Getting started with the General Household Survey
1. Which dataset do I want?
The General Household Survey (GHS)
is an ongoing survey and is supplied annually. Annual datasets are available
for a period dating back to 1971. However, please note that data for 1971 is
only available as ASCII files and is not easily usable.
A number of GHS
teaching datasets are available for the 1979, 1987, 1991 and 1995 data and
have been prepared solely for the purpose of teaching and student use. Most
of the names of the variables and value labels are those used in the original
GHS files. However, some variables have been recoded for ease of use and may
vary from the original GHS data.
There are also two GHS time series
datasets, which combine annual GHS data over time: GHS
Time Series Dataset 1973-1982 and GHS
Time Series Dataset 1972-2004.
There are also a few datasets
which are related to the GHS, such as the 1994 GHS Follow-Up Survey of the
Health of People Aged 65 and Over.
2. Consulting the documentation
It will not be possible to analyse
the GHS 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 which variables are available
- information about how the data is coded
- the survey questionnaires
The survey questionnaires can also
be obtained on the Survey Question
Bank web site, which provides readily searchable versions of questionnaires
for all major surveys used by secondary analysts.
Further information about the GHS
surveys, results
and the GHS
Summary Quality Report, may be found on the ONS web site. (Summary Quality
Reports are produced for many major ONS social survey series, and include key
qualitative information, using six dimensions of quality previously defined
by Eurostat: relevance, accuracy, timeliness and punctuality, accessibility
and clarity, comparability and coherence.)
3. Explore the data online
A good way of starting to explore
the data is to look at the data in Nesstar
WebView.
Nesstar WebView is a data exploration
and analysis tool. It contains the GHS datasets from 1993-1994 onwards, as well
as some documentation about the data. Nesstar will allow you to look at univariate
frequencies and variable descriptions without registering for the data. This
is an excellent way of finding out whether the data are likely to be suitable
for your purposes. You can access Nesstar from the GHS datasets page. GHS datasets
that are available in this format have a Nesstar logo in the 'explore online'
column.
Once in Nesstar, click on the Help
tab in the top right hand corner of the screen to view a user guide.
Once you have registered with ESDS
you will be able to use Nesstar to its full potential, undertaking more complex
analyses and downloading subsets of data in a wide variety of formats.
4. 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 an entire file, or a subset of your choice, into a wider range
of formats via Nesstar Web
6. Analysing the data using an appropriate
analysis package
Because the GHS datasets are micro
data you will need to analyse them using an appropriate package.
You can undertake straightforward
analysis, including linear regression, on the whole dataset or a subset, using
Nesstar. However, it is not possible to produce derived variables or do more
advanced analyses using Nesstar; to do this you will need to use a 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 GHS. 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 General Household Survey is also available.
8. Publishing
We need to let other researchers and
data depositors know what publications are available using the GHS. 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.
