The Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) is a national data service providing access and support for an extensive range of key economic and social data, both quantitative and qualitative, spanning many disciplines and themes. ESDS provides an integrated service offering enhanced support for the secondary use of data across the research, learning and teaching communities. About ESDS: www.esds.ac.uk/about/about.asp

The Data Catalogue provides access to over 5,000 computer-readable datasets for research and teaching purposes for many different disciplines. Comprehensive online information, and links to access data, are available for each dataset.

Datasets can be found in the Data Catalogue by searching on specific information such as the title, the person or organisation associated with the study (e.g. data creator or sponsor), or the date of the study. The Help on searching guide suggests the kind of searches that can be performed and gives tips on how best to formulate queries. Access to data requires registration and uses federated access management (shibboleth) user authentication. Registration is a simple online one-time process.

About the data: www.esds.ac.uk/findingdata/data.asp Search the Data Catalogue: www.esds.ac.uk/search/searchstart.asp Help with searching: www.esds.ac.uk/search/searchHelpESDS.asp Login and registration: www.esds.ac.uk/aandp/access/access.asp Guide to accessing data and documentation at ESDS: www.esds.ac.uk/support/E2.asp Frequently asked questions: www.esds.ac.uk/about/faq.asp

ESDS has produced a series of guides that both introduce and provide guidance on various ESDS services. In addition to showing how to navigate the ESDS web sites, and online systems for finding and exploring social science data and documentation held by ESDS, some of the guides include exercises that are used in ESDS hands-on workshops. Other guides provide a more in-depth exploration of issues pertaining to using data by research themes, software packages or data analysis techniques.

ESDS Government provides beginners' guides for their surveys, for example: Getting started with the Labour Force Survey. Further guides are available on the individual ESDS Government surveys pages.

ESDS International provides a quick guide to their international datasets, with links to the more detailed dataset user guides, and step-by-step guides to accessing the data.