Variable naming convention

Understanding Society has a distinct naming convention for its datafiles to identify which wave the data is from and the source of the data.

The naming convention for variables follows the same rules as file names. Variable names have the same root name which is fixed over time, and begin with a prefix to reflect the wave the data are collected “a_” for Wave 1, and “b_” for Wave 2, etc. In this user guide we have used the wave prefix as “w_”. The names of records in the Innovation Panel have the “_ip” suffix.

We have attempted to keep the names of variables that came from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) the same. 

Variables ending in “_dv” are derived variables.

Variables ending in “_code” are text variables that have been coded, such as indicators for whether the respondent gave address information, such as an email address.

The variable labels for some variables begin with “mc”. This indicates that the variable is related to a multi-code question, where respondents can select all response options that apply.

Additional codes denote different reasons for the lack of a valid response. These values have not been specified as missing in Stata or SPSS. However, these statistical packages have commands to assign values to missing for many variables simultaneously. The codes are:

            -1        Don’t know

            -2        Refused

            -7        Proxy respondent

            -8        Not applicable to the person or because of routing

            -9        Missing by error.

The meaning of substantive codes is explained with each variable’s value labels.

Note that in Waves 5, 7 and 8 there are some variables in the w_youth_ip file with a value of 9 which is labelled as “Not Applicable”. The variables are:

Datafile	Variable
e_youth_ip	e_ycawiout, e_ycapiout
g_youth_ip	g_ypestc, g_ypestk, g_ypfythclub, g_ypdistv, g_ypfadmus, g_ypfhmwrk, g_yphmwkhlp, g_yplvsc2do, g_ypsrhlth, g_yphlwtr, g_yptrvl2sch,  g_ypsmrsk2, g_ypalcrsk2, g_ypmjrsk1, g_ypmjrsk3, g_ypersk1, g_ypamrsk1
h_youth_ip	h_ypcomp, h_yppchw, h_ypconstm, h_ypupset, h_ypsibverab, h_ypstealsib, h_ypverabsib, h_yphlf, h_ypllknbrd, h_ypacvwell, h_yplvsc2do,  h_yp2uni, h_ypfrobulli, h_ypsave, h_ypdklm, h_ypfght