Getting started with the Life Opportunities Survey
1. Which dataset do I want?
The Life Opportunities Survey (LOS) is a longitudinal survey. Data from Wave One, 2009-2010, of the survey are now available from ESDS. The second wave of the survey begins in 2011 and will be deposited during 2012.
2. Consulting the documentation
It will not be possible to analyse the LOS without reference to the documentation. Documentation is available for viewing before downloading/ordering the data, however you will also obtain the documentation if you download the data as a zipped file. The documentation contains:
• information about how the survey was carried out
• information about which variables are available
• information about how the data is coded
• the survey questionnaires
3. Explore the data online
A good way of starting to explore
the data is to look at the data in Nesstar
WebView.
Nesstar WebView is available for the LOS data. Nesstar will allow you to look at univariate frequencies and variable descriptions without needing to have registered for the data. This is an excellent way of finding out whether the data are likely to be suitable for your purposes. Once in Nesstar, click on the Help tab in the top right hand corner of the screen to view a user guide. Once you have registered with ESDS you will be able to use Nesstar to its full potential, undertaking more complex analyses and downloading subsets of data in a wide variety of formats.
4. Registering for the data
Once you have decided which data to
use for your project you will need to register
with ESDS to obtain the data. Information about obtaining data can be found
on the ESDS web site.
Registered users can download/order a large and increasing number of datasets
direct from the web site (usually in SPSS, STATA or tab-delimited formats) via
its online catalogue record and via the download/order section of the Major
Studies web pages.
5. Downloading the data
Once registered, you may either:
o download the data directly as
a zipped ASCII, STATA or SPSS file. This download will also include necessary
documentation
o download an entire file, or a subset of your choice, into a wider range
of formats via Nesstar Light
6. Analysing the data using an appropriate
analysis package
Because the LOS datasets are microdata you will need to analyse them using an appropriate package. You can undertake straightforward analysis, including linear regression, on the whole dataset or a subset, using Nesstar. However, it is not possible to produce derived variables or do more advanced analyses using Nesstar, to do this you will need to use a package like SPSS, STATA or SAS.
If you are unfamiliar with these packages you can find a STATA guide on the ESDS Government pages which uses examples from the Labour Force Survey. A guide to SPSS is also available, based on the Health Survey for England 2002 teaching dataset. Several organisations offer introductory SPSS and STATA courses. CCSR at the University of Manchester offers one-day courses although there is a charge. Details of these courses can be obtained through the CCSR Short Course Pages.
7. Communicating with other users
and obtaining support
The ESDS-govsurveys
JISCmail list is an email list you can join to hear about events and other
news relating to the large-scale government list, including the EFS. To join
the list click on the above link to the ESDS-govsurveys list web page or email
listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with the following message:
subscribe esds-govsurveys firstname
secondname
If you hit a problem with the data
while doing your work feel free to contact us. Queries relating to the large-scale
government datasets should be sent to:
govsurveys@esds.ac.uk
Alternatively you can telephone +44
(0) 161 275 1980.
8. Publishing
We need to let other researchers and
data depositors know what publications are available using the LOS. If you publish
using the data, please contact us at govsurveys@esds.ac.uk and give us details
of your publication. If you would be happy for us to publish something on our
web site, for example the research
story on smoking, please let us know.
Data collectors and distributors should
be acknowledged in publications.
