DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-7083-9
title: Understanding Society: Innovation Panel, Waves 1-10, 2008-2017: Special Licence Access
title: Understanding Society, 2008- : Special Licence Access
title: United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study; UKHLS

description: &lt;b&gt;Innovation Panel&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The Innovation Panel is designed for experimental and methodological research relevant to longitudinal surveys. As far as practical its design, content, and data collection procedures are similar to the main stage Understanding Society survey. It is a multi-topic household survey representative of the population of Great Britain. Data collection takes place annually using computer assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) and computer assisted web interviewing (CAWI). One person completes the household questionnaire. Each person aged 16 or older answers the individual adult interview, including and self-completion questionnaire. Young people aged 10 to 15 years are asked to respond to a paper self-completion questionnaire. The Innovation Panel has multiple experimental studies in which households are randomly assigned to a particular instrument or survey procedure. Experiments can relate to survey procedures, questionnaire design, or substantive social science questions. The experiments are described in the User Manual and in &lt;a href="https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/research/publications/working-papers" title="Understanding Society Working Papers"&gt;Understanding Society Working Papers&lt;/a&gt;. 
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There are two primary versions of the Innovation Panel data. One is available under the standard End User Licence (EUL) agreement (SN 6849), and the other is this Special Licence (SL) version (SN 7083). The SL version contains month and year of birth variables in addition to age, county variables, more detailed country and occupation coding for a number of variables; and various income variables have not been top-coded (see the documentation for more detail on the differences). In addition, there are a number of SL geographical datasets that are designed to be used in conjunction with the primary datasets. Prospective users of this SL version will need to complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables in order to get permission to use that version.
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For the eighth edition (June 2018), Wave 10 has been deposited with accompanying documentation, and Waves 1 to 9 redeposited with some data edits. See the documentation for details of the changes. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Understanding Society&lt;/i&gt; (UK Household Longitudinal Study), which began in 2009, is conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), at the University of Essex, and the survey research organisations are Kantar Public and NatCen. It builds on and incorporates, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which began in 1991. The latest release combines the first seven waves of Understanding Society data with harmonised data from all eighteen waves of the BHPS. As multi-topic studies, the purpose of Understanding Society and BHPS is to understand short- and long-term effects of social and economic change in the UK at the household and individual levels. The study has a strong emphasis on domains of family and social ties, employment, education, financial resources, and health.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
Understanding Society is an annual survey of each adult member of a nationally representative sample. The same individuals are re-interviewed in each wave approximately 12 months apart. When individuals move they are followed within the UK and anyone joining their households are also interviewed as long as they are living with them. The study has five sample components: the general population sample, a boost sample of ethnic minority group members, an immigrant and ethnic minority boost sample (from wave 6), participants from the BHPS and the Innovation Panel (which is a separate standalone survey (see SN 6849). The fieldwork period is for 24 months. Data collection primarily uses computer assisted personal interviewing (CAPI), but includes a telephone mop up, and from Wave 7 of Understanding Society, web-based interviews. One person completes the household questionnaire. Each person aged 16 or older participates in the individual adult interview and self-completed questionnaire. Youths aged 10 to 15 are asked to respond to a paper self-completion questionnaire. For the general and BHPS samples biomarker, genetic and epigenetic data are also available (see SN 7251). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Further information may be found on the &lt;a href="https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage" title="Understanding Society"&gt;Understanding Society&lt;/a&gt; main stage webpage and links to publications based on the study can be found on the Understanding Society &lt;a href="https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/research/publications"&gt;Latest Research&lt;/a&gt; webpage.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;b&gt;End User Licence, Special Licence and Secure Access versions&lt;/b&gt;:&lt;br&gt;
There are two versions of the main Understanding Society data. One is available under the standard End User Licence (EUL) agreement, and the other is a Special Licence (SL) version. The SL version contains month and year of birth variables instead of just age, more detailed country and occupation coding for a number of variables and various income variables have not been top-coded (see the documentation available with the SL version for more detail on the differences). Users are advised to first obtain the standard EUL version of the data to see if they are sufficient for their research requirements. The SL data have more restrictive access conditions; prospective users of the SL version will need to complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables in order to get permission to use that version. The SL versions of the main Understanding Society and Innovation Panel studies may be found under SNs 6931 and 7083 respectively. 
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Low- and Medium-level geographical identifiers are also available subject to SL access conditions; see SNs 6666, 6668-6675, 7182, 7453-4, 7629-30, 7245 and 7248-9 (mainstage study) and 6908-6916, 7339 and 7637-41 (Innovation Panel). In addition, a fine detail geographic dataset (SN 6676) is available under more restrictive Secure Access conditions that contains British National Grid postcode grid references (at 1m resolution) for the unit postcode of each household surveyed, derived from the ONS National Statistics Postcode Directory (NSPD). For details on how to make an application for Secure Access dataset, please see the SN 6676 catalogue record. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;b&gt;How to access genetic and/or bio-medical sample data from a range of longitudinal surveys:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;
A useful overview of the governance routes for applying for genetic and bio-medical sample data, which are not available through the UK Data Service, can be found at Governance of data and sample access on the &lt;a href="https://www.metadac.ac.uk/data-access-through-metadac&gt;&lt;/a&gt; title=" metadac"=""&gt;METADAC&lt;/a&gt; (Managing Ethico-social, Technical and Administrative issues in Data Access) website.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;