Understanding Society User Support

Hi. I hope you can help me to find the respondents with no health conditions in c_hcondno1!

When I produce a table of the frequencies of c_hcondno1 I get the following:

> table(us$c_hcondno1, useNA = "ifany")
   -8    -7     1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9    10    11    12    13    14 
24668  2063   334   756    24    70    90    62    75    27    39   129    52    91   199   255 
   15    16    17 
   26   798   310

The code 96 is for 'None of these' so I would have expected to see at least some respondents with no health conditions. Where are the respondents with no health conditions? Are they in fact coded as the -8 (inapplicable)? I can't imagine there would be a way to a priori select only respondents with a health condition to ask, so is it the case that 24,668 did not have a condition?

Thanks for shedding light on this.
Phil

Hi Jakob,

Thanks for your prompt response. I'm afraid I still don't follow. For wave 3 the documentation you've cited states that:

• New entrants were asked about health conditions, AND
• Existing sample members were asked about new conditions since last interview

As I understanding it that means that all respondents were asked about health conditions as these two groups are mutually exclusive. I would therefore expect that there should be a response for each case in wave 3 (c_hcondno), even if that response was 'no conditions'.

Thank you,
Phil

Hi again Jakob,

I've looked again and have been able to derive a variable that tells me if respondents have ever had a health condition or not. This isn't precisely what I want, but it indicates that there are some respondents who have never had a condition which is reassuring! In R to construct such a variable, having merged waves a, b and c, I used:

# Health conditions ====
us$hcond <- NA

# Wave a all respondents
us$hcond[us$a_hcond1 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond2 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond3 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond4 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond5 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond6 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond7 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond8 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond9 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond10 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond11 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond12 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond13 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond14 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond15 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond16 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond17 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$a_hcond96 == 1]  <- 0

# Wave b existing sample members
us$hcond[us$hcond != 1 & us$b_hcondno1 >= 1 & us$b_hcondno1 != 96] <- 1

# Wave b new entrants not asked (!!)

# Wave c new entrants
us$hcond[us$c_hcond1 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond2 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond3 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond4 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond5 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond6 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond7 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond8 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond9 == 1]   <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond10 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond11 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond12 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond13 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond14 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond15 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond16 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$c_hcond17 == 1]  <- 1
us$hcond[us$hcond != 1 & us$c_hcond96 == 1]  <- 0

# Wave c existing respondents
us$hcond[us$hcond != 1 & us$c_hcondno1 == 96] <- 0
us$hcond[us$c_hcondno1 >= 1 & us$c_hcondno1 != 96] <- 1

us$hcond <- factor(us$hcond, levels = 0:1,
                   labels = c("No health conditions",
                              "At least one health condition"),
                   ordered = FALSE)

It's not perfect, mainly because new entrants at wave b were not asked about their existing health conditions, so these may have slipped through. But, as an indication it's hopeful and I post the code in case such a check is useful to any other readers.

1. Loads responses from wave a (0/1)
2. If respondents reported having a condition, their responses was fixed as '1' and this remained unchanged.
3. If respondents at this stage did not report having a condition, their response was loaded in from wave b (if available)
4. Repeated for wave c

The results:

table(us$hcond, useNA = "ifany")
No health conditions At least one health condition                          <NA> 
               12054                         14722                          3292