New datasets from growing partnership with MIAC Analytics

1st April 2022 by Melinda Green

New datasets from growing partnership with MIAC Analytics

The CDRC are pleased to announce the acquisition of new datasets and a developing data partnership with MIAC Analytics.

The House Price Index and the Rental Index contain more than 25 years of monthly county-level data from January 1995 to the present. The data is available in a research-ready state, having been compiled and cleaned by MIAC Analytics. It will be of particular interest to researchers, including Masters students, who are examining questions relating, for example, to movements in the housing market, gentrification of neighbourhoods and geospatial economic indicators.

The datasets can be found in the CDRC Data Store. Both are Safeguarded data – access is restricted because of license conditions, but data are not considered ‘personally-identifiable’ or otherwise sensitive. Access is available via a remote service with registration and project approval requirements.

Professor Mark Birkin, CDRC Director, said: “CDRC is delighted to announce these latest data acquisitions arising from our long-standing collaboration with MIAC. The data represent a timely and welcome addition to the CDRC’s data store, increasing the diversity of our data assets across our core research themes of urban analytics, sustainable and ethical consumption, and healthy lifestyles. We look forward to continued growth in this partnership, supporting new forms of social research and the development of skills and capacity for both business and the academic sector.”

MIAC Analytics is an independent asset valuation service provider, specialising in property analytics, behavioural modelling, model validation and stress testing. Established in 1989, their head office is in New York with the UK & Europe office based in Twickenham, working from there in over 16 countries. They also have an office in Bangalore, India.

David Pickles, Managing Director at MIAC, said: “MIAC place great value on the relationship we already have with CDRC, having previously provided our Property Analytics for use within their Academic Research function. As we look to the future, we plan to explore more ways to work together to address data and modelling challenges such as quantifying climate change risks to the financial system. We are also keen to further our engagement with CDRC in terms of internships – a fruitful way to enhance student experience and career opportunity for students interested in coming into this market.”

First Findings From IGD Research Trials Announced

14th January 20223rd December 2021 by Melinda Green

First Findings From IGD Research Trials Announced

The research results from the first of our behaviour change trials working with the Institute of Grocery Distribution have been announced this week! Further blogs from members of the team involved will follow in the next few weeks…

IGD press release

Collaboration between IGD, food and consumer goods industry and the University of Leeds helps shift people towards healthier, more sustainable diets

As part of its ambition to make healthy and sustainable diets easy for everyone, IGD is today launching the first results from its in-store behaviour change trials, testing what strategies at point of sale could shift consumers towards making healthier, more sustainable food and drink choices.

To find out what truly drives long-term behaviour change, IGD has joined forces with leading retailers, manufacturers and researchers at the University of Leeds, to put theory into practice with millions of people through a series of real-life behaviour change trials. These first results were taken from promotions across 101 Sainsbury’s stores during a four-week-period in both January 2020 and January 2021.

With 37% of consumers saying that cost prevents them from eating a healthy, sustainable diet¹, the trials tested the hypothesis: reducing the price of fruit and vegetables to 60p in stores across the country, for four weeks, should increase portions sold and variety of products purchased² using three behaviour change levers. Sales data analysed by the team at The University of Leeds found the number of promoted fruit and vegetable portions sold increased by 78% when the price was reduced.

Susan Barratt, IGD CEO, said: “Obesity is one of the biggest health problems this country faces. Just 1% of the UK population currently meets government healthy eating guidance.³ With our diets having such a huge impact on our health and our planet, now is the time for government, the food and consumer goods industry and shoppers to take collective action. The most impactful way to make a difference is to change what we eat and drink.

“This report explores our initial findings, which already shows a positive impact through nudge tactics, pricing and product placement. This is a hugely exciting project, demonstrating the genuine opportunity our industry has to make healthy and sustainable diets easier and more accessible for everyone.”

As well as the number of promoted fruit or vegetables purchased, fruit and vegetable sales also increased beyond the items on offer. The findings show that promoted fruit and vegetable sales did decline after the promotions ended, although the rate of decline reduced year-on-year, suggesting some consumers carried their healthier eating habits forward.

Further findings from Sainsbury’s – looking at whether consumers continued to eat a greater variety of fruit and vegetables in the year after the trial – will be reported on in 2022.

IGD is leading the way and bringing industry together to collaboratively drive change by implementing the trials, with support from their research partner, the University of Leeds, through its Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA) and Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC). LIDA is capturing and measuring sales data from each intervention to assess what levers drive long-term behaviour change to adopting healthier and more sustainable food and drink choices. With learnings from these and further trials that are underway with several UK retailers, which will be shared in 2022, IGD will recommend how industry can effectively shift consumer behaviour towards healthy and sustainable diets.

