The Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) is a national data archiving and dissemination service that was founded in January 2003. It is funded jointly by the

Economic and Social Research Council The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), formerly the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). UKRI is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) funded by the UK government. ESRC provides fundi ...

(ESRC) and

Jisc Jisc is a United Kingdom not-for-profit company that provides network and IT services and digital resources in support of further and higher education institutions and research as well as not-for-profits and the public sector. History T ...

. In July 2012, the ESRC announced it will become a partner in the UK Data Service, to be established as of October 1, 2012.

Scope of work

ESDS provides access to and support for a wide range of key economic and social data in the UK. The collection covers both quantitative and qualitative data which span many different disciplines and themes.

Structure

ESDS service is a distributed service, based on collaboration between four key centres of expertise:

UK Data Archive The UK Data Archive is a national centre of expertise in data archiving in the United Kingdom (UK). It houses the largest collection of social sciences and population digital data in the UK. It is certified under CoreTrustSeal as a trusted ...

Institute for Social and Economic Research An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

(ISER), both based at the

University of Essex The University of Essex is a public university, public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass university, plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the an ...

; Manchester Information and Associated Services (Mimas) and

Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research Cathie is both a feminine given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include: Given name: *Cathie Adams (born 1950), American politician *Cathie Beck (born 1955), American journalist and writer *Cathie Black (born 1944), American educat ...

(CCSR), both located at the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

. These centres work in collaboration to acquire, process, preserve and disseminate a wide range of data across the social sciences. ESDS also provides enhanced user support and training for the secondary use of data for the research, learning and teaching communities.

Data services

The

is responsible for the overall direction and management of the ESDS. Within ESDS, four specialist data services provide value-added support as follows: *

ESDS Government ESDS Government is a national data service which provides large-scale government surveys, such as the General Household Survey and the Labour Force Survey Labour Force Surveys are statistical surveys conducted in a number of countries designed to ...

promotes and facilitates the use of large-scale government surveys, such as the Labour Force Survey and Health Survey for England in research, learning, and teaching. *

ESDS International ESDS International was a Jisc/ESRC funded service which provided the UK academic community with free online access to the major databanks produced by international governmental organisations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and t ...

provides access to, and support for, international (typically comparative) datasets from both survey and aggregate sources. * ESDS Longitudinal supports a range of the key UK longitudinal data. * ESDS Qualidata provides access to, and support for, qualitative datasets, from classic studies from the 1960s and 1970s to contemporary data. Study descriptions and online documentation, including questionnaires, of datasets can be accessed online free of charge and without registering. Access to data requires registration and uses federated access management (shibboleth) user authentication. Registered users can also download and explore/analyse online a large and growing number of datasets.

References

External links

Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS)

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)

UK Data Archive

Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER)

Manchester Information and Associated Services (Mimas)

Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research (CCSR)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Economic And Social Data Service Archives in the United Kingdom Databases in the United Kingdom Online databases Organizations established in 2003 Organisations based in Colchester Science and technology in Essex University of Essex 2003 establishments in the United Kingdom