Understanding Society User Support

Many thanks for your enquiry. The Understanding Society team is looking into it and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

Best wishes,
Stephanie Auty - Understanding Society User Support Officer

Dear Liam,

Households were assigned randomly to sample months, apart from BHPS and NI sample members. The BHPS sample members were all assigned to months in the first year, but they were not asked their employment history in UKHLS as they had already answered in BHPS. Northern Ireland households were also assigned to months in the first year.

The first six months' sample were asked these questions in Wave 1, but then the questionnaire had to be shortened as it was taking too long and so these questions were cut, and followed up with the last 18 months' sample and new entrants since then at Wave 5.

The recall period will depend more on when they started work than which wave they were asked, although there may be differences between employment history at Wave 5 and the annual events information on employment those individuals had previously given which may be influenced by recall bias.

Best wishes,
Stephanie Auty - Understanding Society User Support Officer

Hi Stephanie,

Thanks for the response.

I'm surprised by the answer as I find differences in (Wave 1) region of residence between those who eligible to answer life history in Wave 1 and those eligible to answer life history in Wave 5. Screenshot and code attached. (For comparability I limit to those in the a_indresp file with a_sampst==1, a_ivfio==1 & e_ivfio==1). There's also differences in birth year and ethnicity.

I suspect this isn't a fluke, given the description in the user guide. Was there no geographical patterning to the a_month variable?

Thanks,

Liam

Liam,

Just to add to the above:

I can confirm that the allocation of GPS PSUs to sample month was random - specifically, systematic random after sorting by the stratification variables, as in the text you quote;

It seems to me that the slight imbalance you observe is caused by the inclusion of the Ethnic Minority Boost sample in your analysis. Though you refer in your message to the General Population Sample, your syntax does not exclude the EMBS. The EMBS is not evenly distributed over months, as sampling fractions increased for some groups in Year 2. And, of course, ethnic minorities are not evenly distributed over regions - hence the imbalance.

I ran the attached. First table is GPS-only: no significant difference in the distributions. Second includes EMBS and some differences can be seen (notably London). Third table shows that GPS-only differences are even smaller amongst full wave 1 sample, so attrition may make some minor contribution to the imbalance.

Peter