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.

We aim to respond to simple queries within 48 hours and more complex issues within 7 working days. While we will aim to keep to this response times due to the current coronavirus (COVID-19) related situation it may take us longer to respond.

Best wishes,

Annette

Dear Laura

Cases in the child data file are a subset of the indall file (i.e. all children in enumerated households), and the cases in the indresp file are a subset of the indall files as well, i.e. all adults who participated in an interview. Moreover, not all households have children (and, in principle it is possible that not all households with children have adult interviews). Thus, we would expect the number of cases to drop when we merge all three data files on w_hidp keeping only the matches.

We’d also point out that it is unorthodox to link individual level data such as indall, child and indresp on the household identifier. We wondered whether you wanted to add the parents’ information to the child’s record or vice versa?

If you haven't been on our online courses we are running an Introduction to Understanding Society next week 20-21 May and again in November, sign up here https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/help/training. Our online moodle is also available here https://moodlex.essex.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=221.

You can also browse previous Q&As in the user forum as well and read the FAQs on our website https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/help/faqs.

We also have information on our new online user guide https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage/user-guides/main-survey-user-guide/. We’re always pleased to receive feedback on our user support materials. If you would like to send feedback on the new user guide, please email us at usersupport@understandingsociety.ac.uk.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes

Annette

Dear Laura

Thank you for your reply. I am referring you to my colleague Gundi who will be able to explore this further with you.

Best wishes.

Annette

Laura,

if you look at the interview outcome variable _ivfio or _hhresp_dv, you can see that there are households in _indall data file that do not have any adult interviews, and some of them are households with members that are below age 16 and will therefore also be in the _child data file. That is why you have mismatches when merging _child, _indall, _indreasp data files.

Merging individual level records on _hidp is unorthodox because _hidp does not uniquely describe the rows in either data file.
It is not 'wrong'; many routes lead to the same results just osme seem more efficient than others. In our training course we have a worked example for matching spouses' records using the spouse identifier, and on this forum we have described how to match child and parent records.

For example, when we want to merge child records with their biological mothers's record, we'd first select only children who have a biogical mother in the household (i.e. non-missing mnpid). Then rename the child pidp and other variables so they have a child prefix (e.g., ch), then rename the mnpid to pidp, then merge on pidp using the _indresp data file. This way it is very clear who the mismatches are: children (with biological mothers in the hh) whose biological mothers did not provide an interview. All variables that have the ch prefix refer to the child, all other variables refer to the biological mother.

Best,
Gundi

You are welcome!
Best,
Gundi