Wave 14 focussed on collecting an expansive set of data on families (including new entrants from the Wave 14 Boost sample) as well as new questions on long Covid. A summary of all changes to questions since Wave 13 is detailed in the Wave 14 Module summary table. The table lists the modules in the order they were asked within the Wave 14 questionnaire and includes when the modules were last asked.
The long-term content plan lists the Waves in which all the modules were last asked and when they will be asked again.
New modules for Wave 14 include:
- National Citizen Service (NCS)
- work illness
- generalised trust
- non-residential identifier
- non-resident children
For Wave 14 the Covid19 module focussed on questions about long covid to identify areas where the pandemic has had long term impacts on life. These are based on the monthly Covid-19 survey conducted as part of Understanding Society and allow further linkage across the two datasets.
The administrative data linkage consent modules asked in Wave 14 were last asked in Wave 11:
- HMRC
- National employment Savings Trust (NEST)
Most of the rotating modules for Wave 14 were last asked in Waves 11, 12 and 13:
- devolved election for – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
- voluntary work
- domestic labour
- commuting behaviour
- work conditions
- transport behaviour
- family networks
- charitable giving
- social support
- physical work
- identity
The youth questionnaire for Wave 14 included rotating content on leisure – computer use, activities outside school. Family – household chores, supervision, friendship networks boy/girlfriend. Self-esteem. Risky behaviour – binge drinking, drugs, attitudes. Vandalism – fighting. Identity – ethnicity, religion. Future intentions -marriage, children, 10 years, future job.
Tips for analysts: COVID-19
In response to the pandemic the Wave 11 and 12 questionnaires were adapted to capture changes during this time. Updates went into the field on 28 July 2020. Wave 13 included some questions from the Covid-19 Survey. Wave 14 included questions about long covid (based on the Covid-19 Survey) to identify areas where the pandemic has had long term impacts on life. Researchers need to take into account how the pandemic impacted the main study and consider the effects of mode transition, changes to the questionnaire and analysis of changes during the pandemic compared to the pre- and post pandemic.
We have brought together a document to help researchers explore Understanding Society changes to the main study due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 dataset
The COVID-19 survey started in April 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and interviewed participants from the main Understanding Society sample via a web-survey. This started as a monthly survey and shifted to bimonthly after July 2020 and continued until September 2021. In addition to questions directly related to Covid-19 (symptoms, testing, vaccination), the survey includes questions on different aspects of people’s lives that could have been impacted by the pandemic. The released data also includes the data on serology antibody testing conducted in March 2021 and 2019 pre-pandemic data from the main survey interviews.
