Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), is a longitudinal survey of the members of approximately 40,000 households (at Wave 1) in the United Kingdom, i.e., the geographical area of the countries England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (NI). Households recruited at the first round of data collection are visited each year to collect information on changes to their household and individual circumstances. Interviews are typically carried out face-to- face in respondents’ homes by trained interviewers. From Wave 3 onward, a small number of respondents are interviewed over the phone and from Wave 7 onward some proportion of the sample provides their information in a web interview. Data collection for each wave takes place over a 24-month period. Note that the periods of waves overlap, and that individual respondents are interviewed around the same time each year.
Understanding Society is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and with funding from multiple government departments (the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Department for Education, the Department for Transport, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department of Health, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly Government, the Northern Ireland Executive, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Food Standards Agency). The scientific leadership team is from the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) of the University of Essex, the University of Warwick, and the London School of Economics. Professor Nick Buck was the principal investigator until June 2015. Professor Michaela Benzeval has been the principal investigator since July 2015. Fieldwork was conducted by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) with collaboration with the Central Survey Unit of the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) in Northern Ireland (Waves 1 to 5) and by TNS BMRB (now known as Kantar Public), with collaboration with Millward Brown Ulster in Northern Ireland (Waves 6 to 9).
The overall purpose of Understanding Society is to provide high quality longitudinal data about subjects such as health, work, education, income, family, and social life to help understand the long term effects of social and economic change, as well as policy interventions designed to impact upon the general well-being of the UK population. To this end, the Study collects both objective and subjective indicators and offers opportunities for research within and across multiple disciplines such as sociology and economics, geography, psychology and health sciences. The Study also provides a platform for additional data collections.
This release has data for the Understanding Society main study which collects information from the UK General Population Sample (GPS) and the Ethnic Minority Boost Sample (EMBS). From Wave 2 onward the main study also includes information collected from continuing participants of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), a household panel survey of around 8,000 households in the UK,
which has completed 18 annual waves of data collection and has been run by ISER since it began in 1991. To learn more about the BHPS and other components of Understanding Society, see Section 5.3, below. From Wave 6 onward the main study also includes an Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Boost Sample (IEMBS). From the Wave 7 data release (November 2017) onward, releases also include Understanding Society-harmonised BHPS data (henceforward: harmonised BHPS). Users interested in this element of the Study should consult the designated Understanding Society harmonised BHPS User Guide (Fumagalli, Knies et al. 2017) in addition to reading this guide, which focuses on using the main Understanding Society data.
The User Guide is structured as follows. We first present the general aspects of the Study design (Section 2), which covers sample design (Section 2.2), data collection (Section 2.3), data processing (Section 2.4), and questionnaire content (Section 2.5). Section 3 provides a description of Understanding Society data files and variables, covering derived variables (Section 3.2.6), weighting adjustments (Section 3.3), derived income variables (Section 3.4) and example code for matching information contained in different files (Section 4.7). Information on how to access the data is provided in Section 5. Within it, Section 5.3 provides additional information about further studies in the Understanding Society family such as the stand-alone BHPS, the Understanding Society Nurse Health Assessment, the Innovation Panel and the Cross-National Equivalent File.
As an introduction to the Understanding Society main study data and documentation we particularly recommend the following reading:
•The summary of the general questionnaire content (Section 2.5.3), and notes on naming conventions (Section 3.2.2),
•The sections on sample design (Section 2.2), weighting adjustments (Section 3.3) and data collection and response outcomes (Section 2.3).
•Variable level descriptions of the data can be found on the Study website (https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage/dataset- documentation). The online documentation has extensive links between questions and detailed views of variables and data files. There is also a search facility for searching questions, variables, modules, data files and index terms.
•The example Stata code for matching variables from different data files (Section 4.7).
In assembling the documentation, we have drawn upon the documentation for the BHPS, see Taylor (2010) and http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/bhps.
Understanding Society is a panel survey of households with yearly interviews. Data collection for a single wave is scheduled across 24 months. The Study began with a representative probability sample of households. There is an extended discussion of sample design in Section 2.2, and in Lynn (2009). Adult household members (age 16 or older) are interviewed and the same individuals are re-interviewed in successive years to see how things have changed. Household members aged 10-15 years are asked to complete a short self-completion youth questionnaire. Children become eligible for a full interview once they reach the age of 16. We refer to them as “Rising 16s”.
The overall Study has multiple sample components. In the main survey there is
•the General Population Sample (GPS), with its subset the General Population Comparison (GPC) sample,
•the Ethnic Minority Boost Sample (EMBS),
•the BHPS sample from Wave 2 onward, and
•the Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Boost Sample (IEMBS) from Wave 6 onward.
All samples are administered the same survey instruments and asked the same questions with some exceptions: Some sample members (see Section 4.5 for further details about the constituents of this sample) are asked an additional “Extra 5 minutes” worth of questions that are particularly relevant for ethnic minority and immigrant communities (e.g., ethnic identity and remittances). Additionally, at Wave 6, the instrument for the then new IEMB sample was similar but not identical to the questionnaire administered to the other samples (see Section 2.5.3 for further details).
The instruments for the first three components are the same except the EMBS, IEMBS and the GPC sample have an “Extra 5 minutes” of questions specifically relevant to ethnic minority communities (e.g., ethnic identity and remittances). At Wave 6, the instruments for the new IEMBS were very similar but the focus was on collecting information relevant to new entrants, immigrants and ethnic minorities.
Data from 18 waves of the BHPS have been included for the first time with the Understanding Society Wave 1-7 data release, in November 2017. The data draw on data published in 2009 (and available as UK Data Service SN5151) but include Understanding Society-harmonised variable names, cross-wave identifiers that work across the two studies and much more. Basic documentation is provided in this guide but users should also consult Fumagalli, Knies et al. (2017).
In Waves 2 and 3, Understanding Society augmented survey questions with direct health assessments and the collection of blood samples. The Health Assessment data can be accessed through the UK Data Service (UKDS), SN7251.
Documentation is provided separately, see McFall, Petersen et al. (2014).In addition, there is a separate survey, the Innovation Panel (IP), which is fielded in the year before the main survey. It tests varying measurement issues, and its instruments are somewhat different from the main survey. The IP can be accessed through the UKDS, SN 6849. Documentation is provided separately, see Al Baghal, Jaeckle et al. (2015).
The Understanding Society main survey sample consists of a new large General Population Sample (GPS) plus three other components: the Ethnic Minority Boost Sample (EMBS), the former BHPS sample, and the Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Boost Sample (IEMBS). The design of the first three components is described in more detail in an Understanding Society working paper, see Lynn (2009). The design of the IEMBS is described in Lynn, Nandi et al. (2016). The GPS is based on two separate samples of residential addresses in England, Scotland and Wales and in Northern Ireland. The England, Scotland and Wales sample is a proportionately stratified (equal probability), clustered sample of addresses selected from the Postcode Address File. Northern Ireland has an unclustered systematic random sample of addresses selected from the Land and Property Services Agency list of domestic addresses.
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