Panel data in action at the CoRE IPD summer school in Accra

Panel data in action: practical skills for analysing panel surveys is a five-day course that introduces the fundamentals of panel data analysis. The course has been developed by SALDRU’s Nicola Branson and Emma Whitelaw as part of a project on the consequences of Ghana's expanded education policies for the country’s labour market dynamics and how these differ for men and women.

The course was one of three on offer at this year’s summer school of the Cluster of Research Excellence in Inequalities, Poverty, and Deprivation (CoRE IPD) in Accra, Ghana, in July 2025. These courses form part of the CoRE IPD’s research and capacity building agendas. The CoRE IPD is one of 21 Africa-Europe research clusters that link leading researchers from African and European universities to bolster indigenous African research capabilities and encourage equitable collaborations on contemporary societal and scientific challenges. Murray Leibbrandt, Director of ACEIR and a CoRE IPD co-lead, contributed to the courses, together with SALDRU researchers from ACEIR’s South Africa node. 

The panel data course builds on SALDRU’s legacy of using survey data (and longitudinal data in particular) to analyse inequality and labour market dynamics, as well as the unit’s strong track record of related training for graduates and researchers from Africa.

Countries around the world produce individual-level panel data to understand which people are trapped in poverty and how they differ from those moving in and out of poverty, which people successfully move into the middle classes and beyond, and how the most well-off in any society were able to get to that position and then stay there. Such work promotes an understanding of how societies function to generate poverty and unemployment and to create or perpetuate middle classes and elites. They also illustrate how effective different policies are in promoting virtuous mobilities that lead to positive social and economic impacts.

However, this work is underdeveloped in Africa, making such data and capacity building initiatives both timeous and crucial.

Image: Nicola Branson teaching at the summer school course. Credit: Emma Whitelaw.

“We’ve identified a demand for training in longitudinal data analysis from researchers across the continent”, explains Branson, who leads the project on the consequences of Ghana's expanded education policies as part of SALDRU’s Siyaphambili Post-school Research Initiative.

“We have adapted the material from a short course on panel data analysis previously offered by SALDRU and DataFirst at the University of Cape Town, focusing on the GSPS data rather than NIDS, South Africa’s nationally representative panel survey.”

Five waves of NIDS data collection, led by SALDRU and funded by the South African government, started in 2008 and extended to 2017. The GSPS, which currently entails four waves and is intended to extend for at least 15 years, is carried out and supervised by ISSER. It was principally funded and designed by the Economic Growth Center at Yale University, the Global Poverty Research Lab at Northwestern University, and ISSER. 

Alongside South Africa, Ghana was one of the first African countries to recognise the usefulness of panel data in the establishment of the GSPS in 2009. Partnering with ISSER – which hosts ACEIR’s Ghana node – was therefore critical and well-matched to the project’s three overarching objectives of data accessibility, collaborative research, and capacity building.

“Like NIDS, the GSPS team has a proud track record of making the GSPS data publicly available for researchers. But the current version of the GSPS data is not readily configured for panel data analysis. One of the team’s core undertakings entails matching individuals in the panel, which is key for tracking and explaining individual-level changes over time”, says Branson. This unlocks a high-value research agenda.

The collaboration with ISSER, particularly through Robert Osei, who is ACEIR’s Ghana node head and a co-PI on the project, will ensure that upon completion all data, documentation, coding files, and constructed weights are incorporated into the publicly available data files. Data as a public good is an ethos of SALDRU and ACEIR’s data partner, DataFirst – and one to which the ACEIR nodes also subscribe.

The panel survey data course uses applied examples from Ghana, South Africa and other African countries to give participants practical, hands-on experience in working with the GSPS and other African panel data. The summer school was an apt platform for running the course for the first time. Participants – mostly from Ghana – learnt the basics of panel data analysis and explored the benefits and challenges of using longitudinal data to answer policy-relevant research questions. The questions covered related to education, labour market outcomes, and inequality, with a focus on data quality throughout.

“Ultimately, the course has helped participants to develop a solid understanding of the potential of panel data, along with skills to carefully analyse such data to generate reliable, policy-relevant insights,” reflects Branson.

The course can be conducted on request. For more information, contact Nicola Branson.