The first dataset is comprised of anonymised badger trapping records for government and lay vaccinator groups in England. This dataset only includes records from groups operating under Natural England licence. In the first dataset, each record gives details of the number of traps set by a given group at a particular location (an active badger sett or other area of badger activity) on a single trapping night.  An anonymised code has been given to each group. Additional fields include organisation type (government or lay vaccinator group), operational year (how many years the group has been active), the number of traps set on a given night and the number of badgers captured (note that this value is not the same as the number of badgers vaccinated as over the course of a two night trapping event, badgers trapped on the first night may be recaptured on the second).

The second dataset is comprised of summarised trapping data for calculation of population size (based on Lincoln Petersen estimation) from which the proportion of the population vaccinated is derived. Trapping data have been summarised for each vaccination group in a given year; a total of 35 rows are included. Fields in this dataset include the anonymised code for each vaccination group, year, the total number of badger vaccinated in that group/year combination and the fields required for calculation of the LP estimator.

In England, all badger vaccination projects are required to submit records of their activities as a condition of the Natural England licence under which they operate.  These records are held in an SQL database hosted by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA).  The first dataset is derived from 6352 records from groups engaged in badger vaccination between 2010 to 2015.  A record is defined here as a given night of badger trapping in a specific area undertaken by a vaccination group. Reported data include numbers of traps deployed, organisation type, operational year, month and number of badgers trapped.

In the second dataset, as the LP Index is known to be biased by small sample sizes, data are excluded from groups where less than seven marked badgers were caught on all second nights of trapping. We used records from the first and second nights of vaccination operations only (occasionally trapping was extended to a third or fourth night when no badgers were captured on the first two nights).