Understanding Society User Support

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

Best wishes,
Stephanie Auty - Understanding Society User Support Officer

Hi Olly,

Whether members of couples who split are followed depends on their status as Original Sample Members (OSMs), Temporary Sample Members (TSMs) or Permanent Sample Members (PSMs). The descriptions and following rules for each status can be found in the Mainstage User Guide, available at https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage, in section 2.2.6 Sample Status and Following Rules.

There is also information on maintaining the sample at 2.3.4 Panel Membership and Panel Maintenance, and on response rates for each wave in 2.3.5 Response Outcomes.

Best wishes,
Stephanie Auty - Understanding Society User Support Officer

Olly,

Just to add to this.... outcome codes (w_ivfio and w_ivfho) for all individuals from whom we attempted to collect data are included in the file w_indsamp at each wave. This can of course be linked (via pidp) to all the data provided previously (such as marital status and partner's pidp), so it possible to analyse the tendency to non-respond between groups defined by any collected characteristics.

Of course, to identify a partnership split we would have had to successfully collect data from at least one of the partners subsequent to the split.

Peter