Understanding Society covers a wide range of topics: education, employment, family and households, income, Health and wellbeing, finance, housing, expenditure and deprivation, politics and social attitudes.
The survey also collects demographic information (age, sex, ethnic group, country of birth), family background information (e.g., parents’ occupations, parents’ grand parents’ countries of birth), attitudes and values (ethnic identity, political beliefs and support, gender attitudes etc).
A core set of questions are asked every year, while some are asked every few years as these are not expected to change every year. In addition to these there are questions that are asked only if the respondent has experienced a particular event such as child birth, or reached the age of 45, and so on.
The long-term content plan summarises the pattern that has been collected.
Health and Biomarkers
Understanding Society asks a wide range of questions on health, wellbeing and biomarkers. As part of the Main Study, from Wave 1 onwards participants were asked a number of questions about their general health (physical and mental), healthy and unhealthy behaviours, hospitalisations and so on. In Wave 2 and Wave 3 adult participants received a follow-up health assessment visit from a registered nurse. A range of bio-medical measures were collected from around 20,000 adults, which included blood pressure, weight, height, waist measurement, body fat, grip strength and lung function. Blood samples were also taken at these visits and biomarker data is available including cholesterol and triglycerides, Glycated haemoglobin HbA1c, and so on. Further details on using this health data and genetics and epigenetics data are on the Understanding Society website.
Ethnicity and immigration
The Ethnic Minority Boost Sample (EMBS) and Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Boost Sample (IEMBS) were introduced at Waves 1 and 6 to allow research on different ethnic groups and immigrants. While all participants answer the same basic questionnaire, a subsample comprising mainly ethnic minorities and immigrants living in Great Britain are asked an additional five minutes of questions along with a comparison sample of 500 households from the general population. These are questions of particular relevance to research on ethnicity and migration. Note, the basic questionnaire also includes ethnicity-related questions about issues such as ethnic group, national identity, own, parents’ and grandparents’ countries of birth and childhood language.
Visit the long term content plan for details and explore the Ethnicity and immigration research User Guide.
