Paper presented at the ESRC Research Methods Programme Seminar 'Combining data: using advanced technology to enhance social science resources ' , Dec 18th 2002, University of Manchester.

1. © University of Essex18-Dec-02
Seriously Mixed Methods & Digital UK Data
A GRIDy Challenge?
Dr Ben Anderson
www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/

2. © University of Essex
chimera
Why bother?
• Data Triangulation:
• different data on the same individuals
• different instruments and methods
• Patterns (what?) and explanations (why?)
• Grounded theorising
• Time and geography
• behaviour over time
• behaviour in specific locations

3. © University of Essex
chimera
An example:
Interviews
Shadowing & Observation
Digital Ethnography
Phone call records
PC/Internet usage logs
Questionnaires
Time-use diaries
Rich contextual
picture
Quantitative
Qualitative

4. © University of Essex
chimera
Wave 1 Wave 2 Wave 3
GB ‘pilot’ Longitudinal Panel
• GB panel (2500 individuals)
1998/9 20012000 2002
• Analysis ongoing
• BT research contract with ISER (Essex)
• 3 waves of surveys and time-use diaries
• ownership, usage, social networks, employment, education,
demographics
• Continuous call records, Internet usage logs and Qualitative
interviews from/with the same households/individuals

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chimera
Visualisation: Mixed Method Data
Male (left) and female (right) mean telephone call duration for
individuals over 55 and living alone in March 1999 using continuous
call records
3D Helix representations of integrated behavioural and survey data

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chimera
Data Mining: ISP Calling
• Base = 323 Households, records for 9 weeks starting January 1st 1999

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chimera
(Social) Telephony Networks
• Source = Jan - April 1999 call records for 343 households from the HoL Panel.
• Who’s calling
whom?
• Which groups of
households call
each other
• Why?

8. © University of Essex
chimera
Combining surveys and ethnography
• Qualitative finding:
telephone calls get
shifted in households
with children
• Calls get made
between lunch and
school home time and
not at all in the early
evening
• Does the time-use data
support this?
• Sort of.
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Time of Day
Meanminutesperdayspentmakingcalls
Women aged 20-55 living in households w ith no children under 16 (n = 125)
Women aged 20-55 living in households w ith at least one c hild under 16 (n = 104)
Mean minutes per day spent making calls at specific times of the day by
women who live in households with or without children aged under 16,
derived from HoL Wave 1 time-use diary data.

9. © University of Essex
chimera
Longitudinal mixed method data: a
multimedia database problem?
Sample surveys (t=1 to n) PSTN call records
Qualitative interviews
(transcripts, photos,
objects, video clips,
social network
diagrams)
Internet application usage
logs (email, web, e-
commerce, IM, a/v
streaming)
Household @ t=1
Individual
Household @ t=2
Household @ t=?
?
?
N = 2,500

10. © University of Essex
chimera
Scaling it up: Digital UK Data
Census data
PSTN call records
Qualitative data (ESRC,
commercial, private)
Internet application usage
logs (email, web, e-
commerce, IM, a/v
streaming)
Mobile usage (voice and
data) records, with
location data
ONS/ESRC/EU
Sample and
cohort
surveys
Commercial
datasets
Research/policy questions
Real time applications
N = 58,789,194
Medical, govt, tax records

11. © University of Essex
chimera
A GRIDy Challenge?
• Federated social and behavioural
databases
• extremely heterogeneous
• multiple owners and access rules (public,
private, govt)
• potentially huge datasets
• Realtime aggregation and retrieval
• context sensitive
• Real time and ‘offline’ analysis

12. © University of Essex
chimera
Questions?
benander@essex.ac.uk
www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/