British Household Panel Survey: Waves 1-17, 1991-2008

UKDA study number:5151

Principal Investigator

University of Essex. Institute for Social and Economic Research

Data Collectors

GfK NOP
Office for National Statistics
Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency

Sponsor

Economic and Social Research Council

Distributed by

UK Data Archive, University of Essex, Colchester.

May 2009 (6th Edition)

Bibliographic Citation

All works which use or refer to these materials should acknowledge these sources by means of bibliographic citation. To ensure that such source attributions are captured for bibliographic indexes, citations must appear in footnotes or in the reference section of publications. The bibliographic citation for this data collection is:

University of Essex. Institute for Social and Economic Research, British Household Panel Survey: Waves 1-17, 1991-2008 [computer file]. 6th Edition. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], May 2009. SN: 5151.

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Copyright:
Institute for Social and Economic Research

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5151 . British Household Panel Survey: Waves 1-17, 1991-2008
(BHPS)

Depositor:

University of Essex. Institute for Social and Economic Research

Principal Investigator:

University of Essex. Institute for Social and Economic Research

Data Collectors:

GfK NOP
Office for National Statistics
Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency

Sponsor:

Economic and Social Research Council

Other Acknowledgements:

Over time, additional funding for the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) has been provided by the Health Education Authority (HEA), Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Eurostat.

The Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) is very grateful to the HEA for its help in carrying out the survey of 11-15 year old members of the BHPS sample included from Wave 4 onwards. The Northern Ireland sample, included from Wave 11, is jointly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and various Northern Ireland government departments.

Abstract:

The British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) is conducted by the ESRC UK Longitudinal Studies Centre (ULSC), together with the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex. The ULSC, established in 1999, is a continuation of the research resource component of the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change (MISOC), established in 1989. In addition to conducting the BHPS and disseminating it to the research community, ISER undertakes a programme of research based on panel data, using the BHPS and other national panels to monitor and measure social change.

The main objective of the BHPS is to further understanding of social and economic change at the individual and household level in Britain, and to identify, model and forecast such changes and their causes and consequences in relation to a range of socio-economic variables. It was designed as an annual survey of each adult member (aged 16 years and over) of a nationally representative sample of more than 5,000 households, making a total of approximately 10,000 individual interviews. The same individuals are re-interviewed in successive waves and, if they leave their original households, all adult members of their new households are also interviewed. Children are interviewed once they reach the age of 16; there is also a special survey of household members aged 11-15 included in the BHPS from Wave 4 onwards (the British Youth Panel, or BYP). From Wave 9, two additional samples were added to the BHPS in Scotland and Wales, and at Wave 11 an additional sample from Northern Ireland (which forms the Northern Ireland Household Panel Study or NIHPS), was added to increase the sample to cover the whole of the United Kingdom. For Waves 7-11, the BHPS also provided data for the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). For details of sampling, methodology and changes to the survey over time, see Volume A of the documentation (Introduction, Technical Report and Appendices). Further information about the BHPS can be found on the ISER/ULSC British Household Panel Survey web pages.

Documentation:
The BHPS documentation comprises three parts:

• Volume A (Introduction, Technical Report and Appendices), which is available in PDF format from the Documentation table below (and in the zip package downloadable by registered ESDS users)
• Separate PDF volumes containing questionnaires and showcards for each BHPS wave, available alongside Volume A
• BHPS codebooks and interviewer instructions, available online from the BHPS documentation web pages (follow links on pages for each wave)

The BHPS User Documentation web pages also contain additional information, and users are advised to consult the pages before commencing analysis. It should also be noted that topline frequencies are included in the online codebooks, so are not available for the BHPS from the UKDA catalogue record.

Edition history:
Since the first deposit of BHPS, materials from successive waves have been added each year. (Longstanding users should note that before 2005, the BHPS may have had a different UKDA study number, hence the discrepancy between the edition number and the current survey wave.)

• For the fifth edition of SN 5151 (March 2009), data and documentation from Wave 17 were added to the study. Also, updated data files for Wave 16 were deposited, because the values of derived variables relating to the start date of job spell in progress at the time of the interview had been recalculated, and imputations for Wave 16 which form part of cross-wave imputation schemes had been updated. Further details of changes are available in Volume A of the documentation (see p.380)
• For the sixth edition (May 2009), an updated version of the data file QINDRESP in Wave 17 was deposited. In the previous version, a problem had been identified, where for individuals who reported that they were still working in the same job as at the last wave, the occupation codes in the main job were corrupted, for both the 1990 Standard Occupation Classification variable (QJBSOC) and the 2000 Standard Occupation Classification variable (QJBSOC00). A range of derived classification variables were also affected. These were as follows: QJBSEG, QJBGOLD, QJBRGSC, QJBCSSM, QJBCSSF, QJBHGS, QJBSEC, QMRJSOC, QMRJSEG, QMRJGOLD, QMRJRGSC, QMRJCSSM, QMRJCSSF, QMRJHGS, QMRJSEC. The problem did not affect individuals in a new job or with a new occupational description (QJBCK1 > 1 or QJBSOCP=2 or QJBSOCP=-1). The problem has been rectified in the updated file.

