Secondary analysis offers a great option for dissertation students who are looking to gain experience working with data but who have limited abilities to go out into the field or would like to study a hard-to-reach population.
This free workshop will take you through the research process of a secondary analysis project, including an overview of the methodological and ethical issues.
Join us to learn how to access and get started with quantitative and qualitative data and discuss some key points to include in your dissertation write-up.
As part of this interactive workshop, you'll be given a guided walk-through of some of our data catalogue pages, and get to explore a downloaded dataset and test your knowledge of the research cycle.
If you are a final year student looking for inspiration for your current project or simply trying to evaluate options for next year’s dissertation, this workshop will help you start thinking about how to complete a successful secondary analysis project and ensure you get valuable research experience during your degree.
Presenters: Maureen Haaker and Alle Bloom, UK Data Service.
Maureen has worked with the UK Data Service for over 12 years supporting researchers and institutions in managing, preserving, and sharing qualitative data ethically and effectively. She runs training sessions on research data management, advises on best practices in data curation and anonymisation, and has worked on special projects, including a UKRI-funded project exploring uses of synthetic data in Trusted Research Environments (TREs). She is co-editor of the IASSIST Qualitative Data Special Interest Group and a member of the DDI Working Group developing metadata standards for qualitative data.
Alle is a Research Associate in the UK Data Service Training and User Support (TUS) team, providing expert guidance to those who want to access, understand, and use social science data effectively. She holds an MSc in Social Research Methods and Statistics and has an in-depth working knowledge of many of the UK's key survey datasets and their uses. Her previous projects with the TUS team include developing training resources for lecturers and students, creating interactive learning modules on different data types, and collaborating with international data providers to improve data discovery.
This is an introductory workshop which assumes no prior experience of using archived data.
Target audience: Undergraduate and postgraduate students completing dissertations
We will be using Mentimeter to ask questions in this workshop so you may benefit from having a second device ready for this, such as a smartphone.
This event will be livestreamed on our UK Data Service YouTube channel but the chat will be disabled. By registering and attending the Zoom event you will be able to ask questions and interact.
Recordings of UK Data Service events are made available on our YouTube channel and, together with the slides, on our past events pages soon after the event has taken place.
This event is part of our UK Data Service introductory training series: Autumn 2026.