Dr Michelle Morris, who leads the Nutrition and Lifestyle Analytics team at LIDA/CDRC, said: “Using anonymous sales data at scale, over an extended period of time to understand consumer behaviours and evaluate interventions, is unique and exciting. The collaborative approach to study design, independent analysis and wide dissemination strategy means that we can share learnings across the sector to make the best changes to help consumers purchase healthier and more sustainable choices.”

Use this report to understand how, by working together, the food and consumer goods industry can drive change and trial real-life solutions to inspire others. As part of this work, IGD has also developed a hub of inspiring industry insight, bringing together a wealth of resources to help deliver change in your organisation. Visit the hub to find out why healthy, sustainable diets should be central to your business strategy and see how you can get involved.

For media enquiries please contact Sarah Burns sarah.burns@igd.com / t: 07483 094027.

IGD (2021), Appetite for Change
IGD, Healthy Sustainable Diets: Driving Change, Behavioural Insights Report 2021 – An adult portion of fruit and vegetables is 80g, according to Government guidance
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/10/8/e037554

Inside the Turing-LIDA Data Study Group

4th August 2021 by Melinda Green

Inside the Turing-LIDA Data Study Group

The two-week-long Turing-LIDA Data Study Group (DSG) took place last month, with an incredible amount of data analysis and investigation undertaken in response to challenges set by six organisations (Challenge Owners).

The reports detailing each team’s findings will be published in September. In the meantime, let’s take a look inside the DSG from three different perspectives.

Challenge Owners

One of the six Challenge Owners was Asda. Tom Dart, Senior Supply Chain Manager, explained that, “Both my colleague, Matt [Burt], and I attended the University of Leeds and had a really positive experience. Matt has recently graduated so retained some links and was able to start the collaboration. Our view is that we can use the latest academic techniques to help improve and educate the data science programs that we are establishing.”

With DSGs only having taken place remotely since the beginning of the pandemic, access to data is a big challenge, although it is all managed securely through cloud-based safe data havens. “The initial data transfer agreement took some time to set up and we had some teething issues sending the data. However, we enjoyed close contact with the DSG team throughout and there were always people on hand to assist with questions. I really enjoyed the interaction with the students and hearing their fresh ideas.”

“We will definitely look to engage again with the DSG and have wider collaboration in general on data science topics.”

Network Rail were another Challenge Owner. Stephen Brooks, Senior Engineer, said: “I saw the invitation to be involved in the DSG though communications from the Chartered Institute of Civil Engineering Surveyors. Having consulted with colleagues we agreed that it was a great opportunity to offer what we thought was an ideal challenge. We have already looked at our aerial survey data in multiple different ways to see how we can exploit value from existing data holdings, yet we felt that the DSG offered a potentially different approach to extract greater insight.”

“By far the best reason to be involved was to access the innovative minds of students who may look at the challenge in a different way to some of our existing processes. We were not disappointed. The presentation from the DSG team, just ten days after starting the work, was professional, informative, and delivered very well by all participants.

“Based on this experience, I will certainly be encouraging colleagues to engage more with academic institutions to see the art of the possible from a different perspective. We will also continue to look at new ways to gain even more value from our existing data.”

Principal Investigators/Facilitators

Dr Patricia Ternes is a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds and was the Principal Investigator for one of the Challenges. “There were two reasons I decided to participate,” she said. “Firstly, the opportunity to collaborate with The Alan Turing Institute and to engage with the industry and, secondly, to gain experience as a Principal Investigator.”

“Having contact with real and current challenges was the best thing about being involved in the DSG, as well as monitoring the use of different methods to address these challenges. The biggest challenge was time. Our project had several possible avenues, but in order to reach the final objective, we needed to continuously narrow down the range of work. Choosing when to do this, and which path was a priority, was quite challenging.”

“I believe this challenge is the beginning of a transition from early- to mid-researcher career. I still have a long way to go, but the DSG certainly showed me some fundamentals for this achievement to be possible.”

While the remote nature of the DSG created new challenges, it also provided the huge benefit of enabling participants to be involved no matter where in the world they were or what their personal commitments. “As the DSG was remote, I could (just about!) manage home life with this event, even when my family and I suddenly had to self-isolate,” said Dr Rachel Forshaw, Assistant Professor of Economics at Heriot-Watt University.

