The key to understanding the study is to read the questionnaires. It is complex, but the benefit of reading the questionnaire is that it will help you understand who is eligible for a question, which questions follow and procede that question, the structure of the data and its use.
The questionnaire tells you what to expect, for example, it will tell you why there are missing cases and why some questions return multiple variables. These are explained with some examples below. Note the variable names in the questionnaire do not contain the wave prefix that is applied in the data files.
Example of a question that is not asked of everyone
All questions are not asked of everyone if they are not relevant. In this example, the question about whether the current job is permanent or temporary is only asked of those who say they have a job. These eligibility rules are detailed in the Universe field below the question.
Questionnaire routing and missing values
This video gives an overview of questionnaire routing and missing values in Understanding Society.
Example of a question in the household questionnaire (this variable is also in the BHPS)
Example of question with looping from individual questionnaire
Example of question with multiple choices resulting in multiple variables
The Economic and Social Research Council is the primary funder of the study
The Study is led by a team at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex.
