From April 2020 participants from our main Understanding Society sample have been asked to complete a short web-survey. This survey covers the changing impact of the pandemic on the welfare of UK individuals, families and wider communities. Participants complete a regular survey, which includes core content designed to track changes, alongside variable content adapted as the coronavirus situation develops. Researchers will be able to link the data from this web survey to answers respondents have given in previous (and future) waves of the annual Understanding Society survey.

Understanding Society (the UK Household Longitudinal Study), which began in 2009, is conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex, and the survey research organisations Verian Group (formerly Kantar Public) and NatCen. It builds on and incorporates, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which began in 1991.

The Understanding Society COVID-19 Study is a regular survey of households in the UK. The aim of the study is to enable research on the socio-economic and health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the short and long term. The surveys started in April 2020 and took place monthly until July 2020. From September they took place every other month until March 2021 and the final wave was fielded in September 2021. They complement the annual interviews of the Understanding Society study.

This dataset contains Census 2011 Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOA) geographic variables for the Understanding Society COVID-19 study.

A file is provided for each wave of the Understanding Society COVID-19 study to date, containing the Census 2011 Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOA) geographic variable and a personal identification serial number (pidp) for file matching to the main Understanding Society COVID-19 study (https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/studies/study?id=8644">SN 8644). There are two types of waves: web waves have a filename postfix of _w and telephone waves have a filename postfix of _t.

In addition, this study also contains Census 2011 LSOA geographic variables that can be matched to a dataset released with the main Understanding Society COVID-19 study containing data taken from waves 10 and 11 of the main Understanding Society survey, specifically for the respondents in the COVID-19 study. This file is named jk_lsoa11_cv and as well as the LSOA11 geographic variable, it also contains a personal identification serial number (pidp) and a household identification serial number for both wave 10 (j_hidp) and wave 11 (k_hidp). Further details can be found in the Understanding Society COVID-19 User Guide.

Additional information can be found on the https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/topic/covid-19">Understanding Society COVID-19 website, including https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/covid-19">Data documentation. A list of https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/research/publications/subject/Covid%2019">Understanding Society COVID-19 Research Outputs (regularly updated) is also available.

New edition information
For the seventh edition (December 2021), the new data file for wave 9 has been deposited.