Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Annual Population Survey (APS) is a major survey series, which aims to provide data that can produce reliable estimates at local authority level. Key topics covered in the survey include education, employment, health and ethnicity. The APS comprises key variables from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) (held at the UK Data Archive under GN 33246), all of its associated LFS boosts and the APS boost. Thus, the APS combines results from five different sources: the LFS (waves 1 and 5); the English Local Labour Force Survey (LLFS), the Welsh Labour Force Survey (WLFS), the Scottish Labour Force Survey (SLFS) and the Annual Population Survey Boost Sample (APS(B) - however, this ceased to exist at the end of December 2005, so APS data from January 2006 onwards will contain all the above data apart from APS(B)). Users should note that the LLFS, WLFS, SLFS and APS(B) are not held separately at the UK Data Archive. For further detailed information about methodology, users should consult the Labour Force Survey User Guide, selected volumes of which have been included with the APS documentation for reference purposes (see 'Documentation' table below). The APS aims to provide enhanced annual data for England, covering a target sample of at least 510 economically active persons for each Unitary Authority (UA)/Local Authority District (LAD) and at least 450 in each Greater London Borough. In combination with local LFS boost samples such as the WLFS and SLFS, the survey provides estimates for a range of indicators down to Local Education Authority (LEA) level across the United Kingdom. APS Well-Being data Since April 2011, the APS has included questions about personal and subjective well-being. The responses to these questions have been made available as annual sub-sets to the APS Person level files. It is important to note that the size of the achieved sample of the well-being questions within the dataset is approximately 165,000 people. This reduction is due to the well-being questions being only asked of persons aged 16 and above, who gave a personal interview and proxy answers are not accepted. As a result some caution should be used when using analysis of responses to well-being questions at detailed geography areas and also in relation to any other variables where respondent numbers are relatively small. It is recommended that for lower level geography analysis that the variable UACNTY09 is used. As well as annual datasets, three-year pooled datasets are available. When combining multiple APS datasets together, it is important to account for the rotational design of the APS and ensure that no person appears more than once in the multiple year dataset. This is because the well-being datasets are not designed to be longitudinal e.g. they are not designed to track individuals over time/be used for longitudinal analysis. They are instead cross-sectional, and are designed to use a cross-section of the population to make inferences about the whole population. For this reason, the three-year dataset has been designed to include only a selection of the cases from the individual year APS datasets, chosen in such a way that no individuals are included more than once, and the cases included are approximately equally spread across the three years. Further information is available in the 'Documentation' section below. Secure Access APS Well-Being data Secure Access datasets for the APS Well-Being include additional variables not included in either the standard End User Licence (EUL) versions (see under GN 33357) or the Special Licence (SL) access versions (see under GN 33376). Extra variables that typically can be found in the Secure Access version but not in the EUL or SL versions relate to:geography, including:Postcodes Census Area Statistics (CAS) WardsCensus Output AreasNomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics (NUTS) level 2 and 3 areasLower and Middle Layer Super Output AreasTravel to Work AreasUnitary authority / Local Authority District of place of work (main job)region of place of work for first and second jobsqualifications, education and training including level of highest qualification, qualifications from Government schemes, qualifications related to work, qualifications from school, qualifications from university of college and qualifications gained from outside the UK detailed ethnic group for Scottish respondentsdetailed religious denomination for Northern Irish respondentslength health problem has limited activity learning difficulty or learning disabilityoccupation in apprenticeship or second job number of bedrooms number of dependent children in household aged under 19Prospective users of the Secure Access version of the APS Well-Being will need to fulfil additional requirements, commencing with the completion of an extra application form to demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the extra, more detailed variables, in order to obtain permission to use that version. Secure Access data users must also complete face-to-face training and agree to the Secure Access User Agreement and Licence Compliance Policy (see 'Access' section below). Therefore, users are encouraged to download and inspect the EUL version of the data prior to ordering the Secure Access (or SL) version. Further details and links to all APS studies available from the UK Data Archive can be found via the APS Key Data series webpage. APS Well-Being Datasets: Information, July 2016 From 2012-2015, the ONS published separate APS datasets aimed at providing initial estimates of subjective well-being, based on the Integrated Household Survey. In 2015 these were discontinued. A separate set of well-being variables and a corresponding weighting variable have been added to the April-March APS person datasets from A11M12 onwards. Users should no longer use the bespoke well-being datasets (SNs 6994, 6999, 7091, 7092, 7364, 7365, 7565, 7566 and 7961, but should now use the variables included on the April-March APS person datasets instead. Further information on the transition can be found on the Personal well-being in the UK: 2015 to 2016 Documentation and coding frames The APS is compiled from variables present in the LFS. For variable and value labelling and coding frames that are not included either in the data or in the current APS documentation (e.g. coding frames for education, industrial and geographic variables, which are held in LFS User Guide Vol.5, Classifications), users are advised to consult the latest versions of the LFS User Guides, which are available from the ONS Labour Force Survey - User Guidance webpages. May 2018 Update Due to a change in the Travel-to-Work Area coding structure from 2001 to 2011, the variable TTWA9D has been relabelled in the pooled data file for 2012-2015.

Main Topics:

Topics covered include: household composition and relationships, housing tenure, nationality, ethnicity and residential history, employment and training (including government schemes), workplace and location, job hunting, educational background and qualifications. Many of the variables included in the survey are the same as those in the LFS.

Multi-stage stratified random sample

Face-to-face interview

Telephone interview