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News : Award winners showcase exceptional use of research data

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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) provides secure access to high-quality data. This data is then used to provide valuable new insights that benefit the public. 

This year, the Integrated Data Service (IDS) partnered with the ONS to launch the ONS Research Excellence Awards 2024. 

About the awards

The awards recognise the excellent and innovative analyses carried out using secure data. They promote best practice research methodologies and data matching or linking. The awards promote greater awareness and understanding of the data made available. Showcasing the public good achieved from statistical analyses.

Meet the winners

This year’s winners were announced at a virtual ceremony introduced by Pete Benton, Deputy National Statistician & Interim Director General for Data Capability at ONS. 

The winners are: 

Impact of Analysis Award 

Winner: Dr Katie Hunter (University of Manchester) 

Project: Understanding the intersections between ethnicity, care experience and youth justice involvement

 This project uses newly linked administrative datasets from the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education to explore how children who have been in out of home care and children from racially minoritised backgrounds are disproportionately drawn into the youth justice system in England. 

Winner: Allen Joseph and Whitney Crenna-Jennings (Education Policy Institute)

Project: Early adult outcomes for suspended and excluded pupils 

 This research demonstrates that young people who are suspended during secondary school experience a range of poorer outcomes in late adolescence and early adulthood compared with their peers.

Impact of Analysis Award - Collaboration with Government Award

Winner: Christina Palmou (Office for National Statistics), Jakob Schneebacher (Competition and Markets Authority) and Thiemo Fetzer (University of Warwick & University of Bonn)

Project: How do firms cope with economic shocks in real-time? 

This work builds a new toolbox, (high-frequency linked microdata, a pre-analysis plan and flexible econometric tools) to estimate firm responses to economic shocks in near real-time.

Administrative Data Research UK Research Excellence Award 

Winner: Dr Kitty Lymperopoulou (University of Plymouth) 

Project: Ethnic inequalities in the Criminal Justice System

This research addresses knowledge gaps on wide ethnic disparities in the Criminal Justice System highlighted in recent government reports. It provides evidence on the extent and drivers of ethnic disparities, identifying effective ways of addressing them.

Secure Data Creation Award

Winner: The ECHILD team (University College London, Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health) 

Project: Education and Child Health Insights from Linked Data (ECHILD)

The ECHILD project has enabled linkage of multi-agency data to provide a more holistic understanding of children's lives and how they interact with services spanning health, education and social care.

Organisational Excellence Awards 

Winner: Damian Whittard and the DRAGoN team(University of the West of England) 

Project: Data Research, Access and Governance Network (DRAGoN) 

This is a multi-disciplinary research group that aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia, think-tanks, industry and government to help improve tools, operations and skills in relation to output checking in Trusted Research Environments.

People’s Choice Award

Winner: The Virus Watch team (University College London)

Project: Understanding community incidence, symptom profiles, and transmission of COVID-19 in relation to population movement and behaviour.

This work led to the creation of a new linked dataset in 2020, that provides evidence on which public health approaches are most effective in reducing transmission, and investigating community incidence, symptoms and transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19) in relation to population movement and behaviours.

Learn more

Congratulations to this year’s winners. 

If you would like to learn more about their work then find out more on the ONS Research Excellence Awards webpage (opens in a new tab)