My areas of research interest include homelessness, housing, administrative data collections, and data-linkage. I am a Co-investigator with Administrative Data Research (ADR) Wales, leading on a programme of data-linkage based research related to homelessness and housing. I am also data linkage lead and Co-Investigator for the PHaCT study—a pilot Randomised Control Trial of an intervention with prison leavers at risk of experiencing homelessness.
I have extensive experience of working with third sector and government bodies, largely in improving data collections and research into the topic of homelessness. My current research activities utilise routinely collected (‘administrative’) data, such as healthcare records and information collected by Local Authority housing services in Wales. However, I also have extensive experience of using other quantitative data sources, including surveys to conduct cross sectional and longitudinal analysis. Some of the more interesting quantitative methods I have experience in using include sequence analysis, network analysis (including visualisation using specialised software such as Gephi), text analysis of unstructured data, cluster analysis, Latent Class Analysis, and longitudinal panel regression analysis.
My qualifications include an BSc in Economics & Sociology (Cardiff University, 2006), an MSc in Social Science Research Methods (Cardiff University, 2012) and a PhD (Cardiff University, 2016).
Ian Thomas Bio
