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Session 2

Examples of Surveys

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EFFNATIS Research 2-2


The British Household Panel Survey 2-4
The BHPS Sample and Following Rules 2-5
Additional Sub-samples 2-6
The ECHP sub-sample 2-6
Scotland and Wales Extension Samples 2-7
Survey Instruments 2-7
References 2-9
Skill and Occupational Change 2-10

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EFFNATIS Research

The EFFNATIS (Effectiveness of National Integration Strategies for Children


of International Migrants) research was undertaken in Britain, France and
Germany in 1999. The British sample was coordinated within the Centre for
Applied Statistics at Lancaster University. It was based upon fieldwork in two
localities in northwest England with large ethnic minority populations –
Rochdale and Blackburn.

The project required us to collect data on three groups of young adults aged
between 16 and 25. At least 100 respondents were to be from two differing
ethnic minority groups : this was based upon a prior theoretical expectation
that there are significant differences between and amongst ethnic minority
groups. There was also to be a control group from the autochthonous
population.

The sampling was based upon a random set of addresses drawn from the
electoral register. Interviewers approached these addresses and attempted to
discover if there were people living there aged between 16 and 25. If there
were, interviews were, sought with all such people within the age band.
Normally, just one respondent is interviewed in these circumstances but, as
we know from demographic sources that South Asian households are much
larger on average than autochthonous ones, to have followed such a route
would have biased our sample.

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Interviewing proceeded until we had secured a random sample with the
desired characteristics. The overall sample contained 844 respondents with
the following ethnic characteristics:

Britain: Autochthonous [White] 418


Pakistani 178
Indian 130

France: Autochthonous 286


Portuguese 212
Maghrebian 218

Germany: Autochthonous [German] 215


Turkish 285
Former-Yugoslavian 285

TOTAL 2227

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The British Household Panel Survey [BHPS]

The British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) is carried out by the ESRC UK
Longitudinal Studies Centre with the Institute for Social and Economic
Research at the University of Essex. The main objective of the survey 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,
their causes and consequences in relation to a range of socio-economic
variables. The BHPS is designed as a research resource for a wide range of
social science disciplines and to support interdisciplinary research in many
areas.

The BHPS was designed as an annual survey of each adult (16+) member 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 split-off from 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 11-15 year old household members from Wave Four onwards. The
sample is designed to be broadly representative of the population of Britain.
Additional sub-samples were added to the BHPS in 1997 and 1999.

Research priorities and research design for the BHPS were established after
extensive consultation within the British academic and policy research
community. Major topics in the first three waves of the panel survey were
household organisation, the labour market, income and wealth, housing,
health and socio-economic values. The panel survey thus permits research
into a wide range of topics such as the relationship between health changes
and unemployment, the effects of life events on changing socio-economic
values, life cycle variations in income, the returns in the labour market to
training and education, the causes and consequences of residential mobility,
and so on.

Panel data have many advantages:

• they allow analysis of how individuals and households


experience change in their socio-economic environment and
how they respond to such changes;

• they allow an analysis of how conditions, life events, behaviour


and values are linked with each other dynamically over time;

• they allow analysts to control for unobserved heterogeneity in


cross-sectional models through difference analysis;

• because all household members are interviewed, the effects of


the interaction of changes at the individual level can be analysed
for the whole household or for other individuals;

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• because sample members are followed as they leave their
original household, panel data will provide unique information on
the processes of household formation and dissolution.

♦ The BHPS Sample and Following Rules

The initial sample for Wave One of the BHPS was similar to any cross-
sectional household study, for example OPCS's General Household Survey.
The sample consisted of 8167 issued addresses drawn from the Postcode
Address File. Interviews were attempted at all private households found at
these addresses (subject to selection where multiple households were found).
All individuals enumerated in respondent households became part of the
longitudinal sample. All these sample members are known as Original Sample
Members (OSMs).

The sample for the subsequent waves consists of all adults in all households
containing at least one member who was resident in a household interviewed
at Wave One, regardless of whether that individual had been interviewed in
Wave One. Thus, with a few exceptions, an attempt was made to interview all
those individuals in responding households who had refused to participate at
Wave One, or for any reason had been unable to take part. In addition, a
number of households where no contact had been made in Wave One were
approached for interview in Wave Two after confirmation that no household
moves between waves had taken place.

The following rules applied in subsequent waves differed from the sampling
rules in Wave One in only one respect. In both sets of rules, eligibility
depended on domestic residence in England, Wales, or Scotland south of the
Caledonian Canal. In waves after Wave One, however, OSMs were followed
into institutions (unless in prison or in circumstances where the respondent
was not available for interview e.g. too frail, mentally impaired etc.) or into
Scotland north of the Caledonian Canal.

New eligibility for sample inclusion could occur between waves in the
following ways:

1. A baby born to an OSM.


2. An OSM move into a household with one or more new people.
3. One or more new people move in with an OSM.

Children born to OSMs after the start of the study automatically count as
OSMs. New Entrants to the sample (categories two and three) become
eligible for interview on the standard OPCS household definition, (i.e. as long
as they were living with an OSM and `either share living accommodation OR
share one meal a day and have the address as their only or main residence').
The main requirement for marginal cases of household membership was six
months continuous residence during the year. This excluded students who
might have been at a parental home during vacation (students were treated
as members of their term-time household). The household non-contacts from

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Wave One referred to above count technically as OSMs but for all practical
purposes (in particular the need to obtain `initial conditions' data) were treated
as new entrants. The sample for each Wave thus consists of all OSMs plus
their natural descendants plus any other adult members of their households,
known as Temporary Sample Members (TSMs).

