Researcher Development Initiative (RDI), 2005 - 2010

01/01/06 - 31/12/07

The main objective of this project was to enhance the teaching of quantitative research methods to undergraduate and postgraduate social science students in UK universities. The British Cohort Studies, housed at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute of Education, University of London, provided an ideal resource for secondary data analysis. A set of 10 separate teaching datasets was created, based on data from the 1958 and 1970 British Birth Cohort Studies. These are accompanied by teaching resources including full documentation for the data, suggested exercises and reading lists. The teaching datasets were piloted and supported through a series of four two-day workshops: two in London, one in Edinburgh and one in the North West. They were attended by a total of 50 academics in higher education from a broad range of disciplines. A second series of more specialist workshops included a) Introduction to Psychometrics, b) Multilevel Analysis with Latent variables using Mplus, c) Handling Missing Data in Longitudinal Surveys, d) Teaching Students Event History Analysis. In total 220 researchers and academics at all career stages attended the workshops.

The resources and teaching datasets have been made available via the CLS website
http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/text.asp?section=0001000100050017
and the Economic and Social Data Service
http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=5805

Principal Investigator: Professor Jane Elliott, Institute of Education, University of London
Co-Investigator: Professor Ian Plewis, University of Manchester

Contact Details

Professor Jane Elliott,
Institute of Education, University of London

Email: j.elliott@ioe.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7612 6395