e-Infrastructure for Social Science data:

Obesity e-Lab & MethodBoxIan Dunlop

15/03/11 ian.dunlop@manchester.ac.uk

Terminology

• Obesity e-Lab is the ESRC project

www.obesityelab.org.uk

• MethodBox is the product

www.methodbox.org

Obesity e-Lab Aims

• Enable socially networked research between the social sciences, health sciences and public health

• Add value to archived datasets by developing technologies to help on-line users

• Seed an “open source” approach to social research publication

Project Objectives

• Engagement (‘More with less’)– Research communities (Obesity/Cancer, Education) – Public health researchers (Academic, NHS, LA)– Key data providers (ESDS/UKDA)

• Reduce barriers– For survey datasets– Formation of research communities (cross-disciplinary)

• Develop tools– On line digital laboratory an ‘e-Lab’ known as MethodBox

• Data * Methods * People

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

Where we are upto

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

• 80 registered users, 45 scripts and 58 data extracts.

• 21 public health researchers trained using a combination of social science and health science approaches

• Methodological approach adopted by North West e-Health (www.nweh.org.uk) project (which is 20x bigger than us)

Context, Features, Architecture

• Context– Investigation Cycle– Survey (Meta) Data overload– How MethodBox fits it

• MethodBox– Architecture– Screenshots– E-Infrastructure

• Future Directions

Investigation Cycle

Data

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

AnalysisModels

Results

QuestionsQuestions Publications, Reports or Decisions

ToolingCommunity

Examples: HSE 2006

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

X 17 All HSE

@1800 Variables

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

Ruby delayed jobRuby delayed job

Ruby on RailsRuby on Rails

Data providers

Data providers

User Dataset import

User Dataset import

File system

File system

mySQLmySQLMetadata

importMetadata

import

User data and

metadata import

Request ‘catalog’

information

Provide metadata

Search

Results

Variable info with Stats

Profiles

People & Expertise

Methods

Method Information

Data Extracts

Making the data extractvisible…

Linking a data extractwith a script forderiving variables…

Sharing and visibility

MethodBox as e-Infrastructure• Data Providers

– Existing infrastructure (NESSTAR/NESSTAR Server)– Cautious

• adopt only ‘proven’ technologies• Willing ‘try’ things if risk/work is low

• MethodBox offers– Social Layer, sharing, data tooling– Integration

• Existing data provider infrastructure – NESSTAR Server • Security infrastructure (Shibboleth)• Automated running of scripts for new datasets (using institutional/national

compute)• Deployment

– ESDS/CCSR first instance (exit strategy)• Obesity e-Lab project ends 31/03/12

Future work• MethodBox as e-Infrastructure

– Target deployment as part of ESDS/CCSR– Integration with NESSTAR system

• Focus on communities– Greater Manchester Public Health Inequalities

Research Network– University of Manchester School of Education– North West e-Health and Arthritis Research UK

• Ability to ‘run’ methods– Part funded by Obesity e-lab work in JISC ‘National e-

Infrastructure for Social Simulation’ project

video at http://bit.ly/methodbox11