UK DATA ARCHIVE: IMPORTANT STUDY INFORMATION

Study Number 4498 - Family Resources Survey, 2000-2001


NEW EDITION INFORMATION

The third edition of this dataset contains the new grossing regime, GROSS 3.

DATA PROCESSING NOTES


Data Archive Processing Standards

The data were processed to the UK Data Archive's A standard. A rigorous and comprehensive series of checks was carried out to ensure the quality of the data and documentation.Firstly, checks were made that the number of cases and variables matched the depositor's records. Secondly, checks were made that all variables had variable labels and all nominal (categorical) variables had value labels. Where possible, either with reference to the documentation and/or in communication with the depositor, absent labels were created. Thirdly, logical checks were performed to ensure that nominal (categorical) variables had values within the range defined (either by value labels or in the depositor's documentation). Lastly, any data or documentation that breached confidentiality rules were altered or suppressed to preserve anonymity.

All notable and/or outstanding problems discovered are detailed under the 'Data and documentation problems' heading below.

Data and documentation problems

Date Variables:

In SAS format (in which the UKDA is supplied with the data) dates are held as a number representing the number of days elapsed since 1st January 1960. The value -1 is used to donate missing data. Upon conversion to SPSS, -1 is treated as the day before January 1st 1960, ie 31st December 1959. As a result, dates of 31.12.59 should be treated as missing data.

Missing Values:

Missing values within the SAS files are defined as A's, B's and C's and relate to 'Skipped, 'Refused' and 'Don't know'. In SPSS these can only be represented as negative numbers and are, therefore, assigned as -1, -8 and -9.

Useful Notes

The variables INDINC, BUINC and HHINC are derived variables and are composed of income from different sources. One of the components is income from self employment (SEINCAM2 and INCSEO2) and these can have negative values, therefore the variables derived using these components can also be negative.

File: transact.por.

This file contains information on the imputations and edits carried out by DWP. The information contained within it is meant to be used as an extension of the documentation and not for analysis.

Data conversion information

From January 2003 onwards, almost all data conversions have been performed using software developed by the UKDA. This enables standardisation of the conversion methods and ensures optimal data quality. In addition to its own data processing/conversion code, this software uses the SPSS and Stat/Transfer command processors to perform certain format translations. Although data conversion is automated, all data files are also subject to visual inspection by a UKDA data processing officer.

With some format conversions data, and more especially internal metadata (i.e. variable labels, value labels, missing value definitions, data type information), will inevitably be lost or truncated owing to the differential limits of the proprietary formats.A UKDA Data Dictionary file (in rich text format), corresponding to each data file, is usually provided for viewing and searching the internal metadata as it existed in the originating format. These files are called: [data file name]_UKDA_Data_Dictionary.rtf

Important information about the data format supplied

The links below provide important information about the format in which you have been supplied the data. Some of this information is specific to the ingest format of the data, that is the format in which the UKDA was supplied the data in. The ingest format for this study was SAS

Please click below to find out information about the format that you have been supplied the data in.

SPSS (*.por)

STATA (*.dta)
Tab-delimited text (*.tab)
MS Excel (*.xls files)
SAS (supplied as *.dat and *.sas)
MS Access (*.mdb files)

Conversion of documentation formats

Electronic and paper documentation supplied with this study is usually incorporated into the UKDA User Guide (in PDF format). The conversion programmes used are the latest versions of Adobe PDF Writer for electronic documentation and Adobe Paper Capture (Acrobat 'plugin' version) for paper documentation. Occasionally, someof the electronic documentation cannot be usefully converted to PDF (e.g. MS Excel files with wide worksheets) and this is supplied ina more appropriate format. All User Guides are fully bookmarked.