ONS Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, Covid-19 Module, 2020-2021: Secure Access

The <i>Opinions and Lifestyle Survey</i>, formerly known as <i>ONS Opinions Survey</i> or <i>Omnibus</i>, is a regular, multi-purpose survey which was carried out in eight months of the year until April 2005, from when it ran monthly. Following the ‘Fit for Future’ consultation carried out by ONS at the beginning of 2014, the decision was taken to revert to running the survey in eight months of the year, therefore, from April 2014 the survey will not run in the months of March, June, September or December. It started operating commercially in 1990 and was set up originally to meet the needs of government departments for a survey that used short and simple sets of questions, had greater statistical reliability than private sector omnibus surveys and a properly designed random sample. Now, however, an increasing number of academics are finding it a valuable research tool.<br> <br> The <i>Opinions and Lifestyle Survey</i> is used for a number of purposes, for example:<br> <ul><li>to provide quick answers to questions of immediate interest <br> <li>to provide information on topics that do not require a full survey<br> <li>to develop and pilot questions for other surveys <br> <li>to sift for subgroups that can be followed up in another survey</ul><i><b>History</b></i><br> From January 2008 the <i>ONS Omnibus Survey</i> changed its name to the <i>ONS Opinions Survey</i> (OPN) and became part of the <i>Integrated Household Survey</i> (IHS). As a result, certain classificatory variables were altered to harmonise with the rest of the surveys that form the IHS. For further information, see detailed breakdown of the changes contained within the documentation for 2008 studies onwards.<br> <br> Subsequently, in January 2010, the OPN component was dropped from the IHS due to only one individual per household being interviewed, while the IHS requires questions to be asked of all household members. This process significantly increased the length of the OPN interview and, therefore, OPN reverted back to interviewing one household member, but still contains questions harmonised to the IHS.<br> <br> From April 2012 the <i>ONS Opinions Survey</i> changed its name to the <i>Opinions and Lifestyle Survey</i> following the merger of the non-EU-SILC questions from the General Lifestyle Survey. <p>The aim of the <span style="font-style: italic;">ONS Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, Covid-19 Module, 2020-2021</span> study is to help understand the impact of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic on people, households and communities in Great Britain. It is a weekly survey initiated in March 2020. It is an ad-hoc household survey to measure the attitudes and behaviour towards the Covid-19 in general. The study allows the breakdown of impacts by at-risk age, gender and underlying health condition.</p><p>The weekly samples were randomly selected from those that had previously completed other ONS surveys (e.g., <span style="font-style: italic;">Labour Market Survey</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Annual Population Survey</span>).  From each household, one adult was randomly selected but with unequal probability: younger people were given higher selection probability than older people because of under-estimation in the samples available for the survey.<br><br>For the fourth edition (November 2021), data from Wave AU (February 2021) to Wave BB (April 2021) have been added. The documentation has also been updated to reflect the extended time period.<br><br></p>