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

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).