Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The International Passenger Survey (IPS) aims to collect data on both credits and debits for the travel account of the Balance of Payments, provide detailed visit information on overseas visitors to the United Kingdom (UK) for tourism policy, and collect data on international migration.
The depositor recommends that only expert users who are very familiar with the coding and weighting structures use these data, as limited support is available. Some considerable understanding of the data is required before meaningful analyses can be made; care must be taken when performing time series operations as codes can vary from year to year and not all variables from one year's dataset are used in other years. Weighting the IPS ONS advise that the variable 'fweight' included in the 'Qcontact' dataset should be applied to get an overall weighted profile. This weight is set consistently overtime. Other weights are provided to analyse finer detail but no information is provided in the documentation. ONS are currently reviewing the documentation but in the meantime if users have any detailed weighting questions they should contact the ONS at: socialsurveys@ons.gov.uk. The data cover four subject areas, termed 'Airmiles', 'Alcohol', 'Qregtown' and 'Qcontact'. One file is produced each quarter per subject area, and the dataset updated quarterly. These files can be joined together using the variables YEAR, SERIAL, FLOW and QUARTER. For the fifth edition (August 2006), a revised version of all data for 2005 was deposited, due to changes in the weighting methodology. See study READ file for full details.
Main Topics:
The 2005 IPS dataset covers:'Airmiles': quarter; flow; serial; UK port or route; direct leg overseas port; final overseas port; distance from UK port to first port; from first to second port; from UK port to second port'Alcohol': year; quarter; month; flow; serial; money spent on spirits; wine; beer; cigarettes; hand-rolled and other tobacco'Qregtown': year; quarter; month; flow; serial; towns stayed in overnight; details of type of accommodation; number of nights spent in towns; expenditure in towns; regional stay weight; regional visit weight; regional expenditure weight; various validation checks'Qcontact': year; quarter; month; flow; serial; nationality; country of visit/residence; UK counties; date visit began; purpose of visit; organised conference; study (including English language courses); intended length of stay; number of people; package tour and cost; expenditure pre-, post- and during visit; flight prefix and suffix; first carrier air or shipping line; direct leg overseas port; final overseas port; long or short haul; type of vehicle; number travelling in vehicle; fare type and cost; class of travel; business trip; type of flight; flight origin or destination; gender; age group; UK port or route; quality of response; date of interview; money transfer, net and total expenditure; distance driven in UK by overseas driver; miles or kilometres; type of transport; arrivals (number of adults); departures (type of travelling group, number of adults and children); weighting variables; various validation checksSome slight changes to coding and questions were made for the 2005 survey. These are listed in the documentation.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
Face-to-face interview
