Data sets used in Survey Analysis Workshop
[Page last updated 23 Jan 2014]
Raw data sets are exactly as they would arrive from the fieldwork agency or from institutional data-prep services (in 80-column ASCII format, fixed width font).
SPSS saved files for British Social Attitudes 1986 and 1989 and Quality of Life in Britain are initial files only. Variables in the BSA series are (re-) named using the positional naming convention. There are no mnemonic names and no derived variables, but these will be generated during the exercises. These files have full permissions for use and distribution.
SPSS (19, 21 and 22) can open *.sav and *.sps files downloaded from this site and also save them to a drive on your computer. Earlier tutorials and exercises require you to define a few variables, read in raw data and add dictionary information, then save the files. However, for surveys with dozens, if not hundreds, of variables, this would be too onerous a requirement, especially for beginners. Later tutorials and exercises will need access to much larger saved files containing hundreds of variables and thousands of cases.
I have therefore prepared and uploaded the necessary raw data (*.txt) and SPSS saved (*.sav) files: these can be downloaded from this site and either opened on your own computer or saved to a folder or drive. For convenience, and because some files on your computer may have very long pathway names, I shall assume this to be a USB memory stick and will refer to them in tutorials by a shorter pathname as e:<filename> or
f:<filename>.
Until I have finished converting and updating all the original course materials, the main SPSS saved files we shall be using will be:
bsa86.sav British Social Attitudes 1986 2.0 mb
bsa89.sav British Social Attitudes 1989 (excluding Northern Ireland) 3.2 mb
fifthx.sav Fifth Form Survey 0.07 mb
myclass.sav Initial cumulative data from pre-course questionnaire 0.06 mb
qlgb75.sav Initial working file for Quality of Life in Britain 1975 0.6 mb
(No excuses for the last one as I did it myself! It may be almost 40 years old, but it's a wonderful survey, much copied but never equalled since. If you explore it using the questionnaire, you will see that the subject matter, design logic and data analytical possibilities are not easy to find in other surveys.)
Pre-course questionnaire on interests and experience
Cumulative data file as used in Block 1: From questionnaire to SPSS saved file.
British Social Attitudes
1986 and 1989 as used on my original course, but with positional instead of mnemonic variable names. Exercises will eventually be developed using later waves, but the SPSS saved files for these, distributed by the UK Data Service (UKDS, based at Essex University) need modifying to meet my professional standards. The SPSS setup files to do this will be available on this site, but to use the actual data you will need to be a registered user. See also British Social Attitudes Information System,
Files and documentation are accessible from UKDS: the list of currently available waves 1983-2010 is on British Social Attitudes 1983 onwards. I am currently working on tutorials using data from the 2011 wave and will post these and supporting information when they are ready.
Quality of Life in Britain
Two pilot surveys from 1971, two national surveys from 1973 an 1975 and two local surveys replicated in Stoke-on-Trent and Sunderland simultaneously with the 1973 national survey. Don't be put off by the dates: these are valuable and interesting surveys in their own right and have features not always present in more modern surveys.
Playground to Politics
Self-completed questionnaire by all fifth formers (aged 15-16) present on the survey day in a mixed comprehensive school (11-18) in North London in 1981. A survey done under my professional supervision by three of my 2nd year students as a group project, it meets unusually high standards and shows what is possible.
Raw data sets are exactly as they would arrive from the fieldwork agency or from institutional data-prep services (in 80-column ASCII format, fixed width font).
SPSS saved files for British Social Attitudes 1986 and 1989 and Quality of Life in Britain are initial files only. Variables in the BSA series are (re-) named using the positional naming convention. There are no mnemonic names and no derived variables, but these will be generated during the exercises. These files have full permissions for use and distribution.
SPSS (19, 21 and 22) can open *.sav and *.sps files downloaded from this site and also save them to a drive on your computer. Earlier tutorials and exercises require you to define a few variables, read in raw data and add dictionary information, then save the files. However, for surveys with dozens, if not hundreds, of variables, this would be too onerous a requirement, especially for beginners. Later tutorials and exercises will need access to much larger saved files containing hundreds of variables and thousands of cases.
I have therefore prepared and uploaded the necessary raw data (*.txt) and SPSS saved (*.sav) files: these can be downloaded from this site and either opened on your own computer or saved to a folder or drive. For convenience, and because some files on your computer may have very long pathway names, I shall assume this to be a USB memory stick and will refer to them in tutorials by a shorter pathname as e:<filename> or
f:<filename>.
Until I have finished converting and updating all the original course materials, the main SPSS saved files we shall be using will be:
bsa86.sav British Social Attitudes 1986 2.0 mb
bsa89.sav British Social Attitudes 1989 (excluding Northern Ireland) 3.2 mb
fifthx.sav Fifth Form Survey 0.07 mb
myclass.sav Initial cumulative data from pre-course questionnaire 0.06 mb
qlgb75.sav Initial working file for Quality of Life in Britain 1975 0.6 mb
(No excuses for the last one as I did it myself! It may be almost 40 years old, but it's a wonderful survey, much copied but never equalled since. If you explore it using the questionnaire, you will see that the subject matter, design logic and data analytical possibilities are not easy to find in other surveys.)
Pre-course questionnaire on interests and experience
Cumulative data file as used in Block 1: From questionnaire to SPSS saved file.
British Social Attitudes
1986 and 1989 as used on my original course, but with positional instead of mnemonic variable names. Exercises will eventually be developed using later waves, but the SPSS saved files for these, distributed by the UK Data Service (UKDS, based at Essex University) need modifying to meet my professional standards. The SPSS setup files to do this will be available on this site, but to use the actual data you will need to be a registered user. See also British Social Attitudes Information System,
Files and documentation are accessible from UKDS: the list of currently available waves 1983-2010 is on British Social Attitudes 1983 onwards. I am currently working on tutorials using data from the 2011 wave and will post these and supporting information when they are ready.
Quality of Life in Britain
Two pilot surveys from 1971, two national surveys from 1973 an 1975 and two local surveys replicated in Stoke-on-Trent and Sunderland simultaneously with the 1973 national survey. Don't be put off by the dates: these are valuable and interesting surveys in their own right and have features not always present in more modern surveys.
Playground to Politics
Self-completed questionnaire by all fifth formers (aged 15-16) present on the survey day in a mixed comprehensive school (11-18) in North London in 1981. A survey done under my professional supervision by three of my 2nd year students as a group project, it meets unusually high standards and shows what is possible.
Other data sets
Once all the main tutorials are up and running, I hope to include examples using data from the NORC General Social Survey, the European Social Survey, Understanding Society and other major surveys in the public domain.
The UKDS page Open access data lists some data sets specially prepared for teaching: these are derived from major surveys and are freely available without registration or authentication. This is a new initiative and is expected to grow. I will endeavour to co-ordinate future tutorials with surveys used.
The UKDS page Open access data lists some data sets specially prepared for teaching: these are derived from major surveys and are freely available without registration or authentication. This is a new initiative and is expected to grow. I will endeavour to co-ordinate future tutorials with surveys used.