Additional datasets:
Several datasets from ISER-based BHPS research are also available from the UKDA:

• SN 3909 Derived Net Income Variables for BHPS
• SN 3954 BHPS Combined Work-Life History Data
• SN 5354 Human Capital and Social Position in Britain: Creating a Measure of Wage-earning Potential from BHPS Data, 1991-2004
• SN 5363 British Household Panel Survey Calibrated Time Use Data, 1994-2004
• SN 5629 British Household Panel Survey Consolidated Marital, Cohabitation and Fertility Histories, 1991-2005

For details of other BHPS-based datasets, see 'Related Studies' section (link above).

Teaching Datasets:
ESDS Longitudinal has developed three teaching/sampler datasets based on subsets of BHPS:

• SN 5038 British Household Panel Survey; Waves 1-11, 1991-2002: Teaching Dataset (Social and Political Attitudes)
• SN 4901 British Household Panel Survey; Waves 1-11, 1991-2002: Teaching Dataset (Work, Family and Health)
• SN 5355 British Household Panel Survey; Waves 1-13, 1991-2004: Teaching Dataset (Time Use, Leisure and Social Memberships)

Conditional Access Datasets:
Files containing BHPS Medium-level Geographical Identifiers are also available to ESDS-registered UK users, subject to conditional access. Further details are available on the British Household Panel Survey: Conditional Access datasets web page.

Special Licence Access Datasets:
Files containing BHPS Low-level Geographical Identifiers are also available to ESDS-registered UK users, subject to special licence access. Further details are available on the British Household Panel Survey: Special Licence Access datasets web page.

Main Topics:

The questionnaire package consists of the following elements:

• a household coversheet
• a household composition form comprising a complete listing of all household members, together with some brief summary data of their gender, date of birth, marital and employment status and their relationship to the household reference person
• a short household questionnaire containing questions about the accommodation and tenure and some household-level measures of consumption
• an individual schedule asked of every adult member of the household (aged 16 or over), covering: neighbourhood; individual demographics; residential mobility; health and caring; current employment and earnings; employment changes over the past year; lifetime childbirth, marital and relationship history (Wave 2 for the main sample, supplemented for new entrants from Wave 8 onwards); employment status history (Wave 2 only); values and opinions; household finances and organisation
• a self-completion questionnaire including subjective or attitudinal questions particularly vulnerable to the influence of other people's presence during completion, or potentially sensitive questions requiring additional privacy. It also contains attitudinal items and questions on social support
• a proxy schedule: the questionnaire is a much shortened version of the individual questionnaire, collecting some demographic, health, and employment details, as well as a summary income measure
• a telephone questionnaire, developed from the proxy schedule, for use when all other efforts to achieve a face-to-face interview have failed
• from Wave 4 to Wave 11, the youth questionnaire (aged 11-16 years) was administered using a 'Walkman' personal cassette tape player and a blank self-completion answer grid, as some of the questions cover sensitive issues. From Wave 12 onwards, a normal self-completion script has been used

Standard Measures:
General Health Questionnaire (GHQ);
Activities of Daily Living (ADL) schedule;
Short Form 36 Health Measure (SF36);
The Big Five Personality Traits measure.

Coverage:

Dates of Fieldwork: Wave 1 - 3 September 1991 to 30 January 1992
Wave 2 - 5 September 1992 to 30 April 1993
Wave 3 - 5 September 1993 to 30 April 1994
Wave 4 - 3 September 1994 to 9 May 1995
Wave 5 - 4 September 1995 to 30 April 1996
Wave 6 - 29 August 1996 to 17 April 1997
Wave 7 - 29 August 1997 to 8 May 1998
Wave 8 - 1 September 1998 to 8 May 1999
Wave 9 - 1 September 1999 to 30 April 2000
Wave 10 - 1 September 2000 to 31 May 2001
Wave 11 - 1 September 2001 to 25 May 2002
Wave 12 - 1 September 2002 to 30 April 2003
Wave 13 - 1 September 2003 to 10 May 2004
Wave 14 - 1 September 2004 to 11 May 2005
Wave 15 - September 2005 to May 2006
Wave 16 - 1 September 2006 to 3 April 2007
Wave 17 - 1 September 2007 to April 2008
Country: United Kingdom
Spatial Units: Region/Metropolitan Area (Standard Region, distinguishing former Metropolitan Counties and Inner and Outer London)
Observation Units: Individuals; Families/households
Kind of Data: Numeric data; Individual (micro) level

Universe Sampled:

Location of Units of Observation: National
Population: Households in the United Kingdom and individual household members

Methodology:

Time Dimensions: Longitudinal/panel/cohort
Sampling Procedures: Two-stage stratified systematic sample: see documentation for details
Method of Data Collection: Face-to-face interview; Telephone interview; Self-completion; At Wave 9, the survey moved from pen and paper to a Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) mode of collection.
Weighting: Weighting used. See documentation for details (Volume A)

Language(s) of Written Materials:

Study Description: English
Study Documentation: English

Access:

Access Conditions: The depositor has specified that registration is required and standard conditions of use apply. The depositor may be informed about usage. See terms and conditions for further information.
Availability: ESDS Longitudinal, UK Data Archive
Contact: Help desk: longitudinal@esds.ac.uk

Date of First Release:

12 April 2005

Date of Latest Release:

08 May 2009 ( 6th Edition )

Copyright:

Institute for Social and Economic Research

File last updated:

22 February 2010