Support #902
Life history questions in USOC (and BHPS)
100%
Description
My name is Darina Peycheva and I’m a member of the research team working on the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS), and particularly on the development of a life history questionnaire for the tenth sweep of the study (NCDS10).
This is also the reason I am approaching you. As part of the development of this study element, we are collecting relevant information for the different studies' life history questionnaires (or questions), the different techniques to collect retrospective data, as well as the methodologies used for assessing the validity of life history data.
I would be very grateful if you could help me with some information about the retrospective life history data collected in the Understanding Society (maybe guide me towards particular waves that I could check the available documentation). Perhaps when participants joined the USOC they provided some life history data? I also thought that you could have asked some retrospective questions in the BHPS Wave 11 Ageing and Retirement Module, but have not yet looked at it myself? Any information in this regard would be very helpful.
Updated by Stephanie Auty about 6 years ago
- Status changed from New to In Progress
- Assignee changed from Gundi Knies to Stephanie Auty
- % Done changed from 0 to 10
- Private changed from Yes to No
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
Updated by Alita Nandi about 6 years ago
- Status changed from In Progress to Feedback
- % Done changed from 10 to 90
Initial response from survey team:
In the first wave we identify a new entrant (and for all adult respondents in the first wave), there are two history modules; partnership history and fertility history. For members of the ethnic minority boost, or the new immigrant and ethnic minority boost, we also have a migration history.
At Wave 1, we asked an employment status history. However, the questionnaire at the first wave was too long and so this was only included for the first 6 months of the wave. The remaining sample members were asked the employment status history in Wave 5.
In every wave (after the first) we have a module called “Annual Events”, this collects information that has happened since the last interview and covers residential mobility, marital status, partnership, fertility, health conditions, education periods/qualifications, training, job changes. You can use these to build up a picture of changes across time.
So the “history” modules measures the stock (what has occurred up to that point) and then the annual events history module completes the flow (updates the stock with new events in the previous year).
Updated by Alita Nandi about 6 years ago
(this issue was raised and responded to elsewhere, the correspondence is being logged here)