We are a research data service dedicated to giving open access to data from South Africa and other A
We give researchers online access to survey and administrative microdata (data at unit record level) from South Africa and other African countries. We assist researchers to use the data via our online helpdesk and offer formal training courses in microdata analysis. DataFirst also trains African data managers in microdata curation. We conduct research on the quality and usability of South African
Operating as usual
25/11/2022
DataFirst, SALDRU, and the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town are offering 3 short courses in Jan/Feb 2023. These include an Introduction to Stata course, as well as courses in Complex Survey data & Panel data, both using . For more info ➡️https://bit.ly/2023-short-courses
18/08/2022
Sign up to attend our 6th National Data Quality Workshop. The hybrid event will be hosted at the University of Cape Town on 5 September. To register and for more information visit ➡https://bit.ly/dqw-mail
19/07/2022
Analytic competition: Early Childhood Development outcomes
DataDrive2030 is offering an exciting opportunity for students to analyse a rich child outcomes dataset of over 15000 South African children. The start date for the analyses is 18 August & work should be completed by 31 August 2022. For more information visit https://bit.ly/DataDrive2030
13/05/2022
Are you interested in joining the DataFirst team? We require a Data Analyst to prepare data files and metadata for datasets published on our data site. We are looking for someone with strong quantitative and analytical skills in the Social Sciences. Have a look at https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/about-us/vacancies
DataFirst - Vacancies DataFirst is a data service based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
28/04/2022
UCT mourns the passing of Emeritus Professor Francis Wilson, who was a student at UCT who went on to become an impactful staff member and a brilliant leading scholar in his field. He served selflessly in many capacities. Read more: https://bit.ly/3rYxRgu
25/04/2022
Francis Wilson was a brilliant, humble and kind man who shared his knowledge freely. Hamba Kahle, Francis. Our sincerest condolences to Lindy & the Wilson family.
I heard a short while ago that Francis Wilson has passed away. He has been a towering figure in South African social science. His work on migrant labour and on the gold mines shows what socially engaged research looks like. He founded SALDRU and (many years later) DataFirst. When I moved to UCT in 2004 I had the office next door to him in the Leslie Social Sciences Building. For many years he had the poster of "Famous dinosaurs of Africa" (from Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan's great book) on his door. He had references to that in his short introduction to South Africa "Dinosaurs, Diamonds and Democracy" which hit bookstores in time for the 2010 FIFA world cup. I didn't realise that it was also a sly joke at his own expense until he remarked to me one day that "You and I - we are the dinosaurs in this department!" I guess that now makes me the only remaining dinosaur in the School of Economics. That is very sad. The end of an era
08/04/2022
Our 5-day course on complex social survey data starts on 20 April. There is still time to sign-up - https://bit.ly/2022-complex-surveys
15/03/2022
Learn how to manipulate data as well as perform statistical data analysis and visualisations using R. Sign up for our April course at https://bit.ly/2022-R-april or visit our training page at https://datafirst.uct.ac.za/training
11/03/2022
PALMS Symposium: What have we learnt from 10 years of PALMS?
The Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series (PALMS) is a compilation of South African labour market microdata from 69 household surveys conducted between 1993 and 2019. The surveys were undertaken by Statistics South Africa (the October Household Surveys, the Labour Force Surveys and the Quarterly Labour Force Surveys), as well as SALDRU (the 1993 PSLSD).
The first publicly available version of PALMS was released through DataFirst in 2012. This online event will provide a space for a retrospective discussion about what we have learnt from 10 years of the creation, public access to and use of PALMS, but also a prospective one, thinking about what PALMS may teach us about using survey data in the future and how new ways of undertaking household surveys may impact such surveys included in future versions of PALMS.
Date and time: 24 March at 4pm
Register for the event - https://bit.ly/palms-10-years
10/03/2022
Sign up for our short course on Understanding Panel Survey Data starting at the end of March. You will learn the techniques used in the analysis of “cross sectional” panel data sets, such as the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS).
https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/training
30/09/2021
We will be running a short course in November on Multiple Imputation in Household Surveys Using Stata.
In this course, we will explore approaches for dealing with missing data focusing particularly on multiple imputation.
The course will run online from 8 to 26 November. Participants are expected to have a good grounding in multivariate analysis techniques (multiple regression, discrete choice models), handling of survey data and some experience with Stata.
For more information have a look at https://bit.ly/imputation-course
Apply online https://bit.ly/2021-imputation-course
Closing date for applications is 20 October.
01/04/2021
Learn to use R. Sign up for our Introduction to Data Analysis using R short course. 3 to 5 May 2021.
https://bit.ly/R-May2021
12/02/2021
Short courses in Survey Data Analysis for Development.
The following courses will be offered in March - Econometrics, Complex Social Survey Data and Panel Survey Data. Each course will be delivered online over a period of ten weeks with one 1.5 hour lecture and one 1.5 hour Stata practical per week. Have a look at https://datafirst.uct.ac.za/training for more information.
