DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-5151-2
title: British Household Panel Survey: Waves 1-18, 1991-2009
title: British Household Panel Survey, 1991-2009
title: BHPS

description: &lt;p class="MsoBodyText"&gt;The British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) ran for 18 waves, from 1991-2009, and was conducted by the ESRC UK Longitudinal Studies Centre (ULSC), together with the &lt;a href="https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/" title="Institute for Social and Economic Research"&gt;Institute for Social and Economic Research&lt;/a&gt; (ISER) at the University of Essex. The ULSC, established in 1999, was a continuation of the research resource component of the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change (MISOC), established in 1989. In addition to running panel studies, ISER undertakes a programme of research based on panel data, using &lt;a href="https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/understanding-society" title="Understanding Society"&gt;Understanding Society&lt;/a&gt;, the BHPS and other national panels to monitor and measure social change. &lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt; The main objective of the BHPS was 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 were re-interviewed in successive waves and, if they left their original households, all adult members of their new households were also interviewed. Children were interviewed once they reach the age of 16; there was 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 formed 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). &lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt; Further information may be found on the ISER &lt;a href="https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/bhps"&gt;BHPS&lt;/a&gt; webpages.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="MsoBodyText"&gt;For the eighth edition (October 2018) all data files were replaced with new versions. The main changes are: a) the addition to the main dataset of net income variables, previously released separately; b) the addition of variables to assist linkage to the Understanding Society dataset (SN 6614) which includes BHPS sample members; c) some enhancements to data included in the XWAVEDAT file, and d) a range of data corrections mainly from user comments: these include limited corrections to income data, fixing issues with employment history and occupation data at wave 18 and some issues with weights. Volume A of the documentation has been updated to provide further details on the changes. This edition also splits the previous SN 5151 into an End User Licence (EUL) / Special Licence split to reflect Understanding Society. The variables excluded from the EUL version relate to month of birth (day of birth is not included in either version), full occupation codes, rare country of birth / nationality occurrences, and the full urban-rural classification. Data users should also note that the income variables have been top-coded for the EUL release.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;