“The best thing about being involved was all of the smart and interesting people I met. We had very different backgrounds, and so looked at problems from completely different angles – which is fantastic for coming up with new ideas.”

As with so many participants, the DSG has hopefully provided a springboard into future career development. “The focus of my PhD was not data science, but it’s where I hope my research is moving towards. Testing my self-taught skills in an event like this really helped me to see the areas I’m good in and those that I can improve. It’s solidified in my mind that I would like to pursue using data science techniques in my research. I also feel (after a year of no childcare due to COVID-19, and very little research output as a result) that my confidence level in my own abilities has increased.”

Joel Dyer, Mathematics PhD Student at the University of Oxford, was a Facilitator with another of the DSG teams. “My role was ‘part-servant-part-leader’ for the team of participants. That involved guiding group discussions, overseeing the team’s research, and working to ensure each member drew benefit from – and, importantly, enjoyed – the DSG. The best thing about being involved was to see the culmination of everyone’s hard work in the final presentation, and the extent to which the team collectively and successfully pulled together the different contributions into a coherent story.”

“The interface between academia and industry is somewhere that I think many interesting research questions can arise. The DSG enabled me to gain further experience of that interface.”

“My experiences of the DSG will have a significant long-term impact on my career: the collaboration skills I have learned and developed will remain relevant for the rest of my career whatever path I take, and my experiences as Facilitator will help to inform my decision-making in any future leadership position I hold. Furthermore, the DSG has been an excellent opportunity to expand my professional network, and I am excited by the new opportunities this may bring about.”

Participants

Ciaran Devlin, Postgraduate Researcher at the University of Warwick, voiced the shared experience that the combination of time limitations and “data was the biggest challenge! We had an enormous data set, including different types. This was both exciting and daunting, but it was the main reason I wanted to work on my particular project. We had two weeks to produce something useful so in some instances we needed more computational power to run models. LIDA provided access to Jade2 which helped greatly, but also added another element of complexity.”

“Taking part in the DSG was really beneficial. My team were a diverse, engaged and incredibly intelligent group of people and I learned a lot from everyone, gaining insight into different approaches to data science. Everyone contributed interesting and thought-provoking ideas and methods, some of which I will definitely take forward into my own research.”

“I would recommend the DSG to anyone interested in applications of data science and machine learning. I not only gained a lot from my own project, but also from listening to the other teams and their methods when working on different problems. This was a great event and I hope to return in future.”

And last, but by no means least, one of our very own LIDA/CDRC Data Science Interns, Rosalind Martin, was also involved! “The DSG was advertised with six interesting challenges, half of which were related to the retail sector. My current Internship project is based in the world of nutrition and government legislation, so I wanted to do the DSG in order to look at retailer issues from a slightly different perspective.”

“The biggest challenge was definitely time management! There was so much that the team wanted to do and only two weeks to do it in. Our team split off into a few different groups so we could collectively try multiple methods. We regularly came together to hear about one another’s outputs and ask questions of the methods.”

“The DSG was a fantastic opportunity to develop those time management skills, alongside maturing my team-working skills through the use of regular messaging, stand-up meetings and Kanban boards. I know that I’ve been equipped to get stuck in quickly and meet the desired outcomes when I next have a busy week at work or I start working with a new team for a project.”

For more information, or to get involved with future Data Study Groups, visit https://www.turing.ac.uk/collaborate-turing/data-study-groups

New partnership pilots trials to help change eating habits

25th April 202319th May 2021 by Kylie Norman

New partnership pilots trials to help change eating habits

What we choose to put into our shopping baskets and how we make those choices will come under the microscope in a series of pilot trials designed to encourage healthy and sustainable diets.

Data analysts from the University of Leeds have joined forces with social impact organisation, the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD), to test different ways to encourage healthy and sustainable eating.

They are working in partnership with 20 leading retailers and manufacturers, including Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s and Aldi, to trial different strategies, including signposting better choices, the positioning of products in shops and online and the use of influencers and recipe suggestions.

Some have already begun to use some of those techniques in real-life settings as part of the research designed and implemented by the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA) and the Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC).

Researchers from LIDA and CDRC will analyse the results by capturing and measuring sales data from each intervention, enabling the project group to see exactly what is going on in people’s shopping baskets and assess what truly drives long-term behaviour change.

