Getting started with the English Housing Survey
1. Which dataset do I want?
The English Housing Survey (EHS) is an annual dataset and is available from 2008-09 onwards.
The English Housing Survey, 2008-2009: Household Data comprises the full interview data (plus associated derived variables) for all cases where an interview has been completed. The interview topics include: household characteristics, satisfaction with the home and the area, disability and adaptations to the home, work done to the property and income details..Datasets are provided for single financial years together with annual weights. This dataset should be used for any analysis where only information from the household interview is required. Users who also require data from the physical survey should use English Housing Survey, 2008: Housing Stock Data below.
The English Housing Survey, 2008: Housing Stock Data is available for all cases where a physical survey has been completed and for occupied cases comprises data from the household interview as well as data from the physical survey and market value survey. For vacant properties only data for the physical survey and market value survey is provided. The data is made available for a two year rolling sample i.e. approximately 16,000 cases together with the appropriate 2-year weights. For example, the first EHS Housing Stock dataset are for ‘2008’ covering the period April 2007 to March 2009. The Housing Stock dataset should be used for any analysis requiring information relating to the physical characteristics and energy efficiency of the housing stock.
2. Consulting the documentation
It will not be possible to analyse the EHS without reference to the documentation. Documentation is available for viewing before downloading/ordering the data, however you will also obtain the documentation if you download the data as a zipped file. The documentation contains:
- information about how the survey was carried out
- information about which variables are available
- information about how the data is coded
- the survey questionnaires
3. Registering for the data
Once you have decided which data to use for your project you will need to register with ESDS to obtain the data. Information about obtaining data can be found on the ESDS web site.
Registered users can download/order a large and increasing number of datasets direct (usually in SPSS, STATA or tab-delimited formats) via its online catalogue record and via the download/order section of the Major Studies web pages.
5. Downloading the data
Once registered, you may either:
- download the data directly as a zipped ASCII, STATA or SPSS file. This download will also include necessary documentation
- download certain SEH files (see point 3), or a subset of your choice, into a wider range of formats via Nesstar Light
6. Analysing the data using an appropriate analysis package
Because the EHS datasets are microdata you will need to analyse them using an appropriate package,
like SPSS, STATA or SAS.
If you are unfamiliar with these packages you can find a STATA guide on the ESDS Government pages which uses examples from the Labour Force Survey. A guide to SPSS is also available, based on the HSE 2002 teaching dataset. Several organisations offer introductory SPSS and STATA courses. CCSR at the University of Manchester offers one-day courses although there is a charge. Details of these courses can be obtained through the CCSR Short Course Pages.
7. Communicating with other users and obtaining support
The ESDS-govsurveys JISCmail list is an email list you can join to hear about events and other news relating to the large-scale government list, including the EHS. To join the list click on the above link to the ESDS-govsurveys list web page or email listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with the following message:
subscribe esds-govsurveys firstname secondname
If you hit a problem with the data while doing your work feel free to contact us. Queries relating to the large-scale government datasets should be sent to:
govsurveys@esds.ac.uk
Alternatively you can telephone +44 (0)161 275 1980.
A list of Frequently Asked Questions for the Housing surveys is also available.
8. Publishing
We need to let other researchers and data depositors know what publications are available using the SEH and the EHS. If you publish using the data, please contact us at govsurveys@esds.ac.uk and give us details of your publication. If you would be happy for us to publish something on our web site, for example the research story on smoking, please let us know.
Data collectors and distributors should be acknowledged in publications.