Once household membership is determined, interviews are sought with all


resident household members aged 16 or over on 1 December of the sample
year, thus including OSMs previously coded as children. Proxy interviews with
another household member, or telephone interviews, are carried out for
eligible members who are either too ill or too busy to be interviewed.

Where OSMs are not found at the expected address, interviewers attempt to
trace them using a variety of methods. These are described in the Section on
Sampling and Survey Methods. Interviewees who do not quality as OSMs are
only re-interviewed in subsequent years if they are still co-resident in
households with OSMs. However, a subset of TSMs become permanent
sample members and arefollowed even if they no longer reside with an OSM.
The criterion for this status is that the TSM is the parent, with an OSM, of a
new OSM birth.

♦ Additional sub-samples

Since the start of BHPS in 1991, a number of additional sub-samples have


been added to the survey.

• The ECHP sub-sample

From Wave Seven the BHPS began providing data for the United Kingdom
European Community Household Panel (ECHP). As part of this, it
incorporated a sub-sample of the original UKECHP, including all households
still responding in Northern Ireland, and a 'low-income' sample of the Great
Britain panel. The low-income sample was selected on the basis of
characteristics associated with low income in the ECHP. At Wave Seven
ECHP households in which all adult members responded at wave seven and
which fell into the following categories were issued:

Household reference person unemployed at interview or within the last


year,
Household reference person in receipt of lone parent benefit
Household reference person in receipt of means tested benefit,
Household in rented accommodation.

Respondent households who agreed to have their data passed to the


University of Essex were incorporated in the BHPS.

From the point of view of the BHPS this constitutes a new sample whose first
wave is wave seven. However, their sample membership status depends in
part on their membership status within the ECHP. Thus, members of the
original 1994 ECHP sample are defined for our purposes as OSMs, while

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joiners to ECHP households after the first wave of ECHP, including joiners at
Wave Seven and Wave Eight of BHPS are defined as TSMs or PSMs
according to standard BHPS rules. There are also a small number of ECHP
original sample members who rejoin selected households after Wave Seven.
These are also classified as OSMs.

• Scotland and Wales Extension Samples

A major development at Wave 9 was the recruitment of two additional


samples to the BHPS in Scotland and Wales. There were two main aims of
the extensions. First, to increase the relatively small Scottish and Welsh
sample sizes (around 400-500 households in each country in the initial BHPS
sample) in order to permit independent analysis of the two countries. Second,
to facilitate analysis of the two countries compared to England in order to
assess the impacts of the substantial public policy changes which may be
expected to follow from devolution. The first wave of the extension samples
were fully funded by the ESRC. A consultation period in the early part of 1999
established the requirements of the Scottish and Welsh user-communities.
Provision of comparable data between the different parts of Great Britain
required identical questionnaires and fieldwork arrangements for the
additional samples to those used for the main BHPS sample. The target
sample size in each country was 1500 households. The Scottish sample
includes the population living north and west of the Caledonian Canal.

♦ Survey Instruments

The questionnaire package consists of:

• A household coversheet , which contains an interviewer call


record, observations on the type of accommodation and the final
household outcomes. At Wave One, it contained a Kish selection
grid for the selection of households at multi-household addresses.
Cover sheets are produced containing the last known address of
sample members. Moves discovered by interviewers during
fieldwork are dealt with by interviewers, either by discovering a
forwarding address or by creating a movers form for return to the
Institute. Techniques for following movers are described in Section
IV on Sampling and Survey Methods.

• A household composition form which is administered, in most


cases, at the interviewer's first contact with an adult member of the
household. The interviewer gathers a complete listing of all
household members together with some brief summary data of their
sex, date of birth, marital and employment status and their
relationship to the household reference person (HRP) - defined as
the person legally or financially responsible for the accommodation,
or the elder of two people equally responsible. Additional checks
are required on presence in the household of natural parents or

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spouse or partners, in o rder to unambiguously establish all
relationships (for instance, secondary or `hidden' couples).

• A short household questionnaire administered with the household


reference person and taking on average 10 minutes to complete.
This contains questions about the accommodation and tenure and
some household level measures of consumption.

• The individual schedule takes approximately 40 minutes to


complete and is administered with every adult member of the
household (aged 16 or over). The individual questionnaire covers
the following topics:

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 Two only)
employment status history (Wave Two only)
values and opinions
household finances and organization

• A self-completion questionnaire , which takes about five minutes


to complete. Questions included are subjective or attitudinal
questions particularly vulnerable to the influence of other people's
presence during completion, or potentially sensitive questions
requiring additional privacy. The self-completion questionnaire
contains a reduced version of the General Health Questionnaire
(GHQ) which was originally developed as a screening instrument
for psychiatric illness, but is often used as an indicator of subjective
well-being. It also contains attitudinal items and questions on social
support.

• A proxy schedule is used to collect information about household


members absent throughout the field period or too old or infirm to
complete the interview themselves. It is administered to another
member of the household, with preference shown for the spouse or
adult child. 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 by an experienced interviewer employed by the Institute.
This is used when all other efforts to achieve a face-to-face
interview have failed.

In Wave Nine the conversion to Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing


(CAPI) began. The structure of instruments outlined above remains the same.

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At Wave Nine only the household questionnaire and the individual
questionnaire were converted to CAPI.

References

Buck, N (1994) (ed) Changing Households : The British Household Panel


Survey, 1990 – 1992.

Rose, D. (ed) (2000) Researching Social and Economic Change: The Uses of
Household Panel Studies.

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