Course Leader: Dr Catherine Robinson, WISERD Swansea

In many areas, local industries and indeed firms have a big influence on the shape and size of communities.  This is particularly true in Wales, where primary production was dominant for so long, resulting in substantial developments around industries and individual firms.  That legacy remains, however, economic development and change means that the industrial structures are no longer as obvious as they were previously.  The purpose in this short course is to review how business data can be used by other social scientists, for example, those interested in getting the economic characteristics of an area.

The course ran over half a day. The focus was on Wales and a company accounts dataset was used.

The purpose of the course was to:

  • Discuss the sort of data that are available and what they look like
  • Discuss the uses of business data in a regional context
  • Present some examples of the data
  • Give practical assistance in accessing these data
  • Show how analysis could be carried out on the data