Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. 

The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) is a longitudinal survey of ageing and quality of life among older people that explores the dynamic relationships between health and functioning, social networks and participation, and economic position as people plan for, move into and progress beyond retirement. The main objectives of ELSA are to: construct waves of accessible and well-documented panel data; provide these data in a convenient and timely fashion to the scientific and policy research community; describe health trajectories, disability and healthy life expectancy in a representative sample of the English population aged 50 and over; examine the relationship between economic position and health; investigate the determinants of economic position in older age; describe the timing of retirement and post-retirement labour market activity; and understand the relationships between social support, household structure and the transfer of assets. Further information may be found on the ELSA project website, the or Natcen Social Research: ELSA web pages. Health conditions research with ELSA - June 2021 The ELSA Data team have found some issues with historical data measuring health conditions. If you are intending to do any analysis looking at the following health conditions, then please contact elsadata@natcen.ac.uk for advice on how you should approach your analysis. The affected conditions are: eye conditions (glaucoma; diabetic eye disease; macular degeneration; cataract), CVD conditions (high blood pressure; angina; heart attack; Congestive Heart Failure; heart murmur; abnormal heart rhythm; diabetes; stroke; high cholesterol; other heart trouble) and chronic health conditions (chronic lung disease; asthma; arthritis; osteoporosis; cancer; Parkinson's Disease; emotional, nervous or psychiatric problems; Alzheimer's Disease; dementia; malignant blood disorder; multiple sclerosis or motor neurone disease). For information on obtaining data from ELSA that are not held at the UKDS, see the ELSA Genetic data access and Accessing ELSA data webpages. Harmonized dataset: Users of the Harmonized dataset who prefer to use the Stata version will need access to Stata MP software, as the version G3 file contains 11,779 variables (the limit for the standard Stata 'Intercooled' version is 2,047). ELSA COVID-19 study: A separate ad-hoc study conducted with ELSA respondents, measuring the socio-economic effects/psychological impact of the lockdown on the aged 50+ population of England, is also available under SN 8688, English Longitudinal Study of Ageing COVID-19 Study. ELSA Waves 9 and 10 data updated releases: For the 41st edition (August 2024), Wave 10 EUL and pension grid datasets have been redeposited, with additional variables made available to researchers. The Core EUL dataset now also contains survey weights. The datasets replace the preliminary versions originally made available in January 2024. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) Derived Variable (DV) and Financial DV datasets from Wave 10 have also been deposited, with additional documentation and data dictionaries for each dataset, and the corresponding IFS files for Wave 9 revised.For the 42nd edition (September 2024), the Wave 9 pension grid dataset has been updated to include additional derived variables relating to pension provider (demppen), pension type (ddbdc), and pension scheme membership status (dcurpen).  A corresponding data dictionary has been added.For the 43rd edition (September 2024), the data files for Wave 9 and Wave 10 have been updated to include a variable previously omitted. The Wave 10 data dictionaries has been updated accordingly. The Wave 10 Technical Report has also been added, and the Interviewer Data User Guide has been updated to cover Waves 1-10. Wave 10 Health data Users should note that in Wave 10, the health section of the ELSA questionnaire has been revised and all respondents were asked anew about their health conditions, rather than following the prior approach of asking those who had taken part in the past waves to confirm previously recorded conditions. Due to this reason, the health conditions feed-forward data will not be archived, as was done in previous waves. 

Main Topics:

For a full table of topics and questions covered across all the ELSA waves, see the all waves user guide in the documentation. Standard Measures used in ELSA: Rose Angina Questionnaire: Rose, G. and Blackburn, H. (1986) Cardiovascular survey methods, World Health Organization MonographEdinburgh Claudication Questionnaire: Leng, G. and Fowkes, F. (1992) 'The Edinburgh Claudication Questionnaire: an improved version of the WHO/Rose Questionnaire for use in epidemiological surveys', Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 45, pp.1101-1109MRC Respiratory Questionnaire: Fletcher, C. et al. (1978) The natural history of chronic bronchitis and emphysema, Oxford: Oxford University PressCES-D Depression Scale (8-item): Rasloff, L.S. (1977) 'The CES-D Scale: a self-report depression scale for research in the general population', Applied Psychological Measurement, 1(3), pp.270-278General Health Questionnaire (12-item): Goldberg, D.P. Manual of the General Health Questionnaire, Windsor: NFER-Nelson, 1978CASP-19: Hyde, M. et al. (2003) 'A measure of quality of life in early old age: the theory, development and properties of a needs satisfaction model [CASP-19]', Ageing and Mental Health, 7, pp.186-194Ryff Scale of Psychological Wellbeing: Ryff, C.D. (1989) 'Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological wellbeing', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, pp.1069-1081, and Ryff, C.D. and Keyes, C.L. (1995) 'The structure of psychological wellbeing revisited', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(4), pp.719-727

Multi-stage stratified random sample

Self-administered questionnaire: Web-based (CAWI)

Clinical measurements

Face-to-face interview

Compilation/Synthesis

Physical measurements and tests

Self-administered questionnaire