Opening up access to the historical Scottish Young People’s Survey

Prof Lindsay Paterson’s new articles, described and available here, illustrate the great value of the Scottish Young People’s Survey (SYPS) but the datasets are complex and many are difficult to access  because they were created using earlier technologies. To open up access to the surveys, CES is now working with Edinburgh Datashare to develop an accessible on-line archive of the datasets with full documentation to make them accessible to a wider range of users without specialist knowledge. This is work in progress, but some early datasets can now be accessed at https://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/handle/10283/567

Picture of Linda Croxford

SYPS is a unique series of surveys of young people when they were in their final years at school and as they moved into further and higher education and the labour market.  The survey series was designed, developed and administered by CES until 1990 and subsequently by ScotCen Social Research. The surveys cover the period from the early 1970s to 2005 focusing on young people between ages 15-19. In addition to factual questions about attainment and destinations, family background, social class, school and region, each of the surveys included questions about attitudes, aspirations and choices. They provide a rich source of data on young people’s experiences at a time of major educational, social and economic change and offer considerable potential for further analysis.

For more information contact Dr Linda Croxford (right). Email  l.croxford@ed.ac.uk