Understanding Society: Innovation Panel, Waves 1-17, 2008-2024: Secure Access, National Grid Reference (Easting, Northing, OSGRDIND)

<p><span style="font-style: italic;">Understanding Society</span>, (the 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 Verian Group (formerly Kantar Public) and NatCen. It builds on and incorporates, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which began in 1991.</p><p>The <span style="font-style: italic;">Understanding Society Innovation Panel</span> 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), web surveys and telephone interviewing (CATI) to a small extent. </p><p>For details of the main Understanding Society study, please see study numbers 6614 and 6676.</p>
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<p>For the Innovation Panel, 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 self-completion questionnaire. The Innovation Panel has multiple experimental studies in which households or individuals 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 Understanding Society Working Papers. Wave 12 included an experiment involving the collection of biomeasures by nurses, interviewers and respondents themselves. The biomeasures included in the experiment were: height, weight, blood pressure, venous and dried blood samples and hair samples. Biomarkers have been derived from the different blood and hair samples to compare analytes across sample types. Due to COVID-19 Waves 13 and 14 were implemented using computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and web surveys. Wave 15 included additional data on body measurements. Respondents were asked to install the BodyVolume app on their smartphone or tablet (iOS or Android) and use it after the interview to take two photos of themselves. The app used the body outlines along with profile information that the respondent entered in the app (age, sex, height, weight, level of activity) to calculate measures including waist and hip circumference, total body fat, visceral body fat, and lengths of different body parts. Wave 16 included an experiment asking parents of children aged under 16 to supply health related information from the child’s red book. Respondents were also asked to install the Sea Hero Quest app and play a game that measures spatial cognition.</p>
<p><b>Secure Access Dataset:</b></p>
<p>The Understanding Society: Innovation Panel, Waves 1-16, 2008-2023 dataset contains British National Grid postcode grid references (at 1m resolution) for each household surveyed, derived from the ONS National Statistics Postcode Directories (NSPD). Grid references are presented in terms of Eastings and Northings, which are distances in metres (east and north, respectively) from the origin (0,0), which lies to the west of the Scilly Isles. Each grid reference is given a positional quality indicator to denote the accuracy of the grid reference. In the majority of cases, the assigned grid reference relates to the building of the matched address closest to the postcode mean. No grid references are provided for postcodes in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.</p>
<p>The Secure Access version of Understanding Society: Innovation Panel 2008-2022 includes all files in the Special Licence version, plus files containing the 3 variables relating to the National Grid Reference for each household: Easting, Northing and positional quality indicator (OSGRDIND). All other files are the same as in the Special Licence version, which is held under SN 7083.</p>
<p><b>Related UK Data Archive studies:</b></p>
<p>The Secure Access version of the dataset has more restrictive access conditions than standard End User Licence or Special Licence access datasets (see 'Access' section). Further details and links to the less restrictive versions can be found on the Understanding Society series Key data page.</p>
<p><b>Latest edition information</b></p>
<p>For the 13th edition (April 2026) the BodyVolume app, file o_bviapp_ip, has been reinstated. The revisions documentation has also been updated.</p>
<p><b>Co-funders</b></p>
<p>In addition to the Economic and Social Research Council, co-funders for the study included the Department of Work and Pensions, the Department for Education, the Department for Transport, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Community and Local Government, the Department of Health, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly Government, the Northern Ireland Executive, the Department of Environment and Rural Affairs, and the Food Standards Agency.</p>
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