Alongside regular annual interviews, Understanding Society also works on projects to collect certain types of data, to improve how the survey works, or to test collecting new forms of data.
Some of these projects are tested on a small selection of participants, while others include everyone who takes part. Our current projects are listed below.
Health Measures
In Wave 16 Understanding Society is collecting new health data. These include physical health measures, such as height, weight, waist and hip circumference, and blood pressure. We are also asking participants to give a small blood sample. Taking these measurements in a large number of people can help to predict certain health patterns within a population. Changes in these measurements within a population reflect the changes in a society’s diet and lifestyle.
Couples Living Apart Survey
About 10% of people in the UK do not live in the same house as their partner. The Couples Living Apart Survey is a survey Understanding Society is running to find out more about who is living apart, why and what they plan to do in the future.
Co-parenting Across Homes Survey
The relationship children and young people have with their parents is very important.Many parents now share parenting duties while living in different homes, but we don’t know much about how this works and how it affects kids and their families. It’s really important to include both parents in research about children because it helps us understand their development.
Smart Meter data linkage
There is a lot of interest in how we use gas and electricity – and how much it is costing us. Researchers want to see how much energy we use, and how the type of housing we have affects what we use. Other researchers are interested in how changes in energy prices affect how much we use, and whether they impact the cost of living. While we can ask about how much participants spend on energy, and when they use it, it can sometimes be easier to get this information from the meters that are already in the house that measure energy use.
In-Home Sensors
Variations in air quality, as well as things like air temperature, humidity, noise levels and light levels, may affect our physical health, and how we feel – and might affect different people in different ways. To understand how conditions inside people’s homes vary, we have invited some households to place a sensor in their home for a period of time.
Life History Calendars
We are asking some participants to complete life history calendars, so we can see where big life events happen and how they impact on other parts of our lives. Other research has also shown that asking people to record their life in a visual way helps them remember more than they would if they complete a survey. Visual calendars help people relate different events to each other and see where there are gaps.
Life Events study
We are asking some participants to complete a mini ‘life events’ survey each month. We will ask them whether certain things have happened in the previous calendar month. If none of them has happened, it should take less than a minute to tell us. If any of them has happened, we will ask a few more short questions about them. This short survey will help researchers understand how different life events affect people, see how common different life events are, and learn whether there are people who don’t experience any of these life events.
Understanding Activity Study
We are asking some participants to wear a smartwatch to track their activity over several weeks. This study collects data on sleep, physical activity levels and location. The purpose of the research is to look at how our daily routines influence our health, work and relationships.