‘Integrating’ Quantitative Data

Building on the meta-database research, the WISERD geo-portal will provide a framework to not only search and access official and WISERD-generated survey data across Wales, but also have a much clearer understanding of how these data vary in their detail across different spatial scales such as electoral divisions, travel-to-work areas, Unitary Authorities and different time periods.

The meta-data will allow researchers to identify one or more datasets which provide the necessary variables and, crucially, provide some indication as to whether data from different datasets can be pooled to create a larger dataset.  Pooling data may be beneficial in cases where data from individual surveys provide sample sizes for the location or time period of interest that are too small for statistically robust analysis.  

Even with the Welsh boosts to national government surveys, it can be difficult to analyse data below the national scale and certainly below the Unitary Authority scale without confronting statistical issues relating to small numbers of observations. Pooling data could be a potential solution to this and also encourage researchers to increase their use of the diverse and rich datasets collected for Wales.