Study title

The GEODE project is concerned with the technologies behind the distribution of ‘occupational information’ within the social science research community. Occupational information refers to summary statistics and data which are associated with particular occupational positions. Such information is used by many social research projects, but is not always available in an easily accessible form. The GEODE project is an attempt to use ‘eScience’ and ‘Grid’ technologies to facilitate access to occupational information. These technologies involve a particular form of (newly emerging) computing resource – indeed, a wider intention of the project is to develop and promote these technologies as examples of ‘eSocial Science’. The project has two main aims. The first is to develop an online processor or ‘portal’, which will allow social science users to securely submit their datasets (such as survey data with occupational records), and have the data returned with appropriate occupational information (such as social class classifications) matched to the relevant cases. The second aim is to develop an online environment to act as a ‘depository’ for occupational information, for use by a wide range of national and international social science researchers.