Help RDS shape our services
We work with a range of organisations and people to help shape our work, projects and data access services.
Calling all researchers and data professionals!
Are you interested in sharing your views and experience to help RDS simplify access to public sector data? We’re keen to consult a wide range of people, including early career and experienced researchers, research co-ordinators, evidence-based policy developers, data analysts, data service providers and administrators to inform and shape our work, projects and data access services.
Sign up to our engagement contact list
The form asks you to provide your contact details and tell us a bit more about your current work and expertise to help us identify opportunities for your input.
You’ll receive a confirmation email when you sign up, which will include a link to update your experience and interests or remove yourself from the contact list.
What's involved?
We use the list to bring together people with relevant interests and experience to ask for input on specific topics. Activities you might be involved in include interviews, workshops, and task-based testing of digital products and prototypes.
Thank you for your participation!
We are grateful to all those who give their time, experience, views and feedback to support our work in revolutionalising access to secure datasets. It is by working together that we can unlock the potential of public sector data for the benefit of public good.
Previous engagement activities and impact
Consultation with end-users has been pivotal to the development of our Researcher Access Service. Plans for the new service were shaped by user research comprising a series of one-to-one discovery interviews and a two-hour workshop involving analysts, researchers, programme managers and eDRIS research co-ordinators.
These sessions identified points within the application journey at which applicants most frequently need additional advice and helped guide the development of clickable prototypes for the Researcher Access Service’s initial enquiry and application forms. User research has also aided simplification and standardisation of language for the Researcher Access Service, as researchers questioned terminology and identified acronyms that are not commonly understood.
The prototypes were further improved through iterative testing with end-users and they have been instrumental in building the first live version of the service. Further testing and consultation with researchers and research co-ordinators will ensure the service meets diverse needs through incremental enhancements. The feedback we have received via interviews with our Accelerator Awards recipients is helping us to make functional improvements to the service.
For more information on how user feedback has helped shape the Researcher Access Service, check out the following blog post from Jen Campbell, our Digital Delivery Lead: "Learning from users to build the Researcher Access Service."
Another example of where our plans have and will continue to be shaped by user engagement is our synthetic data work. Our synthetic data strategy was guided by an online workshop with 20 researchers, partner and wider data providers. In particular, the workshop informed our thinking on the level of fidelity needed for common use cases.
We have also hosted in-person synthetic data workshops, which introduced attendees to using the synthpop R package to create synthetic versions of confidential, individual-level data and discussed the ways in which synthetic data could be used for their work. The positive feedback received from our attendees has helped us shape further workshops, including plans for a more in-depth workshop for previous attendees to expand on their synthetic data and synthpop knowledge.
For more information about the content of our synthetic data workshops, see this blog post from Stella Telford, one of our Data Analysts: "Intro to synthpop: behind the scenes at our synthetic data workshop."
We collate and share insights from our user engagement activities to apply across other areas of work where relevant. For example, developing information on the RDS website and informing how we streamline approaches to secure data linkage.
We maintain ongoing user engagement to inform the re-platforming of the RDS Metadata Catalogue and the development of enriched metadata within the Connect4 project.
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