Local authorities are being invited to take part in an ‘innovative new data project’ which will help them to better understand ageing-related issues in their communities.
A new project by the Centre for Ageing Better will explore new ways of analysing local data sets to support ageing-related policy-making, as well as to help advance research, monitoring and evaluation methods in the field of ageing.
An academic researcher will work with a small number of localities for up to six months to explore research and evaluation interests, and help localities to develop practical ways to use existing big and open data sets.
The research — funded by the National Centre for Research Methods — will look at issues such as how to better identify people who are at risk of experiencing isolation or loneliness and how to effectively target them with different interventions.
Matt Bauman, senior evaluation manager at the Centre for Ageing Better, said: ‘This is essentially a data science innovation project, through which we want to shed light on ways that local areas can use open-data approaches to gain greater insight into the issues and interventions that will help people to have a better quality of later life.’
