DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-5050-17
title: English Longitudinal Study of Ageing: Waves 0-8, 1998-2017
title: English Longitudinal Study of Ageing
title: ELSA

description: The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) is a longitudinal survey of ageing and quality of life among older people that explores the dynamic relationships between health and functioning, social networks and participation, and economic position as people plan for, move into and progress beyond retirement. The main objectives of ELSA are to:&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;construct waves of accessible and well-documented panel data;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;provide these data in a convenient and timely fashion to the scientific and policy research community;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;describe health trajectories, disability and healthy life expectancy in a representative sample of the English population aged 50 and over;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;examine the relationship between economic position and health;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;investigate the determinants of economic position in older age;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;describe the timing of retirement and post-retirement labour market activity; and &lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;understand the relationships between social support, household structure and the transfer of assets.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;Further information may be found on the &lt;a href="http://www.ifs.org.uk/elsa/" title="English Longitudinal Study of Ageing"&gt;Institute for Fiscal Studies: ELSA&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.natcen.ac.uk/series/english-longitudinal-study-of-ageing" title="ELSA"&gt;Natcen Social Research: ELSA&lt;/a&gt; web pages.&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt; &lt;i&gt;Wave 3 Life History Essays&lt;/i&gt;:&lt;br&gt; A set of 558 transcripts of short essays collected from respondents to the Wave 3 Life History Interview are available. The essays were written in response to section 3 of the Life History self-completion questionnaire, "Thinking back over your life, with its wide variety of enjoyable as well as difficult experiences, please write about three aspects of your life that have been especially important to you, and how they affected you."&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt; &lt;i&gt;How to access genetic and/or bio-medical sample data from a range of longitudinal surveys&lt;/i&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 &lt;a href="http://www.metadac.ac.uk/data-access-through-metadac/" title="Governance of data and sample access"&gt;Governance of data and sample access&lt;/a&gt; on the METADAC (Managing Ethico-social, Technical and Administrative issues in Data Access) web site.&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt; &lt;i&gt;Harmonised dataset:&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br&gt; The Harmonised dataset is originally compiled in Stata, and contains extra alphabetic missing value codes. An SPSS version is also deposited, but as SPSS does not accommodate alphabetic missing value codes in numeric variables, the codes have transferred as long numeric codes. While the missing values are fully labelled, users should be aware that only the Stata alphabetic codes are described in the documentation. Users who prefer to use the Stata version will need access to Stata SE/MP software, as the file contains over 2,047 variables (the limit for the standard Stata 'Intercooled' version). &lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt; &lt;i&gt;Latest edition of ELSA&lt;/i&gt;:&lt;br&gt;For the 30th edition (August 2019) the Wave 7 Technical Report was added to the documentation.&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt;