Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.Understanding Society (the UK Household Longitudinal Study), which began in 2009, is conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex, and the survey research organisations Kantar Public and NatCen. It builds on and incorporates, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which began in 1991.

For details of the main Understanding Society study, please see study number 6614. Innovation Panel The Innovation Panel is designed for experimental and methodological research relevant to longitudinal surveys. As far as practical its design, content, and data collection procedures are similar to the main stage Understanding Society survey. It is a multi-topic household survey representative of the population of Great Britain. Data collection takes place annually using computer assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) and web surveys. One person completes the household questionnaire. Each person aged 16 or older answers the individual adult interview, including and self-completion questionnaire. Young people aged 10 to 15 years are asked to respond to a paper self-completion questionnaire. The Innovation Panel has multiple experimental studies in which households or individuals are randomly assigned to a particular instrument or survey procedure. Experiments can relate to survey procedures, questionnaire design, or substantive social science questions. The experiments are described in the User Manual and in Understanding Society Working Papers. Wave 12 included an experiment involving the collection of biomeasures by nurses, interviewers and respondents themselves. The biomeasures included in the experiment were: height, weight, blood pressure, venous and dried blood samples and hair samples. Biomarkers have been derived from the different blood and hair samples to compare analytes across sample types. Due to COVID-19 Waves 13 and 14 were implemented using computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and web surveys. Wave 15 included additional data on body measurements. Respondents were asked to install the BodyVolume app on their smartphone or tablet (iOS or Android) and use it after the interview to take two photos of themselves. The app used the body outlines along with profile information that the respondent entered in the app (age, sex, height, weight, level of activity) to calculate measures including waist and hip circumference, total body fat, visceral body fat, and lengths of different body parts. There are two primary versions of the Innovation Panel data. One is available under the standard End User Licence (EUL) agreement, and the other is a Special Licence (SL) version (available under SN 7083). The SL version contains month and year of birth variables in addition to age, county variables, more detailed country and occupation coding for a number of variables; and various income variables have not been top-coded (see the documentation available with the SL version for more detail on the differences). In addition, there are a number of SL geographical datasets that are designed to be used in conjunction with the primary datasets. Low- and Medium-level geographical identifiers are also available subject to SL access conditions and fine detail geographic data are available under more restrictive Secure Access conditions that contains British National Grid postcode grid references (at 1m resolution) for the unit postcode of each household surveyed. Further information may be found on the Understanding Society main stage webpage and links to publications based on the study can be found on the Understanding Society Latest Research webpage. Latest edition information For the twelfth edition (October 2023), Waves 14 and 15 have been deposited with accompanying documentation, and all previous waves redeposited with various corrections - see the documentation file '6849_ip_waves_1-13_changes_collated.pdf' for details of the changes.

Main Topics:

The survey instrument is constructed using modules. For a fuller listing of modules and questionnaire content see the ISER Innovation Panel Dataset Documentation webpage. Experiments are described in the User Manual for the Innovation Panel. The household questionnaire includes a composition listing of all household members and collects information about gender, date of birth, marital and employment status, and relationship to the household respondent. The household questionnaire also has questions about housing, mortgage or rent payments, material deprivation, and consumer durables and cars. The individual interview is asked of every person in the household aged 16 or over, and covers: demographics, baseline information, family background, ethnicity and national identity; religion; partnership and fertility histories; health, disability and caring; current employment and earnings; parenting and childcare arrangements; contact with non-resident children; benefit payments; and household finances. Some modules are carried in selective waves - see the User Manual. A proxy module, a much shortened version of the individual questionnaire, collects demographic, health, and employment information, as well as a summary income measure. The adult self-completion questionnaire was a pencil-and-paper instrument (PAPI) at Waves 1 and 3, and in Waves 4-7 included an experimental comparison with Computer Assisted Self-Completion (CASI). It includes subjective questions, particularly those which are potentially sensitive or require more privacy. It covers feelings of depression, sleep behaviour, neighbourhood participation and belonging, life satisfaction, and attributes of friends. There was no adult self-completion questionnaire at Wave 2. The youth self-completion questionnaire (also PAPI) is given to children aged 10-15 years in the household. It covers computer and technology use; relationships with parents; feelings about areas of life; Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ); and educational plans.

Multi-stage stratified random sample

Mobile application

Face-to-face interview

Telephone interview

Self-administered questionnaire

Web-based interview