Data from the first Wave of Understanding Society, the world’s largest household panel survey, is now available to researchers to use in their analysis. An interim set of data (14,000 of the planned 40,000 households) has now been deposited with the Economic and Social Data Service and can be accessed by researchers from today.
The study will give an unrivalled opportunity for the analysis of life course trajectories, and the influences that interact to impact on their health, personal relationships, finances and well being.
Understanding Society, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and run by ISER, is an ambitious and innovative household panel survey. It collects data on a wide range of topics within a household including consumption and income, demographic change, behaviours and comparative sibling outcomes. Its focus on the household allows a unique opportunity for analysis of all cohorts at one point in time and the ability to track inter-generational change. It also draws together supplementary administrative data, such as education records and neighbourhood information, to enhance the life course picture created by the survey data.
Nick Buck, who leads the survey team at ISER, said it was an important and exciting day for the study and he hoped researchers would begin to use the data in their analysis. And he added:
“The ambition that drives Understanding Society is not only to create a large and wide ranging study, but to design a survey that appeals to researchers beyond the traditional panel use disciplines of economics, sociology and social policy.”
The study pushes at the frontier of methodological innovation in survey research. There is a sub-sample called the Innovation Panel that is used to test methodological developments such as the use of visual and audio techniques. It also provides for the first time in the UK a panel survey that follows year on year a sufficient number of ethnic minority households to give a real insight into issues such as disadvantage, adaptation and inclusion.
Understanding Society both replaces and incorporates the British Household Panel Survey which started in 1991 and which is also run by the ISER team. Like BHPS, Understanding Society is conducted annually and incorporates some of the questions from BHPS, giving researchers access to a valuable long standing time series.