Questionnaire Session2

Session 2 Examples of Surveys page

EFFNATIS Research

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The British Household Panel Survey

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The BHPS Sample and Following Rules

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Additional Sub-samples

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The ECHP sub-sample

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Scotland and Wales Extension Samples

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Survey Instruments

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References

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Skill and Occupational Change

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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] Pakistani Indian

418 178 130

France:

Autochthonous Portuguese Maghrebian

286 212 218

Germany:

Autochthonous [German] Turkish Former-Yugoslavian

215 285 285

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;

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they allow an analysis of how conditions, life events, behaviour and values are linked with each other dynamically over time;

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they allow analysts to control for unobserved heterogeneity in cross-sectional models through difference analysis;

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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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•

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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 crosssectional 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 2-5

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.

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Additional sub-samples

Since the start of BHPS in 1991, a number of additional sub-samples have been added to the survey.

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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 2-6

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.

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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.

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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 2-7

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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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. 2-8

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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