Understanding Society Survey Waves 9-11 (T602)

NOTE: This notice was updated on 07 December 2015 for the following reason: Dates to be corrected in the original notice: Place of dates to be added: Contract |Start Instead of: 02 May 2016 Time: 12:00 Read: 02 May 2016 Time: 12:00 Fieldwork for Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study, including Waves 9-11 for the main sample and waves 10 and 11 for the Innovation Panel. Understanding Society is a large household panel survey, which requires continuous fieldwork through the year.

The main sample covers the UK and consists of individuals in around 25,000 households. Movers out of addresses are expected to be traced and interviewed at their new address within the UK, and movers into a household with an existing sample member temporarily become sample members.

Within each household there is an enumeration instrument and a household questionnaire (around 15 minutes for the two), for each adult aged 16+ there is a 40 minute (median) interview, for 10-15 year olds there is a self-completion instrument. Understanding society is mixed-mode, so that adults in a large proportion of households (currently around 40% but with the expectation that this will increase) are initially invited to participate on-line, with non-respondents followed up by face-to-face interviews.

The rest of the samples are issued directly to interviewers, with any non-respondents invited to take part online. There is also a telephone mop-up stage towards the end of the fieldwork.

The sample for Understanding Society is allocated over 24 calendar months, although each case is in the field for up to 6 months. Each household is issued annually, so there is an over-lapping design; Wave 10 Year 1 will start at around the same time as Wave 9 Year 2.

The main sample comprises of a general population sample, and ethnic minority boost (for whom the interview is around 45 minutes, median), and the former-BHPS. The Innovation Panel is a sample of 1,500 households used by researchers as a test-bed for innovative ways of collecting data and for developing new areas of research.

It helps develop leading edge survey methods and content that will ensure the ongoing success of Understanding Society and to generate important new knowledge. Experiments are carried out, and questions, procedures and methods are tested and used in a context similar to the main Understanding Society survey to make the test-bed as realistic as possible. The key requirements for this project are that the fieldwork agency/agencies achieve high response rates, a high level of data quality and the ability to meet deadlines for fieldwork and data delivery.”