The design of Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study calls for enhanced health content relative to its precursor study, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). This paper documents the design and implementation of the collection of biomeasures by trained nurses in...

Economic theory suggests that when a primary earner within a couple loses their job, one potential response is for the secondary earner to seek additional paid work to bolster their household finances. Yet, the empirical quantitative evidence regarding any such ‘added worker effect’...

Public and academic debate has revealed concern with the extent and implications of national identification among minority groups in Western societies. In this paper we present new analysis of Understanding Society that expands the limited evidence on minority identification. Drawing on...

When performing data linkage, survey respondents need to provide their informed consent. Since not all respondents agree to this request, the linked dataset will have fewer observations than the survey dataset alone and bias may be introduced. By focusing on the role that survey design features...

Understanding Society was designed to be representative of the UK population using a stratified, clustered, equal probability sampling design. This paper uses Census 2001 data to analyse whether Wave 1 respondents are representative of the different regions of the UK in terms of the types of...

This paper presents some preliminary findings from Wave 6 of the Innovation Panel (IP6) of Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study. Understanding Society is a major panel survey in the UK. In March 2013, the sixth wave of the Innovation Panel went into the field. IP6 used a...

This paper presents some preliminary findings from Wave 5 of the Innovation Panel (IP5) of Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study. Understanding Society is a major panel survey in the UK. In February 2012, the fifth wave of the Innovation Panel went into the field. IP5 used a...

Results from IP5 suggested that a mixed mode approach affects response rates. A small qualitative follow up study was undertaken to understand the role that mode played in panel members’ decisions about whether to continue to take part and in particular the role of the web instrument in...

To date, face-to-face interviewing has been the primary mode of data collection for Understanding Society. There may be advantages in instead collecting data online where possible. Primarily, this should bring a reduction in data collection costs. There are, however, concerns that response rates...

This paper presents some preliminary findings from the Wave 4 Innovation Panel (IP4) of Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study. Understanding Society is a major new panel survey for the UK. In March 2011, the fourth wave of the Innovation Panel was fielded. This paper...