Microdata

The Statistics Unit at the Social Sciences Library offers advisory and mediation services to help researchers obtain microdata.

Microdata refers to data files containing individual responses from surveys, which may involve people, households, or organisations, such as businesses.

According to the INE (the Spanish National Statistics Institute), "microdata files contain the individual data of a statistic, anonymised to protect confidentiality. These are ASCII files with a field structure, where each survey record includes the values of the variables. The data is presented without aggregation, so specialised statistical software is required to process it."

As it contains individualised results, this material is highly "sensitive" and is subject to statistical confidentiality to ensure privacy and legal protection. For this reason, such data is typically only available to researchers, although it is increasingly being made available free of charge, upon signing a usage licence and/or confidentiality agreement.

The most requested microdata comes from Eurostat (the Statistical Office of the European Union). UAB is recognised by Eurostat as an authorised research institution for requesting microdata, and the representative of UAB who signs the request forms is the Director of the Library Service.

For further information, please contact the Social Sciences Library.