CLOSER Metadata Assistant

About IOE

IOE is UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. Founded in 1902, IOE has been shaping policy and helping government, organisations and individuals navigate a changing society for the last 120 years.

We embrace collaboration and excellence to create a future that is inclusive and just, and have been ranked number one for education every year since 2014 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

The Social Research Institute is one of the leading centres for social research in the UK. It is home to seven internationally renowned research units:

• Centre for Longitudinal Studies
• Centre for Time Use Research
• CLOSER
• EPPI-Centre
• Quantitative Social Science
• Social Science Research Unit
• Thomas Coram Research Unit

All of our centres are multidisciplinary, with staff drawn variously from economics, sociology, social policy, demography, psychology, anthropology and social statistics. We promote problem-solving interdisciplinary research on particular themes where we have outstanding scholarship and critical mass, e.g. gender, families, work, inequalities, migration, bio-social interactions.

About CLOSER

CLOSER, the home of longitudinal research, is the interdisciplinary partnership of leading social and biomedical longitudinal population studies, the UK Data Service and The British Library. Our mission is to increase the visibility, use and impact of longitudinal population studies, data and research to ensure that longitudinal evidence is used to address the health, social, economic and environmental challenges facing the UK, now and in the future.

CLOSER Discovery, the UK’s most detailed research tool for longitudinal data, allows researchers to search and browse questionnaires and data from 11 of the UK’s leading longitudinal population studies. The studies currently included in CLOSER Discovery are:

• Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children
• 1970 British Cohort Study
• Health and Employment After Fifty
• Hertfordshire Cohort Study
• Millennium Cohort Study
• 1958 National Child Development Study
• Next Steps
• 1946 MRC National Survey of Health and Development
• Southampton Women’s Survey
• Understanding Society
• Wirral Child Health and Development Study

The candidate will be responsible for contributing to the creation and enhancement of metadata for use in CLOSER Discovery. This will involve entering questionnaires into a specialist database – Archivist – which was designed to meet the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) metadata standard. Both the standard itself and the questionnaires involved are complex, and the post holder will need to work within detailed guidelines to ensure consistency.

The post holder will work under the guidance of the Metadata Officer and will be expected to work closely with other members of the CLOSER Data Discoverability team.

This post is part-time and available until 30th September 2024 in the first instance.

You will have knowledge of, or experience working with, questionnaires and experience working independently and remotely.

You will also be highly organised, with a conscientious and methodical approach to completing tasks.

Your application form should address all the person specification points and should clearly demonstrate how your skills and experience meet each of the criteria.

It is important that the criteria are clearly numbered and that you provide a response to each one.

• 41 Days holiday (27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days)
• Additional 5 days’ annual leave purchase scheme
• Defined benefit career average revalued earnings pension scheme (CARE)
• Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan
• Immigration loan
• Relocation scheme for certain posts
• On-Site nursery
• On-site gym
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay
• Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service
• Discounted medical insurance

As London’s Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world’s talent.

We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong. We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL’s workforce.

These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people; LGBTQI+ people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women.

Our department holds an Athena SWAN Bronze award, in recognition of our commitment to advancing gender equality.