Understanding Society User Support

a) Using xwhist on xwavedat - although it is not entirely clear what a change in postcode actually means. Is this a move over any distance or could the person have moved within their postcode area without this being recorded?

Moves within the same unit postcode are not detected in this way.

b) By comparing LSOA/datazones at t-1 with t (more on this below)

Could be used if only moves between different LSOAs are of interest.

c) Using the origadd and reasons for moving variables derived from the questionnaires-although the origadd indicator seems to be derived at the household not individual level. Am I correct in assuming that this means that people are only routed towards the reasons for moving questions in the annual event module if their whole household had moved since t-1? This is quite different from BHPS and it seems odd given that households are not consistent units through time.

The universe for e.g. movy1 (reason for move) can be found in the questionnaire specification;

If (ff_ivlolw = 1 | Ff_everint = 1) // interviewed at prior wave or has been interviewed previously
And If ((HHGrid.OrigAdd = 1 & (HHGrid.NewPer = 2 | AdCts = 2)) | (HHGrid.OrigAdd = 2 & AdCts <> 1)) // HH interviewed at current address previously and
respondent is a rejoiner or respondent has not lived at current address continuously since previous interview, or HH interviewed at a different address previously and respondent has not lived at the current
address continuously since previous interview

So, not solely dependent on origadd.

My current approach is to try and do all of these and somehow triangulate them into a new variable. Does this seem appropriate or is there something really obvious I am missing? In any case it would be very useful to have a simple 'residential move since last wave' dummy in UKHLS (like movest in BHPS). Are there any plans to produce such a variable?

Thanks for the suggestion. We will take it into account when we next revise the added-value content. Please note that we have not (yet) tried to resolve any potential conflicts between approach a and c to date.

2. I have some concerns about some of the LSOA/datazone information in SN7248. The study documentation tells us that at wave 2 37500 households had postcodes matched to their records and this was 35128 at wave 3. However in the SN7248 there are lots of hidp records with blank micro-geographic codes (5315 at wave 1; 3719 at wave 2; 3320 at wave 3). This isn't mentioned in the study documentation. Is there any reason for this discrepancy with the number of households with valid postcodes?

The Scottish 2011 Census identifiers were not available before the deadline for this deposit. This is documented in the source, ONSPD Nov 2013, but unfortunately not in our documentation.

Let us know if you have got any further questions.

Jakob

On the xwhist variable there are quite a lot of cases where a postcode is present at wave 1, then not at wave 2 but the person is back at wave 3. Examples could be 'FMS' or 'FON'. If a person has a value of 'O' or 'M' in wave 2, then am I correct to assume that any 'S' or 'N' values at wave 3 refer to the individual's mobility behaviour between wave 1 and wave 3? So basically if an 'S' or 'N' follows a non-contact, then all we know is that that individual moved at some point between the first and last observation

That is correct.

If we were interested in mobility between pairs of waves then we couldn't make use of these cases as it is not possible to know when the move occurred (unless this is recorded on plnowm and plnowy4).

As mentioned above, we have yet to try and tie admin and response data together and resolve any potential conflicts between these different data sources. I agree that some assumptions might be needed.
Should also mention that in terms of data access, it is possible to apply for secure data service access to postcode grid references.

Jakob