1. ESDS Resources for EFS Users Jo Wathan ESDS Government Centre for Census and Survey Research University of Manchester

2. In this presentation… Who we are EFS resources Keeping in touch Where next?

3. ESDS Government Specialist service supporting users of the large, continuous, cross-sectional surveys collected (largely) for government purposes Supports EFS, NFS and FES as well as other large surveys such as FRS, LFS, GHS... Part of the larger Economic and Social Data Service led by the UK Data Archive –ESDS Longitudinal –ESDS Qualidata –ESDS International

4. What are we here for? Archiving and dissemination of the surveys (UKDA) Other functions at CCSR –Promoting and supporting the use of the data –Value added materials –Training –Facilitating communication between data depositors and users

5. How are data made available? EFS Data deposited in 2 parts –Main EFS deposit – Household Form and Diary expenditure data as derived summary variables. Available in SPSS, Stata and Tab formats –Food diary information including nutritional values in Microsoft Access (single file) or Tab format (multiple files) EFS is also available in Nesstar, but may not contain the derived and food data!!!

6. Current EFS Resources Web pages dedicated to EFS contains: –Relevant links (e.g. to published reports and methodology) –FAQs –Registered uses for the data –Variable search tool –Resources include Publications Links to relevant useful documents

8. Variable search Variable search based on the names and labels of variables Based on SPSS (therefore does not currently search on the food diary data) Start from the EFS page to search on EFS alone

9. How have the data been used? Registered uses...and publications

10. In production... Consumption Theme Material EFS Teaching Dataset –Household Level dataset –Single file –Reduced number of variables Consumption theme guide –Identifies the main datasets used for consumption research –Compares key features of the data Consumption theme research conference –Held last year –Presentations on the events page

11. Workshops and Events Introductory workshops (inc. those joint with SARs workshops) Joint workshops with other ESDS services Methods Research conferences Dataset user groups Other presentations Posters

12. Help-desk C.250 Queries in the last year Range of different ranges of complexity: –How do I get access to the HSE? –What are social classes written as roman numerals? –Should I apply weights if Im modelling? –The household identifiers are missing from a file Help desk involves collaboration with UKDA, ONS, NatCen etc

13. Keeping in touch Website contains news & information about consultations/data developments JISCmail esds-govsurveys list Newsletter –Biannual –Contains news Survey news from ONS etc New ESDS resources Summaries of meetings Focus on researchers –Available on website

14. The important last (but one) slide… Helpdesk: govsurveys@esds.ac.uk (0161)275 1980 Website: http://www.esds.ac.uk/government Jisc list: esds-govsurveys@jiscmail.ac.uk

15. Some questions for you... What can we do to help users with their use of the EFS? Would you a subsetting tool help? Can you suggest how we can better reach new users?