractors, their main work arrangement could be less than all those who are mentioning a zero hour contract. The next one is, can you examine differences across local authorities using the EUL data? And we can see that most people have put no, which is correct. And there is a variable for local authority but only in the APS. And to see if this research would be possible with the APS you would need to look into information such as whether there are zero hours contracts held in the APS. And again, you could find that through the documentation. And finally, I can see our summary of how everyone found the LFS documentation in general. So I can see that lots of people have found it detailed and useful, which is great. Other people have found it overwhelming, which is understanding understandable because we're just getting to grips with it. And like I say, there are about 11 different volumes. And one person has found it straightforward, which is good. So thank you all for your answers on those questions.