The UK Household Longitudinal Study

Introduction
Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) is a major research study designed to provide new evidence about people in the UK, focusing on their lives, experiences, behaviours and beliefs and how people in the same household relate to each other. The Study was commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council and is led by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER). The National Centre for Social Research conducts the fieldwork for the survey.

The study started in 2009 and follows 100,000 individuals in 40,000 households each year. The scale of the survey means that it can also focus on key sections of the community such as older people, parents, people from ethnic minorities and people with low incomes, allowing for deeper analysis of a wide range of sections of the population as they respond to regional, national and international change.

The study also captures biomedical data on 20,000 participants to help weigh the extent to which people’s environments influence their health.

In 2010, the British Household Panel Study was incorporated into Wave 2 of the UKHLS. The British Household Panel Study started in 1991, and so there are data going back two decades for many of these households.

Data
The UKHLS collects a wide range of information on a great number of topics over time. The questions answered by respondents relate to:

Standard of living measures (income, consumption, material deprivation, expenditure, financial well-being)
Family, social networks and interactions, local contexts, social support, technology and social contacts
Attitudes and behaviours related to environmental issues (energy, transport, air quality, global warming etc)
Illicit and risky behaviour (crime, drug use, anti-social behaviour etc)
Lifestyle, social, political, religious and other participation, identity and related practices, dimensions of life satisfaction/happiness
Psychological attributes, cognitive abilities and behaviour
Preferences, beliefs, attitudes and expectations
Health outcomes and health related behaviour
Education, human capital and work
Initial conditions, life history

Further detailed information on the data and questionnaires held in the UKHLS is available from the survey website here.

Linkage
To add greater scope and depth to the UKHLS, permission has been asked of respondents to add in information from other administrative records.

Wave 1 of the UKHLS requested consent from each adult respondent to link their survey data to both health (such as NHS and ONS administrative records) and education records. Parents of children aged 0-15 (health) and 4-15(education) were asked for their consent to link administrative records about their children to their survey responses. The consent rate was approximately 70%. Wave 4 (scheduled for 2012/13) will again ask for permission to link to these records and also to Department for Work and Pensions administrative records, which cover social security benefits.

ISER is currently working with the various government departments to create the linked datasets. Information leaflets about administrative data linkages and consent forms are available from the Understanding Society website here.

Potential for research
As the UKHLS provides a wealth of information about people’s lives, the potential use for research is vast. Areas that could be considered include:

Changes in the structure and functions of households -how family circumstances impact on the development of children and young people.
The impact of personal characteristics and attitudes on future outcomes – cognitive abilities, personal plans, and expectations for the future of public provision.
The development of well-being over the life-cycle – health, income, consumption, asset accumulation and time use.
Changing patterns of economic opportunities – the influence they have on the prevalence of poverty and social exclusion.
Health-related behaviours (diet, tobacco and alcohol consumption, exercise) and their consequences.
The causes, and long-term consequences, of disadvantaging conditions such as unemployment, teenage pregnancy, ill-health, mental illness, truancy, drug taking and criminality.
Issues of identity, diversity and culture, in terms of class, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, citizenship, national identity, age group, disability, consumption and lifestyle.

Further information on publications that have already used the UKHLS is available from the survey website here.

Application procedure
The National Centre for Social Research delivers UKHLS data to ISER. These data are checked, cleaned and go through a process of quality assurance. The data are then made more user-friendly, by re-structuring the data-sets, adding weights, imputing missing values, adding derived variables and documenting the data. ISER then deposits UKHLS data with the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS). Researchers can apply for access to general anonymised data, more detailed geographical data via the ESDS special licence access and British National Grid postcode references via the Secure Data Service.

Further information
For further information on Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study including information about administrative data linkage, please contact ISER by:
1. Phone on 01206 872957.
2. Email info@understandingsociety.org.uk.

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