Understanding Society User Support

Hi Roberto,

Thanks. Super helpful. I've now appraised myself more of this, reading your reply and also the revisions set out by Understanding Society (here: https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage/user-guides/main-survey-user-guide/revisions-to-the-main-current-job-occupation-jbsocc-in-wave-13/).

I have some more questions, just to be sure I've understood this issue correctly.

For context, I've been using data on workers' SIC 2007, cross-referenced with Labour Force Survey data, to build a matrix of occupational health and safety and introduce this into Understanding Society. It does this by building a profile of workplace accidents and illnesses in comparable years of LFS and then introducing health and safety data based on workers' SIC in the corresponding wave. My data uses Waves 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 of UKHLS but I wanted to update this to Wave 14. In addition, I also now want to build a matrix of workers' job quality by SOC 2020 - I probably only need at least some good data on SOC 2020 to do this.

It seems these issues may make both these things more difficult, but I think I might still be able to find a way through it depending on the severity of the issue - especially whether prior waves' data are affected. Pursuant to this, can I check that:

1. For the most part, this isssue isn't deemed to affect pre-Wave 13 data on jbsic07, jbsoc00 and jbsoc10? My initial worry was that the high rate of change has led the UKHLS team to worry about the accuracy of prior waves' data, but in fact it more seems like the absence of dependent interviewing has created a lot of as you say "artificial" changes in occupations amongst people whose jobs actually remained the same? The analysis linked above appears to suggest as much because once you filter out spurious changes you seem to end up with a rate of job change that's similar to prior waves (~15%).

2. For Waves 13-14, can any jbsoc20 data which are not coded as missing (-9) be relied on as providing a reasonably accurate reflection of that person's current job? I.e. someone coded -9 presumably reported an occupation change which has since been identified as spurious, meaning they don't have an soc20 (and unfortunately it can't be recovered).

3. For sic 2007 in Waves 13-14, amongst those in paid work, it seems there has been a huge jump in inapplicables (-8) for Waves 13-14 - previously I found no inapplicables for those prior waves amongst this sub-group - but -9 is fairly stable. Which suggests the UKHLS team have assigned spurious SICs to -8, is that right? This prompts the same question as #3: can those who aren't coded as 8 be relied on?

4. For SIC 2007, is it possible that some of these Wave 13-14 workers' data from prior waves is recoverable? I.e. in cases where their change in jobs is spurious, I can presumably write some code which carriers forward their prior waves' SIC 2007? I would need to know which of these -9s are genuinely spurious though, which I could presumably find using workers' self-reported job change data.

Any advice on the above would be greatly appreciated!

Best wishes,

Tom