04/02/2021
04/02/2021
Online application is open for our Introduction to Data Analysis using Stata short course. This course will be provided online from 9 -11 March 2021. Sign up before 19 February - https://bit.ly/stata-march-2021
16/07/2020
The findings and data for the National Income Dynamics Study - Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) have been released. The NIDS-CRAM study is the largest non-medical COVID-19 research project currently underway in South Africa. The Wave 1 data of the five-wave panel survey is available for download from our Data Portal.
https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog/NIDS-CRAM
Read the overview of results and findings in the
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-07-15-overview-chapter-of-the-2020-coronavirus-rapid-mobile-survey-results-and-findings/ .tab=0
Covid-19's Impact: 2020 Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey: an overview of results and findings Maverick Citizen is today publishing paper one of the NIDS-CRAM report, its Overview and Findings. This survey is the largest, most methodologically sound population analysis of the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown and health emergency to date. Its results, summarised below, are extremely distressing...
New CSAE Working Paper ‘What is a firm census in a developing country? An answer from Ghana' by Andrew Kerr and Bruce McDougall.
Their paper shows that the coverage of firm censuses both within and across countries can differ quite dramatically and that this can impact research that uses firm census data.
Download at - https://csae.ox.ac.uk/working-papers
This paper is also available for download as a SALDRU/DataFirst working paper.
http://opensaldru.uct.ac.za/handle/11090/978
03/07/2020
SALDRU is delighted to announce the launch of a new book, Migrant Labour After Apartheid, produced by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), and edited by SALDRU’s own Emeritus Professor Francis Wilson, in partnership with SALDRU friends Leslie Bank (HSRC) and Dorrit Posel (Wits University). Research used in the book was supported by SALDRU’s Research Project on Employment, Income Distribution, and Inclusive Growth (REDI3x3), which ran from 2012 – 2018 Read more: https://www.saldru.uct.ac.za/2020/06/29/launch-of-new-book-migrant-labour-after-apartheid/
21/05/2020
Household formation and service delivery in post-apartheid South Africa: Evidence from the Agincourt sub-district 1992–2012 (2020). Household formation and service delivery in post-apartheid South Africa: Evidence from the Agincourt sub-district 1992–2012. Development Southern Africa. Ahead of Print.
Does the choice of balance-measure matter under genetic matching?
22/04/2020
The results from the COVID-9 business impact survey are available. You can request the anonymised data. This is the first time Statistics South Africa has released firm data.
Four in ten South African businesses feel that they cannot continue to operate under the COVID-19 pandemic.
A rapid response survey, conducted by Stats SA during the lockdown, asked businesses how the current crisis is affecting their operations.
Explore the results of the survey here: http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=13236
21/04/2020
Have a look at Andrew Kerr & Amy Thornton's paper on essential workers, working from home & job loss vulnerability in South Africa. The authors estimate who is more likely to be able to work and who is not by using the PALMS version of the Statistics South Africa’s quarterly labour force surveys that Andrew Kerr, Martin Wittenberg and David Lam created at DataFirst.
Read the paper: https://bit.ly/dfru_tp2041
Download the classifications of essential workers and those who can work from home as well as the Stata code to replicate their results: https://bit.ly/dfru_tp2041_code
Access PALMS:
https://datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog/434
Just published - DataFirst Technical Paper: Essential Workers, Working from Home and Job Loss Vulnerability in South Africa by Andrew Kerr and Amy Thornton.
The authors estimate who is more likely to be able to work and who is not by using the Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series (PALMS) version of the Stats SA Quarterly Labour Force Survey data from 2017, 2018 and the first two quarters of 2019. Read the paper at https://bit.ly/dfru_tp2041
16/04/2020
IZA World of Labor - The labor market in South Africa, 2000–2017 The legacy of apartheid and demand for skills have resulted in high, persistent inequality and high unemployment
13/02/2020
It is Love Data Week! We would like to highlight the Gauteng Quality of Life Survey 2009-2018 as the dataset of the week.
This survey dataset contains data on Gauteng households’ satisfaction with their housing and household services, as well as community services and amenities. There is also information on migration, health (including disability), and education and household finances and assets. Finally, the dataset has data on the perceived personal wellbeing and quality of life of respondents.
The Quality of Life Survey was conducted by the Gauteng City-Region Observatory which is a partnership between the University of Johannesburg, the University of the Witwatersrand, and the Gauteng Provincial Government, and other Gauteng municipalities. The data is downloadable for free from our open data portal at http://bit.ly/gcro-dataset
Gauteng City-Region Observatory The Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) is a partnership of the University of Johannesburg, the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG), and organised local government in Gauteng (SALGA-Gauteng). The GCRO helps to build the knowledge base that govern...
02/01/2020
UCT Research and Innovation
University of Cape Town researcher and data scientist Wiebke Toussaint has made valuable data on South Africa's electricity use available for research use.
“This data set provides fascinating insight into how South Africans, primarily in rural areas and townships, use energy and how that energy use has changed in the post-apartheid era as living standards evolved,” says Toussaint.
