CLOSER and Understanding Society have each developed teaching/training datasets and suggested exercises to help you get to grips with analysing longitudinal data.
CLOSER has developed a teaching/training dataset based on the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS). It is fully documented and is available via the UK Data Service. We have also created a series of suggested teaching exercises to use with this dataset.
The dataset includes variables from eight waves of the NCDS, from the first sweep in 1958, to the age 50 sweep in 2008. Variables in the dataset include:
The dataset comprises respondents who have taken part in every sweep of the study (complete cases). A subsequent data set will be prepared that includes respondents who have taken place in some but not all sweeps of the study, so students can learn how to deal with sweep-level missing cases. This dataset will be available soon.
We have developed teaching exercises using this data set on the following topics. The first PDF in each topic sets out an exercise and the second PDF provides the answers to those activities:
Smoking and voting
Does smoking make you less likely to vote in general elections?
Malaise
How do people’s early-life circumstances affect their propensity to suffer depression in middle-age?
Social mobility
How much intergenerational social mobility was there for people born in 1958? Do people tend to end up in the same social class as their parents, or higher/lower? What drives any intergenerational class mobility – is it intelligence, or education, or other factors?
We have produced a detailed online guide using the CLOSER teaching dataset to illustrate more advanced regression analysis techniques for longitudinal data. The resource includes information on how to get started with the data, and guidance for the following analysis methods – general linear regression, logistic regression, and multinomial logistic regression.
Understanding Society: UK Household Longitudinal Study, which began in 2009, is a panel study conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex.
They have co-developed a teaching resource with the UK Data Service (UKDS), available via UKDS, for those who are new to data analysis, which includes a step-by-step guide starting from exploring a survey, understanding the structure of the survey data and then using the data to do some simple exercises to measure differences in health and wellbeing across ethnic groups.
The dataset here includes responses given by adults (16+ year olds) during the first interview (Wave 1) to questions about ethnicity, health and wellbeing and some key socio-demographic characteristics such as age, sex, education, income, labour market status etc.
Also available are two teaching worksheets:
Part One introduces the survey Understanding Society, explains the structure of the survey data and provides a guide to exploring what information is collected.
Part Two provides a more detailed step-by-step guide with exercises explaining how to do some simple descriptive analysis using data from this survey and the statistical software package, Stata.
The Learning Hub is a resource for students and educators
tel | +44 (0)20 7331 5102 |
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closer@ucl.ac.uk |
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