The first of three summer schools funded through the COORDINATE Network was held between June 20th and June 24th at the University of Essex, UK. This course, run in tandem with the Understanding Society Panel Data Workshop, covered the basics of longitudinal and panel data analysis using the child and youth data of Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study.
Seventeen participants from 8 European countries successfully applied to attend the Sumer School.
The week started with an introduction to Understanding Society and the child and youth data that was used in the course, given by Dr Cara Booker and Dr Edith Aguirre.
Over the week, morning sessions covered different methods of data analysis, e.g. linear panel data methods, structural equation modelling, weighting, etc. Following these lectures, participants were provided with examples of those methods using the youth data from Understanding Society. Participants were allowed to conduct the analysis in their software of choice, with most using Stata and R. In the afternoons, participants worked on their own pre-established research questions by selecting variables and conducting data management and analysis.On the final afternoon, participants were provided the opportunity to present their research ideas, how far they had come with their data analysis over the week and receive feedback from the course convenors and their fellow participants.
During the week, participants from the COORDINATE Summer School and the Understanding Society Panel Data Workshop were able to meet each other for lunch and at the joint dinner that was held.
Summer School materials are publicly available under a CC-BY 4.0 International License and can be found here:
Understanding society data can be accesses via UK Data Archive.
Impressions:
“Truly wonderful experience- gave me much needed insights into analysis of such a large, longitudinal dataset!”
“Was an amazing experience and I wish I can do it again!”
“This was very enriching, congratulations to the organizers”