Full story: bit.ly/SA-electricity-use
Energy Research Centre (UCT) UCT Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment CSIR Eskom Hld SOC Ltd DataFirst
14/10/2019
UCT Research and Innovation
After 10 years of forging partnerships and delivering research excellence, the Southern Africa Labour & Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town(SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) has drawn to a close its time as implementation partner for the National Income Dynamics Study (NiDS). Murray Leibbrandt, professor of economics at UCT and director of SALDRU, provides a retrospective on this phase in South Africa’s first and only national household panel study.
Full story: bit.ly/UCT_NiDS
Stats SA Department of Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation
Faculty of Commerce, University of Cape Town
08/10/2019
There is still time to apply for our short courses on Survey Data Analysis for Development. The following courses are on offer:
Introduction to using | 15-17 January 2020
Introduction to using | 20-22 January 2020
Analysing Spatial Data using | 23-24 January 2020 Econometrics short course | 20-24 January 2020
Understanding Complex Social Survey Data | 27-31 January 2020
Understanding Panel Survey Data | 3-7 February 2020
Dealing with Missing Value Problems by means of using | 3-7 February 2020
Visit https://lnkd.in/guv9cWx for more information.
datafirst.uct.ac.za DataFirst is a data service based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
03/10/2019
The International Science Council’s Regional Office for Africa & the International Astronomical Union’s Office of Astronomy for Development are jointly hosting an interdisciplinary workshop on “Science for Development” in January 2020. Registration is free and closes on 31 October 2019. http://science4dev.astro4dev.org/
18/09/2019
Online application is open for our Summer Training Programme. Have a look at our short courses running in January-February 2020 - https://mailchi.mp/9891748f5746/2020-summer-programme
mailchi.mp Short courses are a great way to acquire new skills or to enhance/refresh your existing skills. Our summer programme will run in January and February 2020 on the Middle Campus at the University of Cape Town. All the courses have a strong practical component and teaching takes place in a computer la...
18/09/2019
Martin Wittenberg
Yesterday evening UCT's Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Internationalisation, Sue Harrison, presented a keynote address at Michigan State University on UCT's research priorities and global partnerships.
18/09/2019
Martin Wittenberg
I've spent the last two days at a data workshop at Michigan State University, as part of a team from UCT, including our Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research, Sue Harrison. Yesterday I talked about the work that DataFirst does.
12/09/2019
Online application for our 2020 summer programme is open. The following short courses are on offer:
Introduction to using | 15-17 January 2020
Introduction to using | 20-22 January 2020
Analysing Spatial Data using | 23-24 January 2020 Econometrics short course | 20-24 January 2020
Understanding Complex Social Survey Data | 27-31 January 2020
Understanding Panel Survey Data | 3-7 February 2020
Dealing with Missing Value Problems by means of using | 3-7 February 2020
Visit https://lnkd.in/guv9cWx for more information.
datafirst.uct.ac.za DataFirst is a data service based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
11/09/2019
New version of the Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series!
The Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series (PALMS) version 3.3 is a stacked cross sectional dataset created by DataFirst at the University of Cape Town. The data consists of microdata from 69 household surveys conducted by Statistics South Africa between 1994 and 2019, as well as the 1993 Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development conducted by SALDRU at UCT. The Statistics South Africa surveys include the October Household Surveys from 1994 to 1999, the bi-annual Labour Force Surveys from 2000-2007, including the smaller LFS pilot survey from February 2000, and the Quarterly Labour Force Surveys from 2008-2019. The data is at individual level, but household level variables may be created using the household id variable uqnr. No attempt has been made to link individuals or households across waves, although there was a panel element to the earlier rounds of the LFS, as well as the QLFS.
You can access the dataset on our open data portal -
https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog/434
04/09/2019
Well done, Team!
My students Winnie Sambu and Amy Thornton presented. So did I and my colleague Andrew Kerr.
04/09/2019
Martin Wittenberg
Takwanisa Machemedze and Andrew Kerr at the DataFirst table at the Economic Society conference
04/09/2019
Martin Wittenberg
Jacqueline Mosomi talking about gender gaps in wages and employment at the Economic Society conference
04/09/2019
Takwanisa Machemedze at our stand at the Economic Society of South Africa conference.
DataFirst has a stand at the Economic Society of South Africa conference. Here is Takwanisa Machemedze explaining what we do to Leigh Neethling
04/09/2019
DataFirst has a stand at the Economic Society of South Africa conference. Takwanisa Machemedze, one of our researchers, will be around to answer any questions about our open data portal, research that we are involved in, as well as our training courses. Pop around to find out more about us.
27/08/2019
https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/features/2019-08-22-inequality-sas-vanishing-middle-class/
An article in the Financial Mail dealing with some of my work, and that of colleagues, on inequality
DataFirst is a research data service dedicated to giving open access to data from South Africa and other African countries. We promote high-quality research by providing the essential Open Research Data infrastructure for discovering and accessing data and by developing skills among prospective users, particularly in South Africa. We undertake research on the quality and usability of national data and encourage data usage and data sharing.
| Monday | 09:00 - 16:30 |
| Tuesday | 09:00 - 16:30 |
| Wednesday | 09:00 - 16:30 |
| Thursday | 09:00 - 16:30 |
| Friday | 09:00 - 16:30 |
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