Coverage ESRC Data Infrastructure

This research project investigates how to make a consistent assessment of the coverage of different Longitudinal Population Studies (LPS). LPS are very important data investments in the UK, with great potential to help answer a wide range of biomedical, social and economic research questions. It is of crucial importannce to understand when population subgroups are under-represented or missing in the LPS datasets. This will provide evidence whether the conclusions from research are widely generalisable, and also indicate when there is sufficient coverage of particular subgroups for analyses to be of reliable quality. Based on a range of quantitative and alternative measures for coverage, we will develop a toolkit for the consistent measurement and reporting of coverage in LPS, and illustrate its use with two case studies, the 1970 British Cohort Study and UK BioBank. We will also use the toolkit to indicate ways in which coverage can be improved. An intended outcome of the research project is to remove some of the barriers to the use of LPS to answer topical research questions in different social, economic and biomedical disciplines and to maximise the use of the existing LPS.