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.

Best wishes,
Understanding Society User Support Team

Dear Leonard,

"the last election" may refer to the same general elections in more than one wave, so the same event in multiple waves. The reason behind this is the length of the fieldwork in UKHLS - it takes about 30 months to complete one wave (see https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage/survey-timeline), so it might happen that some people are interviewed before the GE and then are asked about this elections in later waves (see summary below), and the irregularity of the elections calendar in the recent years has further complicated the process. However, in principle there should be no respondents asked about the same elections more than once (save for a handful of fieldwork errors). You can quickly check this by crossing, for example for GE 08-Jun-17, h_vote7 by i_vote7, h_vote7 by j_vote7, i_vote7 by j_vote7. Please see the questionnaires for the details of the universe for these questions in each wave: https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage/questionnaires

That is the breakdown of GEs by UKHLS waves:

1) GE 07-May-15 - we asked about this GE in wave 7,
2) GE 08-Jun-17 - we asked about this GE in waves 8,9,10
3) GE 12-Dec-19 - we asked about this GE in waves 11,12

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Understanding Society User Support Team