Consumer Data Research Centre
The Consumer Data Research Centre was established to lead academic engagement between industry and the social sciences, and utilise consumer data for academic research purposes.
We provide unique insight into a diverse range of societal and economic challenges, in collaboration with a wide range of consumer data providers.
The Consumer Data Research Centre is working with industry and public sector partners to facilitate the use of consumer data in research to provide unique insight into lifestyle, activity, attitudes and behaviours and to help policy makers better understand the societal and economic challenges facing the country.
In the last year we have:
- Added new data products from Which?, Mastercard, and Compass IOT to our data store, which now holds over 100 data products available for academic research use
- Launched an updated version of the Priority Places for Food Index to support policy makers to identify neighbourhoods that are most vulnerable to increases in the cost of living and which are likely to be food insecure.
- Provided data and analysis to support BBC and ITV investigations into food insecurity hotspots in the UK.
- Provided evidence for Parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA) ‘Fairness in the food supply chain’ inquiry and to the Welsh Affairs Committee’s inquiry on ‘Access to High Street Banking in Wales.’
- Delivered 13 introductory and intermediate short courses in R, Python, GIS and Tableau for academic and non-academic researchers. This year we provided 40 free spaces for individuals with protected characteristics via the CDRC Open Data Science Bursary.