Support #2301: Variables for whether respondents were interviewed alone, and death of non-coresident parent - Understanding Society User Support

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Support #2301

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Variables for whether respondents were interviewed alone, and death of non-coresident parent

Added by Elias Hofmann about 1 month ago. Updated about 1 month ago.

Status:

Feedback

Priority:

Normal

Assignee:

Understanding Society User Support Team

Category:

Data documentation

Start date:

12/03/2025

% Done:

50%

Description

Dear user support,
I am currently looking for two variables ideally capturing:
- Whether respondents were interviewed alone or together with their spouses for UKHLS (similar to ivda available in some of the BHPS-waves) - so basically, who was present during the interview.
- Whether their non-coresident parent(s) died since the last wave / when their partner died.

Can you please tell me whether there are variables capturing these concepts - and where to find them?

Thank you and all the best,
Elias

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Updated by Understanding Society User Support Team about 1 month ago

Category changed from Data management to Data documentation
Status changed from New to Feedback
% Done changed from 0 to 50
Private changed from Yes to No

Hello Elias,

You may use the variable ivprsnt, which measures whether someone else was present during the interview. One caveat is that it only applies when the interview mode is face-to-face or telephone.

For your second question, there isn’t a single variable that captures this specifically, but you can combine several sources of information. For example:
• lvrel1 to lvrel10, which measure living relatives who are not living with the respondent.
• parmar, which indicates whether the respondent’s parents live together in the same household;
• To identify partners, you may use the egoalt file, which contains kin and other relationship information between household members.
• Then use variables such as dcsedfl_dv and dcsedw_dv, which capture whether the respondent is reported as deceased and in which wave this was recorded.

I also recommend using the Mainstage Variables Search tool (https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage/variables/), where you can look for additional variables using keywords such as “deceased”, “partner”, etc.

I hope this information is helpful

Best wishes,
Roberto Cavazos
Understanding Society User Support Team

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Updated by Elias Hofmann about 1 month ago

Dear Roberto,
Thank you very much for your replies and the information!
About the limitations of the ivprsnt-variable: I've seen in the questionnaire information about the interviewer observation module (https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage/questionnaire-modules/interviewerobs_w14/#interviewerobs_w14.ivprsnt) that there should be a variable denoting the presence of others for web-interviews: wivprsnt. But I could not find this variable in the variable search or in the indresp-dataset. Do you know whether it is available somewhere else?

Thank you also for the other information regarding the parental/partner death!

All the best,
Elias

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Updated by Understanding Society User Support Team about 1 month ago

Hello Elias,

The variable “wivprsnt” was included in the new Wave 15 release, and you will find it starting from Wave 14. The information has not yet been uploaded to the website, but the Study is already available through the UKDS here:
https://datacatalogue.ukdataservice.ac.uk/studies/study/6614#details

You can also see a bit more information in the questionnaire module section at the link below:
https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage/questionnaire-modules/interviewerobs

I hope this information is helpful

Best wishes,
Roberto Cavazos
Understanding Society User Support Team

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