Dr Michelle Morris, who leads the Nutrition and Lifestyle Analytics team at LIDA and is a CDRC Co-Investigator, said: “I am passionate about helping our population move towards a diet that is both healthier and more sustainable. I believe that unlocking the power of anonymous consumer data, collected by retailers and manufacturers, is a really important step towards this goal.

“Working with the IGD and its members to evaluate their healthy and sustainable diets programme is very exciting – testing strategies to change purchasing behaviour and evaluating the wider impact of these changes.”

The pilot trials have been funded by IGD and form a key part of the charity’s Social Impact ambition to make healthy and sustainable diets easy for everyone.

Hannah Pearse, Head of Nutrition at IGD, said: “We want to lead industry collaboration and build greater knowledge of what really works. Our Appetite for Change research tells us that 57% of people are open to changing their diets to be healthy and more sustainable, and they welcome help to do it. But we also know that people don’t like to be told what to do and information alone is unlikely to change behaviour.

“We believe consumers will make this transition if we make it easier for them; that’s why we are delighted to be partnering with our industry project group and our research partners at the University of Leeds, to pilot this series of interventions over the coming months. The team at LIDA are experts in capturing, storing and analysing big data and have a variety of academic specialties that will be critical for this work.”

The work being carried out by CDRC researchers at the University of Leeds is unique because it will use the secure infrastructure at LIDA to allow retailers and manufacturers to share anonymised transaction data over a sustained period of time.

It is hoped that the results of the first pilot trial will be published towards the end of this year.

Celebrating collaboration: the CDRC Masters Dissertation Scheme

13th May 2021 by crstuart

Celebrating collaboration: the CDRC Masters Dissertation Scheme

Celebrating collaboration: the CDRC Masters Dissertation Scheme. Thursday 29th April 2021, 10:30-15:00.

The CDRC Masters Dissertation Scheme, now in its tenth year, has been successfully run by the Consumer Data Research Centre for the last seven years. The event celebrated the success of the scheme, and explored the changing nature of academic-industry collaboration. Masters students who had gone through the scheme presented project case studies, and a selection of alumni spoke of the positive impact the scheme had had on their data science careers. A panel session rounded off the event with a discussion of the possibilities and ambitions for the next seven years of the Masters Dissertation Scheme. The event was attended by industry partners, MDS alumni, and the CDRC team including Paul Longley, Alex Singleton, and Jonathan Reynolds.

Speaker biographies

Programme

1030-1130: The Business of Engagement. Session recording (Longley 0:06, Dugmore 7:05, Reynolds 28:27, Squires 41:21)

Introduction & welcome: Professor Paul Longley, Director, CDRC
The evolution of academic-industry collaboration: Keith Dugmore, Demographic Decisions. Slides
CDRC: Where are they now? MDS 7 years on: Dr Jonathan Reynolds, Deputy Director (Oxford), CDRC. Slides
The business of engagement: the firm’s perspective: Martin Squires, Director of Advanced Analytics, Pets at Home. Slides

1145-1245: Alumni presentations. Session recording (Murage 2:16, Davies 25:10, Tonge & Montt 45:53)

Nombuyiselo Murage, Tamoco. Dissertation at Tamoco. MSc Geographic Data Science, University of Liverpool. Slides
Alec Davies, Pets at Home. Dissertation at Sainsbury’s. MSc Geographic Data Science, University of Liverpool, PhD Geographic Data Science. Slides
Christian Tonge, Movement Strategies. MSc Geographic Data Science, University of Liverpool, and Cristobal Montt, Movement Strategies. MSc Data Science, City, University of London. Dissertations at Movement Strategies. Slides

1400-1505: Alumni presentations (continued) and panel discussion. Session recording (Ushakova 1:48, Samson 21:29, Panel 37:26)

Alumni presentation: Dr Anastasia Ushakova, Senior Research Associate, University of Lancaster. Dissertation at British Gas.
MSc Public Policy, UCL; PhD Computational Social Science. Slides
Alumni presentation: Nick Samson, Associate Director, CBRE. Dissertation at British Gas. MSc Geographic Information Science, UCL. Slides
Panel Discussion. The next 7 years. Achievements and ambitions: Alex Singleton, Deputy Director (Liverpool), CDRC;
Samantha Hughes, Analytics Innovation Manager, Avon; Martin Squires, Director of Advanced Analytics, Pets at Home.
Thanks & conclusion: Professor Paul Longley, Director, CDRC

Nick Samson, 2014 MDS alumnus. Dissertation at British Gas. Project title: Can smart meters save consumers and British Gas money and carbon by pinpointing which consumers are most likely and best placed to install insulation in their homes?