ADR Scotland partnership

Learn how Research Data Scotland (RDS) is working with Administrative Data Research Scotland (ADR Scotland).

Introduction

ADR Scotland is helping to make administrative datasets more readily linkable and securely available for research on a suite of critical issues in Scotland, including children's lives and outcomes, lifelong health and wellbeing, health and social care, poverty and fair work, and building safer communities.

As part of ADR UK — funded by the Economic and Social Research Council — ADR Scotland is a partnership combining specialists in the Scottish Government and academic researchers at the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR). Along with a number of delivery partners, they are investing in data linkage infrastructure and working to transform the way researchers access public sector data. ADR Scotland projects are commissioned in line with the ADR Scotland Strategy, which uses administrative data to focus on research that brings public benefit, and which responds to policy priorities in Scotland. You can find out more about the catalogue of de-identified, linkable data on the ADR Scotland data catalogue and how accredited researchers can access the data.

Our work and impact

Research Data Scotland started work on the ADR Scotland programme as a delivery partner in 2023. Since then, we have helped to refresh the process of preparing datasets for secure storage within Scotland’s National Safe Haven by:

Ensuring data has been cleaned, prepared and is of a high quality to become an approved dataset that is added to the Scottish National Safe Haven
Hosting the metadata records for the ADR Scotland programme and promoting them to the research community
Providing additional support to the ADR Scotland programme.

Our team have delivered several datasets, which are now available for research. These include the addition of new datasets such as the EU Farm Structure Survey 2010, Achievement for Curriculum for Excellence, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Service Leavers Database – Scotland, as well as updates to existing datasets including the Pupil Census, Attendance and Absences, and Exclusions.

We have built on the good practice that was in place already, adopting and adapting existing systems and processes where appropriate and introducing approaches which have helped us to deliver at pace. This includes the development of a Reproducible Analytical Pipeline (RAP) which provides a consistent approach to data preparation with only minor, dataset-specific adaptations where required, making the process significantly faster.

Several other new and updated datasets will be made available in 2025, including:

Growing Up in Scotland
SQA Qualifications updates
Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) for Scottish Students —available in ONS IDS

Our close working relationships with the partners and delivery partners involved in ADR Scotland has made the progress on the programme possible. In June 2024 our joint work with Scottish Government was recognised with an ADR UK award for Outstanding Teamwork.