Getting started with the Integrated Household Survey
1. Which dataset do I want?
The Integrated Household Survey (IHS) is an ongoing continuous survey. Annual datasets will be released every quarter on a rolling basis. The first dataset April 2009 - March 2010 became available in October 2010.
End User Licence and Special Licence IHS data
Users should note that there are two versions of the IHS study. One is available under the standard End User Licence (EUL) agreement, and the other is a Special Licence (SL) version. The SL version contains more detailed variables relating to age, age of youngest dependent child, country of birth, family unit type, household and household reference person, industry class, sub-class and division, month left last job, cohabitation, country of residence history, multiple households at address, nationality, New Deal training types, National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) long version, qualifications, household relationships, minor Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) groups, sexual identity, training and working age. The more detailed geographic variables present include county, unitary/local authority, Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 2 (NUTS2) and NUTS3 regions and Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs). Users should note that the user guide also mentions variables that are not included in either the EUL or SL datasets held at the Archive.
The EUL version contains less detailed variables. For example, the lowest geography available is Government Office Region, only major (3-digit) SOC groups are included for main, second and last job, and only industry sector for main, second and last job. Users are advised to first obtain the standard EUL version of the data to see if they are sufficient for their research requirements.
The SL data have more restrictive access conditions than those made available under the standard EUL. Prospective users of the SL version will need to complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables in order to get permission to use that version. Therefore, users are strongly advised to order the standard version of the data. In order to help users choose the correct dataset, 'Special Licence Access' has been added to the dataset titles for the SL versions of the data.
2. Consulting the documentation
It will not be possible to analyse the IHS 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
Further information about the IHS surveys may be found on the ONS web site.
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 IHS dataset from 2009-2010 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 IHS datasets page. IHS 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 IHS 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 Integrated Household Survey is also available.
8. Publishing
We need to let other researchers and data depositors know what publications are available using the IHS. 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.
