ADR Scotland

ADR Scotland is helping to make administrative datasets more readily linkable and conducting research on a suite of critical issues in Scotland, including children's lives and outcomes, lifelong health and wellbeing, health and social care, poverty and fair work, and building safer communities.

The partners

The Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR) – hosted by the University of Edinburgh but involving academic researchers from across Scotland – brings many years of experience in understanding administrative data sets and their analysis, a track-record of methodological innovation, and has a strong independent stakeholder network.

The Scottish Government brings proven experience in managing data-sharing and linkage projects, as well as access to and understanding of policymakers in government, and expertise in information governance. It is committed to taking forward a programme of work to develop a new infrastructure to support administrative data research.

You can find out more about how to access data in Scotland on the Trusted Research Environments page, by visiting Research Data Scotland, or in the SCADR Researcher Handbook.

The Strategy

ADR Scotland’s Strategy 2022 – 2026 highlights their goals to enhance the administrative data landscape in Scotland by improving data quality and access, building capacity and creating more sustainable data assets. This will collectively enable research to benefit the Scottish population and address major policy and social challenges.

Visit the ADR Scotland Strategy

Working with ADR Scotland

ADR Scotland have developed a series of short guides to help data controllers understand how they can safely and securely have their data used as part of the ADR Scotland programme of research:

1. An introduction to ADR Scotland
2. An introduction to ADR Scotland (visual)
3. The benefits of working with ADR Scotland
4. How ADR Scotland handles data safely and securely.