Large sample size

Understanding Society is following through time the lives of a very large number of households. The sample is made-up of four parts which together yield the target sample of 40,000 households at wave 1 of the study. The large sample size provides an opportunity to explore issues where other longitudinal surveys are too small. For example:

• Analysis of small subgroups, such as teenage parents or disabled people
• Analysis at regional and sub-regional levels, allowing examination of the effects of geographical variation
• High-resolution analysis of events in time, for example focussing on single-year age cohorts.