Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) on April 17, 2023, begun a five-day capacity-building exercise on data analysis for young researchers as part of the capacity development plan for the financial year 2022/2023. The training was be based on the existing knowledge and skills gap among young researchers to use intermediate and advanced MS Excel for data management, analysis and visualization. In addition, there is a growing influence of using Big Data for research, and the Centre intends to build the necessary capacity to use such data in future studies.
The main purpose of the training was to enhance and broaden the researchers’ skill set for data analysis of quantitative data and Big Data. Specifically, researchers will be equipped with knowledge and skills in the following areas:
- Understanding of Big Data
- Big data management and analysis
- Data analysis and visualization using MS Advanced Excel
- Data analysis of large household surveys using STATA
In day one’s session, the facilitators from United Nations Pulse Labs trained and engaged the researchers on how data can be visualized, analyzed and interpreted using the different software besides the known Stata and excel data sets. Dr. Ernest Mwebaze engaged researchers with new data analytics software “Data Resources and Google Colab“.
Dr. Martin Mubangizi took the session of the Big Data Landscape through explaining terminologies and core concepts. He also trained the researchers in Big data modelling (problem Set up and use cases from our context.