Getting started with the Individual Income Series
1. Which dataset do I want?
There are seven datasets in the Individual Income Series (IIS). The data are available for the years 1996/97, 1997/98, 1998/99 and 2004/05, 2005/06, 2006/07 and 2007/08.
2. Consulting the documentation
It will not be possible to analyse the IIS 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
Note that the data are derived directly from the Family Resources Survey (FRS) (available through ESDS under GN 33283) and the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) (available at ESDS under SN 5828) so relevant documentation can be found on the web pages of those survey series.
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 website.
Registered users can download/order a large and increasing number of datasets direct from the web site (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.
4. Downloading the data
Once registered, you can download the data directly as a zipped ASCII, STATA or SPSS file. This download also includes some documentation, although you may additionally need to consult the documentation for the surveys from which the IIS data was derived: the Family Resources Survey (FRS) (available from ESDS under GN 33283) and the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) (available from ESDS under SN 5828).
5. Analysing the data using an appropriate analysis package
Because the IIS datasets are microdata you will need to analyse them using an appropriate package. 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 Health Survey for England 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.
6. 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 IIS. 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.
7. Publishing
We need to let other researchers and data depositors know what publications are available using the IIS. 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.
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