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 Office

Dear Lewis,
the general following rules and definitions apply to students: If the young person is an OSM and moves to a new address such as a shared student house or a Hall of Residence, the student is a split-off from the issued (parental) household and so a household will be generated for them. If they are in institutional accommodation (e.g., Halls of Residence), then they are the only person interviewed at the new address. If they are in a shared house with others and this is rented privately, then the other household members will be eligible for interview as TSMs (usually, i.e. when they are considered a household, sharing bills and meals with the OSM). So even if the student only lives there during term-time, and goes home for the holiday, they should still be treated as a split-off with their own household.

In the first wave (i.e. w1 for most samples and w6 for the iemb sample), we only sampled residential addresses. So, as part of the enumeration in that wave, we asked about anyone connected to the household but living in institutional accommodation. Students in institutional addresses were then OSMs, but marked as absent. Absent household members may nominate others in the household to provide a proxy interview on their behalf. At the next wave, if they were still in the same institutional accommodation, they were still treated as absent. However, if they moved out of that accommodation, even if it was to another institution, they were counted as a split-off from the issued household and set up as their own household.

There is no special treatment of students (present or absent) in terms of how we compute the household incomes. Students normally are not part of their parent’s benefit unit (unless they are counted as a dependent child) when they live in the parental household but all incomes in the same household are summed up to form total household income.

Does this answer your question?
Gundi

On behalf of the Understanding Society data support team.