Understanding Society User Support

Dear UKHLS Team,
I am using the hcond variables in Wave 13 to look at whether respondents have certain health conditions. Specifically, I would like to create a variable indicating if they currently have the condition (i.e. they have been diagnosed with the condition and still have the condition at the time of interview). I have followed the guidance in the PDFs you have posted in previous posts on the forum (e.g. #2220), however I believe that the way health conditions are recorded in the data has since changed, particularly for continuing respondents. Having looked at the data I think I have worked it out generally, however could you please let me know what the prevhcondno* variables record and how it is coded in the Wave 13 data? It appears to be different from in previous waves.

In the previous PDF guides (which I think were for up until Wave 12), you stated that conditions reported in previous waves were recorded in "PREVHCONDNO1-PREVHCONDNOn (where n was the maximum number of health conditions reported in that wave) where each variable simply recorded the number of the health condition from the list". However, in the Wave 13 data, m_prevhcondno1 appears to relate to asthma, m_prevhcondno3 appears to relate to congestive heart failure etc. The variables are coded 0 and 1 (without labels), but the vast majority of respondents are coded -8 (inapplicable). My guess is that 1 = previously reported the condition, and 0 = did not previously report the condition, however I am not sure why so many respondents are coded as -8.

Thank you very much for your help!

Best wishes,
Laurence Rowley-Abel