Methodbox:Preparing for National Service

Shoaib Sufi11/10/11

Obesity Epidemic

Fragmented understandingof public health problems such as obesity

...data, methods/models and expertisesplit across

disciplines (e.g. social vs. biomedical)

and settings (e.g. academia vs. healthcare)

Puddles of researcharound the organising principle

… but policies need the big picture

Cross disciplinary research

• ProblemLots of data + un-connected expertise

• SolutionEasier to find relevant data + find experts/expertise

• www.methodbox.org

Investigation Cycle

Data

•Our Tooling focus is (survey) Data and Analysis•Our main Community focus is Expertise via Methods/Analysis/Scripts

AnalysisModels

Results

Questions Publications, Reports or Decisions

ToolingCommunity

Examples: HSE 2006 data set

13 pages208 pages

Variable DefinitionsVariable CategoriesVariable SPSS code

Questionnaire Instructions

224 pages

Questions usedTo set variables

148 pages

Survey Description

9 pagesVariable Value

Domains 351 pages46 MB data files

Data and Variable Codebook

@1800 Variables

HSE

All HSE18 datasets in all of HSE

Just 5 surveysHSE

HSE

HSE

HSE

HSE

HSE

HSE

MethodBox serves 69 surveys !

MethodBox Features• Searching for Surveys, Datasets, Variables• Exploring Variable data summaries• Shopping metaphor for Variable selection• Creating Subsets• User Profiles• Security (Authentication/Authorisation)• Groups & Public links• Upload Scripts• Comments and notes• Linking resources• Registering PubMed Id or DOI publications• Upload your own survey style data (CSV + DDI2)

e-Lab

Socially-stimulating science, in-silico

Research Object

FindShareReuse

Data-sources

Data-preparation scripts

Research protocol Statistical analysis scripts

Slides

Working datasets

Figures/Graphics

Manuscripts

References

Analysis-logs & notes

www.methodbox.org

survey results

variable results & details

Quotes• MethodBox just seems to be a lot more intuitive… You can just put

in 'bus + scotland' or whatever it was and it will just go 'ta-da!'. It's all relevant and you can understand what's come up. You don't just get a load of codes and titles of surveys.

•I'd use MethodBox to see if there were other suitable datasets [for my PhD research]. It would be useful to see if I could get more detailed or more recent stuff as well. If anything did come up, if I thought, 'oh that looks quite interesting' I can just go off on a tangent and have a look at habitualized recycling behaviour or whatever. I can just look at specific things that maybe the main dataset that I'm using doesn't have. I can use it to explore other options.

How MethodBox fits in

UK Data Archive(UKDA)

MethodBox

Economic and Social Data Service(ESDS)

Survey Curation

Survey Mapping

diagram not to scale

Survey Navigation

Survey Commissioning & Collection

etc…

Impr

ovin

g Ac

cess

& U

se

Where we are upto

• MethodBox launched at an ESDS government event April 2010 (5.7/7 from 15 responses)

• 69 surveys available (e.g. HSE)• 259 datasets (e.g. HSE 2008)• 176 data extracts• 51 scripts• 400 unique visits in the last month (up 25%)

Sustainability

• Meet Data Provider requirements– Curation (content vs. service)– Support– Scaling (further surveys)– Licensing– Branding

• Formative evaluation usability/improvements• Knowledge transfer – building a close link with the

delivery team at UKDA• Platform for further developing ‘Amazon like features’

Vanessa Higgins

Rob Haines

Caroline Jay