Getting started with the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions
1. Which dataset do I want?
The Great Britain EU-SILC dataset has been produced in accordance with EU regulations under guidance from Eurostat. The data and documentation can be accessed from the ESDS website. Users should note that only the cross-sectional data are currently available from ESDS and these data only cover GB.
The Great Britain component of the EU-SILC dataset is collected by the Office for National Statistics as part of the General Lifestyle Survey (GLF) (held at ESDS under Special Licence access conditions) but will soon be collected from the Family Resources Survey instead of the GLF. A document outlining the changes is available in PDF format. The Northern Ireland component is collected by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) as part of the Living Conditions Survey (LCS) (not currently held at ESDS).
2. Consulting the documentation
It will not be possible to analyse the EU-SILC 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 which variables are available
• information about how the data is coded
• the survey questionnaires
3. Registering for the data
Once you have decided which ata 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 website.
Registered users can download/order a large and increasing number of datasets direct (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.
4. Downloading the data
Once registered, you may download the data directly as a zipped ASCII, STATA or SPSS file. This download will also include necessary documentation.
5. Analysing the data using an appropriate analysis package
Because the EU-SILC datasets are micro data you will need to analyse them using an appropriate package such as 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 HSE 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.
6. 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 EU-SILC. 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.
7. Publishing
We need to let other researchers and data depositors know what publications are available using the GB EU-SILC data. 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.
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