Survey Skills

“The Survey Skills Programme is a unique training programme for career-young social researchers to gain a first-hand insight into how the data they analyse was collected, or to understand more fully the issues faced by survey organisations when trying to provide high quality data. A prestigious collaboration of academic institutes and professional research organisations, including the National Centre for Social Research, the Office for National Statistics, TNS – BMRB and IpsosMORI have joined together to offer a wide range of training opportunities covering all stages of the survey research process.

Survey Skills, funded by ESRC since 2009 as part of the Survey Resource Network, is targeted at early-career social researchers whether studying for postgraduate degrees or working in central and local Government, the public, voluntary or charity sectors. It is a low cost practical training programme comprising an introductory workshop followed by tailored placements. The cost to enter the programme is on a sliding scale between £20 and £50 depending on your research sector. In addition we do have a small resource available to help fund travelling to ensure this programme is accessible to everyone.

The workshop provides an overview of the survey process from the practitioner’s viewpoint. It considers quality in relation to the decisions made at each stage of the process, with an emphasis on how participants can recognise quality in survey data. It also provides an introduction to other resources available to social researchers. In the afternoon we showcase a national social survey and discuss related methodological issues. The workshops offer a great opportunity to network with fellow researchers from across the social research community and act as a gateway into a range of other Survey Skills and ESRC activities & resources.

Participants can then move onto up to four days of placement activity which provides hands-on experience of the process of running a survey. Placements are free of charge and have included activities such as accompanying an interviewer during a household ‘face to face’ interview, visiting the UK Data Archive, visiting a telephone unit, attending a workshop on analysing longitudinal data, and shadowing a survey team working in one of the survey organisations.”

For more information visit: http://www.surveynet.ac.uk/ssp/workshops/scheduled.asp