Questionnaire content
All members of the household aged 16 or over were interviewed. In addition children aged 11 – 15 completed a self-completion questionnaire – the Youth Questionnaire introduced in 1994. The questionnaire for each adult individual lasted approximately 45 minutes and there was an additional short household level questionnaire asked of one person only.
The core questionnaire covers a broad range of social science and policy interests including:
- household composition
- housing conditions
- residential mobility
- education and training
- health and the usage of health services
- labour market behaviour
- socio-economic values
- income from employment, benefits and pensions
There is also a variable component containing questions which need to be asked less frequently than annually, new questions engendered by changing policy and research issues, and questions to elicit retrospective data on panel members’ life histories before the first interview. These have included a lifetime history of marriage, cohabitation and fertility; lifetime job history; questions on wealth and assets, additional health measures, ageing, retirement and quality of life, children and parenting, neighbourhood and social networks.
A summary of the variable components carried at each wave of the survey is available.
The questionnaires for each wave of the survey are available.