The datafiles released under SN6614 and listed on the Data files and their descriptions page, represent the data collected in the main survey interviews. In addition to this, data is collected from Understanding Society survey participants for specific purposes in separate surveys: Nurse health assessment and genetics data and the Covid-19 survey. These data can be linked to the main survey data using the unique cross-wave individual identifier, pidp.
Information about current and past histories on specific events such as employment, jobs, and (marital) partnerships is collected during the main survey interviews and the aim is to collate these and provide event history datafiles. Currently the partnership history file is available, the others will be made available in the future. These data can be linked to the main survey data using the unique cross-wave individual identifier, pidp.
Data linkage
Data linkage is the activity of bringing together separate data sources by identifying and matching the same entity in each and then bringing those different sources of information together into a single dataset. Understanding Society survey data can be linked to many different external data sources including Census data, area level deprivation, National Pupil database and so on. To learn more about these different datasets and how to access them see the Data linkage pages.
Interviewer characteristics
Some basic demographic information (sex, ethnicity, years of experience, age) about Understanding Society interviewers is provided by the fieldwork agency and this information can be linked to the main survey data using (scrambled) interview IDs using Study number 8579. In addition to this, Wave 1 interviewers participated in a survey which collected information on more subjective measures, attitudes and opinions. You can find this data under study number 7615.
