Becoming a safe researcher
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2025 4:52 am
Ben BrindleBen Brindle, a PhD student at the University of Brighton and one of our #DataImpactFellows, discusses what he learnt on the UK Data Service’s Safe Researcher training course recently.
The UK Data Service provides spain rcs data research access to wide array of datasets covering all manner of topics. For my PhD research, which looks at the labour market effect of immigration to the UK, I decided that it would be optimal to use some of the UK Data Service’s secure datasets, including the Secure Labour Force Survey and the Annual Respondent’s Database.
In order to gain access to these datasets I was required to attend a one-day Safe Researcher training course recently. In this post, I share some insights from the course.
Safe outputs
As you may have guessed, ‘secure’ datasets are classified as such because they contain sensitive information and a high level of detail – on health conditions or financial data, for example – and thus presents a risk of re-identification of firms, individuals etc. This means that research outputs must be checked to mitigate this risk of potential disclosure
The UK Data Service provides spain rcs data research access to wide array of datasets covering all manner of topics. For my PhD research, which looks at the labour market effect of immigration to the UK, I decided that it would be optimal to use some of the UK Data Service’s secure datasets, including the Secure Labour Force Survey and the Annual Respondent’s Database.
In order to gain access to these datasets I was required to attend a one-day Safe Researcher training course recently. In this post, I share some insights from the course.
Safe outputs
As you may have guessed, ‘secure’ datasets are classified as such because they contain sensitive information and a high level of detail – on health conditions or financial data, for example – and thus presents a risk of re-identification of firms, individuals etc. This means that research outputs must be checked to mitigate this risk of potential disclosure