Jean Marion Russell

Computer Officer/Statistician

Customer Services

Telephone : 0114 22 23098

Responsibilities

Providing a statistical consultancy for all research and administrative members of the University of Sheffield, on research design, sampling procedures, data collection and entry, analysis and the reporting of findings
To advise on and maintain an appropriate level of general provision by the University of Sheffield with respect to statistical packages and computer aided qualitative data analysis systems(CAQDAS)
To provide documentation and training on the packages above
To provide a liaison point between the software providers and the users at the University of Sheffield
To advise people on the use of CAQDAS
To provide internal statistical information to aid the decisions within CiCS.

Biography

I joined the University 15 years ago as support for statistical packages within Academic Computing Services. In those days about 50% of users were using the Unix big box machines for their analyses and requests for help were often simple "how to" questions. Today with many users having statistical packages on their own computer and there being a good user interface, the queries have changed in nature from "how to", to in-depth understanding of the users needs. Often the actual statistics is not that hard but knowing that what you suggest is correct is often much harder.

I became a member of the Royal Statistical Society in 2002 and in 2003 I received my Chartership from the Royal Statistical Society.

In 2006 I gained a MA in Social Science from the Open University having been studying for the previous four and half year in my spare time. I have just, this last year, started a PhD in Congregational Studies at the University of Birmingham. This will involve me in carrying out my own qualitative analysis and gathering a clearer picture of the research process. I am also a member and elder at St. Andrew´s URC in Sheffield.