SN:3242  Family Expenditure Survey 1993

Users should note that the last three quarters of this year's data overlap
with the first three quarters of SN:3280 FES 1993-94.  FES 1993 runs from
January to December 1993 and FES 1993-94 runs from April 1993 to March 
1994.  Users can identify respondents from the different quarters using
variable A099 in both of these datasets.


COMMUNITY CHARGE DATA

During the anonymisation of the 1993 calender year data an incorrect conversion
list was used at the point at which the FES local authority codes are mapped
onto the DSS local authority codes. Households were thus allocated an incorrect
council tax level because they were allocated to an incorrect local authority
group.

The nature of the error was to scamble the anonymised values of the local
authority code and council tax level. This appears to have happened in a
non-systematic way and appears to have had an effectively random effect. The
impact on averages and aggregates has therefore been very slight: The impact on
some specific anayses that have been carried out by the DSS has been shown to
be minimal, and this is also likely to be true for the other anayses.


Users should note the following in relation to these files:

1. The files can be matched into the main dataset using the variable CASENO
   which is the case number.

2. In order to protect the anonymity of the responding households, CSO have
   taken the average community charge over several local authorities with
   similar community charges and averaged them.

3. DSS_CODE is the DSS local authority grouping - any cases with the same
   value for this are included in the same group.

4. AVG_CT_B is the average community charge for the DSS group. CSO calculations
   for the data use the community charge rates set by local authorities for
   each financial year.  Therefore the calculation of the average grouped
   community charges will vary between the first quarter (January to March) and
   the other three quarters April to December).

5. Any household interviewed in the first quarter will have community charge
   data consistent with households who were interviewed in the second, third
   and fourth quarters of the previous year.

6. AVG_WATE is the average community water charge for the DSS group.

7. There are three case nos (141652, 141676 and 141679) where the interview
   date fell in April 1994. These casenos should be treated as cases from the
   1993-94 dataset as they were sampled in March 1994, therefore these cases
   are included in the 93/94 data.

UK DA, September 2001