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The United Kingdom Longitudinal Household Study

Providing new insights into our lives

How we work

Organisation and funding

Understanding Society has been commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The research team is led by the Institute for Social and Economic Research. The National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) will deliver the study.  

Jointly funded by the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (£12.5 million) and the ESRC (£3 million), the initial budget of £15.5 million will support the study until 2012. Additional funding was granted in 2009 to carry the study through until 2015. It is envisaged that the study will continue for at least 10 years.

Participants

The study is following approximately 40,000 households across the UK. It includes people from all walks of life, covering a variety of ethnic and social backgrounds. The sample has been selected by postcode by NatCen who are conducting the data collection.  

Anyone in a family age ten and over can participate in the study. When individuals leave the household they will be given the opportunity to continue in the study. The study interviews each respondent every 12 months.

Topics

The questionnaire topics for this study result from an exhaustive consultation exercise among potential stakeholders ranging from academic researchers and analysts to central and local government, public organisations and agencies, research charities, foundations and think tanks, and commercial users.

The key aims of this ongoing consultation process are to establish priorities concerning the topics, the content of the core questionnaire (the part repeated at each wave), and the content of questions to be included on a rotating or occasional basis.

Gathering the data

A sample (of 1,500 households) for methodology research, known as the Innovation Panel, was interviewed in early 2008 to test the new study methods. The Innovation Panel will be repeated annually to test data collection methods and innovative questionnaire content.  The second wave of the Innovation Panel took place in April 2009, and the third wave in April 2010. A separate pilot of 100 households took place in July 2008 to test questionnaire content and survey procedures for the main Understanding Society survey, which started in January 2009. This Dress Rehearsal sample is re-interviewed in September each year to prepare for the forthcoming wave.

A range of data collection methods are used, including face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews and self-completion questionnaires. Face-to-face interviews for the first wave of this confidential study started in January 2009 and are carried out by NatCen in close collaboration with the University of Essex who are experts in safe and secure data collection and storage. Face-to-face interviews for the second wave started in January 2010, with the third wave starting in January 2011.

Findings

The first set of data from the first wave of interviews was released in late 2010. The first findings from the first year of the first wave are now available.