FAQs
Data Access
- Do I need to pay to use Understanding Society data?
- How does the Secure Lab work?
- Can I use Special Licence or Secure Access data for more than one research project?
- When is the data available?
- Can more than one person be included in one Special Licence or Secure data application? Do they have to be in the same institution?
- Can I request more than one type of Special Licence or Secure Access dataset in my application? Can I use data I already hold for a new purpose?
- How can I access the data?
- What should I do if I have a problem accessing the data?
- Can I use Understanding Society for teaching?
- What is a ZIP file? How do I save a ZIP file? How do I open a ZIP file?
- How do I access geographical identifiers?
- Some journals ask authors to make available the data used for a publication. How do I comply with this?
- What software will I need to use the data? In which formats are the data available?
Data and variables
- How can I find out if the sample size is large enough for the questions I want to use?
- What is hidp?
- What is pidp?
- How can I determine which variables are comparable across years?
- What data file contains what information?
- How should I cite my use of the data?
- Why do some variables have a suffix _dv at the end? What are derived variables?
- What are the individual and household level files?
- How do I know which sample a sample member belongs to?
- What is the variable naming convention? Why do some variables have letter prefixes while others do not?
- Why do some datafiles have a prefix while others do no?
- What linked data is currently available?
- What is the difference between w_relationship and w_relationship_dv?
- Can I get the full date of birth? Which date of birth variables are available?
- Which variables should I use to measure age and date of birth?
- Where do I report data errors?
- How do I search for variables?
- How do I merge information of one spouse or partner to the other?
- How are missing values treated in the data? Why do some variables have negative values?
- How do I merge individual level files across waves? How do I match respondents across waves?
- How do I merge individual and household level files within the same wave and across waves?
- What is pno?
Questionnaire content
- What questions are asked about UK general elections and how can I use this information?
- What are interview respondents asked?
- What information is collected about children?
- Who provides the information? Who is interviewed? Who answers which questions?
- How is the BHPS different from Understanding Society in terms of questionnaire content?
- Where can I get copies of the questionnaires?
- Are the same questions repeated every year?
- What information is collected? How do I find what questions are asked?
- How can I find out who is asked a particular question?
Samples
- What is the Extra Five Minutes sample?
- What is the biomarker sample?
- Have any new samples been added since the start of the survey?
- How are the different samples of Understanding Society selected?
The Study
- How are students living away treated?
- What are interview respondents asked?
- Are institutional populations (e.g. students in university halls, individuals in care homes, people in prison) included in the Study?
- Does Understanding Society collect biological information?
- What is the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS)? Can I use data collected in the BHPS and Understanding Society together in my analysis?
- What are the different samples in Understanding Society?
- What about consent?
- Who provides the information? Who is interviewed? Who answers which questions?
- Who collects the information? Who are the fieldwork agencies?
- How does Understanding Society collect the information? What are the interview modes?
- What is a dwelling unit?
- What is a household?
- Do interviewers keep the same interviewer ID from wave to wave?
- Do you provide training to use the data?
- What questions have been researched using Understanding Society?