Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The Skills Survey is a series of nationally representative sample surveys of individuals in employment aged 20-60 years old (since 2006, the surveys have additionally sampled those aged 61-65). The surveys aim to investigate the employed workforce in Great Britain. Although they were not originally planned as part of a series and had different funding sources and objectives, continuity in questionnaire design has meant the surveys now provide a unique, national representative picture of change in British workplaces as reported by individual job holders. This allows analysts to examine how various aspects of job quality and skill levels have changed over 30 years.The first surveys in the series were carried out in 1986 and 1992. These surveys also form part of this integrated data series, and are known as the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative (SCELI) and Employment in Britain (EIB) studies respectively.The 1997 survey was the first to collect primarily data on skills using the job requirements approach. This focused on collecting data on objective indicators of job skill as reported by respondents. The 2001 survey assessed how much had changed between the two surveys and a third survey in 2006 enhanced the time series data, while providing a resource for analysing skill and job requirements in the British economy at that time. The 2012 survey aimed to again add to the time series data and, coinciding as it did with a period of economic recession, to provide insight into whether workers in Britain felt under additional pressure/demand from employers as a result of redundancies and cut backs. In addition, a series dataset, covering 1986, 1992, 1997, 2001, 2006 and 2012 is also available . A follow-up to the 2012 survey was conducted in 2014, revisiting respondents who had agreed to be interviewed again. The 2017 survey was the seventh in the series, designed to examine to what extent pressures had continued as a result of austerity and economic uncertainties triggered, for example, by Brexit as well as examining additional issues such as productivity, fairness at work and the retirement intentions of older workers.Each survey comprises a large number of respondents: 4,047 in the 1986 survey; 3,855 in 1992; 2,467 in 1997; 4,470 in 2001; 7,787 in 2006; 3,200 in 2012; and 3,306 in 2017.
The Skills and Employment Survey 2012: Follow-up Survey, 2014 (SES2012_R) is a longitudinal follow-up survey from a re-interviewed sample of respondents to the SES2012(SN 7466). SES2012 objectives included the comparison of key aspects of workers' experiences of their jobs with past patterns and to provide insights into how the British workforce felt the direct aftermath of the Great Recession. From 2,497 respondents in SES2012 who agreed to be re-interviewed, 1,108 follow-up interviews were completed approximately two years after the baseline, in the period from January-August 2014. SES2012_R's purpose was to analyse change in key work-related items at the level of individuals since the baseline. The questionnaire follows up on job classification and skills, detailed nature of the job, ICT usage on the job, the organisation working for, the job since the baseline interview, training since the baseline, well-being at work, and basic time-variant demographic characteristics. Further information is available from the Skills and Employment Survey 2012 webpage and the Project 2.5 Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: A Longitudinal Analysis webpage.
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The deposited data file combines data from the follow-up interviews in 2014 with information from the baseline in 2012 (SES2012, SN 7466). It comprises of items that were collected both at the baseline and at the follow-up, a selection of derived variables to ease analysis and time-invariant individual information from the baseline that were not asked again at follow-up. Apart from a few exceptions that are documented in the available list of variables, item non-response due to refusal or 'don't knows' have been allocated unique values.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
Face-to-face interview
