Publication type
Understanding Society Working Paper Series
Series Number
2026-13
Series
Understanding Society Working Paper Series
Authors
Publication date
October 5, 2026
Abstract:
Understanding Society aims to provide users with the highest quality data for research and policy purposes, and reporting on different aspects of quality. This report investigates the quality of data released from Waves 1-15 and will be updated annually. It complements the annual attrition report and is part of our broader Quality Profile. The analysis shows that from Waves 1 to 15, the level of household completeness (i.e. all relevant participants complete the their surveys) is relatively high, but has decreased over time. Item missingness, again across the 15 waves, is very low for adult and youth questionnaires, except for information on self-employment, but item missingness is much higher in the household questionnaire. In this report we focused on the stability of measures over time, which in general was good, or changes reflected societal trends. There are two breaks in trends over time for different kinds of variables. Firstly, during the COIVD-19 pandemic, which affected both the study methods and society, and hence disrupted the stability of some variables. Secondly, when a boost sample was added at Wave 14, and a break in trends can be seen which can be explained by the study adding recent migrants.
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