Title: UCAS Thesaurus –
Management and use
Date: 29 April 2016
Version: 1.0
Status: Live
Security Marking: Public
Contents
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Overview
Ownership and Management
Use
Process of assigning terms to courses
Examples of appropriate classification
Overview
The Thesaurus is a course classification system wholly owned by UCAS, and used by
UCAS and some external partners. It has been developed over 20 years, and forms
part of the functionality within the new search tool on ucas.com. The Thesaurus
consists of a number of hierarchical levels, with subject areas grouped across those
levels. Alongside the parent and child relationships between terms, there are also a
small number of sibling relationships where terms within a single subject area, or
across more than one subject area are very closely related.
Ownership and management
Control of the Thesaurus lies in-house with the data teams (the Data Collection Team
with oversight from the Data Quality and Audit team) in the Technology and
Operations business unit. This control covers:
o Thesaurus terms
o Thesaurus structure
o Thesaurus siblings
o Thesaurus descriptions
o Thesaurus mappings for products and extracts
The Thesaurus currently contains over 2,500 terms across six levels. The data teams
manage, and act as stewards for, all course information held by UCAS. If new
subjects emerge in the courses, or words and phrases change their meaning over
time, these are reflected in the Thesaurus. As the Thesaurus is an independent
classification system, it is not possible to map it to other commonly-used
classification systems, such as JACS.
For queries related to course information and specific classification of courses, the
Data Collection Team can be contacted at [email protected]. Please note,
classification assigned to courses will only be amended within the process of
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assigning terms outlined below, to maintain consistency across all data extracts and
publications.
Use
The structure of the Thesaurus is intrinsic to its use. It is important from the point of
view of learners searching for courses on ucas.com and partner websites. If a course
has the right classification it will appear under searches for that subject. If a course is
incorrectly classified it will come up in the wrong searches or be linked to irrelevant
subject content on the website or publication, which could mislead a learner.
It is also important for other publications for partners such as the British Council, and
for reporting purposes. If data extract information is required based on subject or
subject areas (e.g. art and design, education, and business master’s courses), this is
obtained using relevant thesaurus terms. If courses have not been classified
correctly, they may be missed out of publications or data extracts.
Process of assigning terms to courses
The Thesaurus contains the terms available for classifying courses. These terms are
organised in a tree structure with parent terms and up to five levels of related child
terms (six levels in all). For example:
Parent (First-level term):
Child (second-level term):
Child (third-level term):
Parent (First-level term):
Child (second-level term):
Child (second-level term):
Biology
Genetics
Applied genetics
Molecular genetics
Human biology
Anatomy
Courses are given an initial classification when first entered on the database by the
user creating the course record. This is then reviewed by the Data Collection Team as
content is added or updated, or if the subject title of the course is updated. The
more information supplied about the course, the more accurate the classification
can be.
Courses should be assigned the relevant precise term wherever possible. If there is
no exact term for a course, the Data Collection Team use the Thesaurus to find the
most appropriate term – starting with the main parent term under which a learner
would expect the course to appear, then working down through the child-level
terms.
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Courses can be classified with any number of relevant terms, as required by the
subject content of the course. However, classification is not made on a module-bymodule basis. Over-classification is discouraged; multiple terms from the same
subject level should not be used together unless specifically necessary. The Data
Collection Team will classify at the most granular level possible; a first level term
should not be used if a relevant third level term is available.
Taught postgraduate courses may only need one Thesaurus term. In some cases,
there will be an obvious term that matches the course title. In other cases, two or
more terms will be needed to describe the course. For example:
Course title: Environmental Policy and Management
Thesaurus terms: Environmental management, Policy studies
Research courses usually include a number of different areas in which students can
pursue research. Each of the research areas/interests should be considered as a
separate ‘course’ for classification purposes, and should be given a Thesaurus term.
This enables potential learners to search for research opportunities in their
particular area of interest. For example, a PhD in history might list research interests
in medieval history, Renaissance history, modern history, American history and
historiography. This course would need a Thesaurus term for each of these subjects.
Examples of appropriate classification
Some courses may require extra classification to ensure learners can find them. An
example of this is courses in modern languages; the Data Collection Team use the
Thesaurus terms for all the languages taught on the course, as well as the term
‘Modern languages’.
While the course title is often the only information available to assist in classifying a
course, the Data Collection Team look at the subject area as a whole before
assigning relevant terms. For example, a course called ‘International Accounting’
should not be classified ‘Accounting’ and ‘International studies’. ‘International
studies’ is found under ‘Social sciences’ in the Thesaurus, so it is not appropriate to
this course. A more suitable classification in this case would be ‘Accounting’ and
‘International business studies’.
This is of greater importance when classifying courses that contain words or phrases
that have multiple associations in common language. For example, a course in
‘production’ could be associated with either manufacturing terms or media terms.
Within the Thesaurus, ‘Production’ sits within the engineering subject area; for other
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production courses there are terms within ‘Media studies’ and ‘Arts and crafts’
subject areas.
Because of the hierarchical structure, some terms in the Thesaurus are too broad
and are not used to classify courses. Using these terms for classification would
return such a large number of courses in search results it would make the search
function meaningless. There is always a more granular term that should be used.
The following are not used for classification:
o Agriculture, horticulture and veterinary studies
o Area studies, languages and literature
o Arts and crafts
o Business and management
o Education
o Engineering and production
o Environment
o Family and personal care services
o Food, leisure and hospitality
o Medicine and health studies
The remaining first-level terms are acceptable to be used for classification:
o Construction
o Humanities
o Librarianship
o Media studies
o Science
o Teaching
o Transport
‘Science’ is used sparingly, for courses that are general in content only. ‘Teaching’
relates to courses that train individuals to teach. The study of teaching as an
academic discipline is classified using the ‘Education’ subject area terms.
Other specific use cases:
The term ‘Language’ refers to the scientific study of language (its grammar, syntax,
etc.), and comes under the ‘Linguistics’ subject area. It should not, therefore, be
used for courses that involve the study of a foreign language.
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‘Strategic studies’ falls under ‘Politics’ and signifies the study of war and/or peace
tactics, so should not be used for courses in ‘Strategic management’ or ‘Business
strategy’.
‘Equal opportunities’ is a term under ‘Human resource management’, and relates to
employment/personnel issues. ‘Race relations’ should be used for social sciencetype courses concerned with racial equality.
‘Research methods’, ‘Scientific research methods’ and ‘Social research’ should only
be used for courses teaching general research skills. Specific courses, such as
Psychological Research Methods, Built Environment Research, should be classified as
the main subject (‘Psychology’, ‘Built environment’), and not with the general
‘Research methods’ term.
Notice the difference between ‘French’ and ‘French studies’; ‘German’ and ‘German
studies’, etc. The first term is used for courses in the language concerned, the
second for area studies courses covering the culture of the country concerned. At
postgraduate level, courses will often require both the language and the ‘Area
studies’ Thesaurus terms.
‘Development’ refers to building and planning, rather than child, language or social
development.
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