Understanding Society User Support

Dear Hiba,
the questions we ask about housing tenure in Understanding Society are identical to the ones asked in the BHPS, and there is a derived variable about housing tenure in the household response data file (_tenure_dv).

We tried to keep the BHPS variable names but this was not always possible given naming conventions in Understanding Society override those in the BHPS. I would recommend that you search the online questionnaires (in PDF) intensively for key terms to identify whether information collected in the BHPS exists also in Understanding Society. Another hint is that questions that were already in the BHPS will mention "BHPS" as a Source in the questionnaire. We are also working on re-vamping the online data documentation and hope to include more cross-references to associated and derived variables to make it easier to find useful variables.

With respect to the parents' employment status, I am afraid we do not collect the specific information you need for your study (you can search the questionnaire for "mother" or "father" to see what information is collected on parents, or look at the module for new entrants to the Study). There was a lot of pressure on questionnaire time in Understanding Society, and given it is possible to construct the National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NSSEC) on the basis of the SOC 1990/2000/2010 codes alone, it's been decided to not ask for the parents employment status in Understanding Society. There may be ways to predict the employment status on the basis of SOC 2000 codes (maybe ONS has done some work on this?).

FYI: The next release of Understanding Society (in November 2015) will include the parents' NSSEC (5-digit version) when the respondent was aged 14.

Sorry to not have a more positive reply,
best wishes,
Gundi