Understanding Society User Support

Dear Rory,

Many thanks for your enquiry. The team is looking into it and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

Best wishes, Victoria

On behalf of the Understanding Society Data User Support Team

Dear Rory,

There is a question asked at the “household” level about whether the household is still residing at the issued address – it is a household level indicator, but if there is a split-off from the issued household, then that split-off is put into a new household with the original issued address appearing at that question, so for a split-off individual, they would have a mover flag at that question (Origadd). If we are informed of a change-of-address in between waves (where a whole household have all moved, all to the same new address), we update the sample database and so the new address is fed-forward as the “issued address” and so the move may not be picked up in the interview. However, there is a flag in the data to indicate that this is the case (ff_allmoved=1).

Once you have this information, LSOA information is available in the special licence version of the data, which should be ok for your team. You would then need to determine the LSOA before the move and the LSOA after the move (i.e. you would need to know the LSOA of the pidp in the current wave and match it to the pidp + LSOA in the previous wave).

We hope this helps?

Best wishes, Victoria.

Dear Rory,

Sorry for the delay while we have been looking into this.

We have tried to respond as far as possible to your points below – however, given all the “ifs and buts”, the only (relatively!) straightforward and reliable way to get the simple flag that you want is for it to be derived via the postcodes, or some other address-related data, for consecutive waves.

Re point 1: Agreed. There was a problem regarding addrchck, and consequently origadd, in the earlier waves with TNS/KP. This is mainly a historic problem. Some interviewers were looking at the printed address on their sample information sheets, rather than the address as recorded on their laptops, and answering addrchck based on that. These addresses could be different if, for example, fieldwork learned of a new address (as a result of a move) subsequent to the time the sample data was fed forward. This later address would be on the interviewer’s sheets, so that they would go to the appropriate location, although the laptop address was the original address. Using that printed address to inform the response to addrchck would result in the move not being recorded.

And re: “... how can we tell this is a whole household move?” I think the answer to that requires examining the household population at waves n and n+1.

Re point 2: we don’t believe so. Perhaps the earlier response could have been worded slightly differently. “… so the move may not be apparent to the interviewer”

Re point 3: we don’t believe there’s anything in the released data that enables easy identification of a split-off household, and perhaps it can only be done via examination of the household members.
There is another problem regarding split-offs, not really applicable at wave 6, but certainly thereafter, relating to web/CAWI households. For web cases all participating adults will receive an email inviting them to complete an online interview. The first person in the issued household to log on will be asked to enumerate the household. If it so happened that this person had actually moved out of the household, and was actually (part of) a split-off, they would be presented with the original household address and the question (addrchck) “Are you normally resident at this address”. The answer would presumably be “No”, in which case we have a “reverse” split-off.

Re point 4: the fieldwork procedures are essentially the same for both BHPS and Understanding Society, however we are looking into this further and will be able to provide a follow up response shortly (re a movest equivalent).

Just to clarify, you can also apply to access the postcode / grid reference data via the secure data service. There are no restrictions on discussing results / showing vetted project outcomes with collaborators from abroad. You will not be able to share data or list individual postcodes/LSOAs but neither are you allowed to do that with the LSOA data that you already have access to. Your collaborators in the USA are not permitted to access LSOA/geographically linked data at scales below LAD.

We will follow up shortly but I hope this is helpful.

Best wishes, Victoria.

Dear Rory,

Just a brief update:

We can now confirm that the BHPS individual level variable wMOVEST was computed by comparing exact postcodes for the address of residence of individuals at successive waves, rather than from information collected from participants. Producing an equivalent for Understanding Society would be possible in principle and we will explore the possibilities of doing this.

Best wishes, Victoria.

Hi Rory,

It was not always the case that the ONSPD for the closest point to each survey sweep was used to assign sample members to 2011 LSOAs. The attached file (which is available on the UKDS website https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7248) should explain the situation.

We hope this helps, best wishes, Victoria.