UCL CeLSIUS Blogs
Who will fill in the internet census?
A blog on the UCL CeLSIUS website by Oliver Duke-Williams
“This weekend (Sunday March 21, 2021) we will all be asked to fill in our census forms. There’s a key difference this time: the Office for National Statistics, which runs the operation, is aiming for at least 75 per cent of our returns to be submitted online, and the early signs are that millions of people have already responded.” Published on March 19th, 2021
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/linking-our-lives/2021/03/19/who-will-fill-in-the-internet-census/
The ONS Longitudinal Study: how does it work?
A blog on the UCL CeLSIUS website by Nicola Shelton
“Back in the late 1960s there was concern that policymakers had too little information about births and deaths: death certificates recorded only limited information and even the occupation of the deceased could be recorded inconsistently. Similarly it was impossible to use information from birth registrations to look at patterns of fertility – how were children spaced within families, for instance? And so the ONS Longitudinal Study was born.” Published on March 18th, 2021
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/linking-our-lives/2021/03/18/the-ons-longitudinal-study-how-does-it-work/
The 2021 Census: What will it tell us about life after Covid-19?
A blog on the UCL CeLSIUS website by Nicola Shelton
“When the 2021 census was first planned, we thought some of the biggest research questions to emerge from it would be around the effects of Brexit. But while those are still live, researchers and others will be watching with interest to see what this snapshot of Britain in 2021 will tell us about the effects of Covid-19.” Published on March 9th, 2021.
CeLSIUS have produced a research brief outlining how the ONS LS can be used to identify Windrush migrants in England and Wales. This revealed statistics such as:
- In 2011 there were around 1,735 Windrush migrants who had entered the country as children prior to 1971 and who did not hold any passport
- Overall 3,744 Windrush migrants were identified who did not hold any passport
The brief also highlights how the ONS LS could be used for more in-depth research on the Windrush migrant population.
Download the Research Brief (PDF 335KB)
For more information on this topic get in touch with CeLSIUS: celsius@ucl.ac.uk
(download as a PDF 958kB)
Overview
The Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study, ONS Longitudinal Study (England and Wales), and Scottish Longitudinal Study include a vast range of data relevant to many different types of research question. Their combination of administrative, census and health data across time make them a rich and unique set of resources. Examples of the types of research enabled by these features of the LSs include: The role of subject choices in secondary education on further education studies and labour market outcomes and Population characteristics of stigma, condition disclosure and chronic health conditions.
As an exploration of the many ways in which the LSs have been used, CALLS have conducted an analysis of the journal papers produced by LS researchers.
This citation analysis demonstrates the impressive range of academic fields to which LS-based research has contributed in the last 6 years. Research featured in almost 60 journals, and spanned more than 40 Scopus subject categories.
Research based on the LSs is regularly published in top quality international peer reviewed journals such as Demography, the International Journal of Epidemiology and Population, Space and Place. Fifteen papers in the citation analysis were published in journals ranked within the top 5 for their field (articles ranked by SJR Impact Rating for the relevant subject category in the publication year).
LS | n papers published | Total citation count |
| NILS | 29 | 119 (avg 4.1) |
| ONS LS | 51 | 264 (avg 5.2) |
| SLS | 32 | 259 (avg 8.1) |
| All LSs | 106 | 588 (avg 5.6) |
Papers had excellent citation rates indicating the acknowledgement of the unique contributions LS data offer. Papers published within the last 2-3 years were amongst the most highly cited. Eighteen papers had been cited 10 or more times.
The subject areas of papers using the LSs reflect the strengths of the data that they offer: SLS and NILS had a higher proportion of health-related papers, likely due to their excellent linkages with health data. Looking at subject categories for the LSs also reflect these variations: whilst the categories were very similar, ONS LS’s top 5 included ‘Demography’, whereas the SLS and NILS included ‘Health(social science)’.
Overall the analysis shows the valuable contribution of the NILS, ONS LS and SLS to a diverse range of academic fields including medicine, demography, geography, economics, business, psychology, environmental science and more.
Although we only focus on publications in academic journals here, LS research has considerable impact in other formats such as briefing notes, books and presentations to government, and has also formed part of a variety of PhD Theses. The full list of outputs can be explored in our Outputs database.
The raw data for the analysis can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.
Methods
Using the CALLS Hub outputs database a total of 106 published papers from the period January 2010 – May 2016 were identified from the three LSs. It should be noted that whilst CALLS and the RSUs actively solicit LS users to record all outputs, and also conducts literature searches to maximise capture, it is possible that some further papers exist.
All papers published in journals or regularly produced official publications – such as ONS Population Trends – were included. We did not include working papers in this analysis. Citation counts were gathered from Scopus, taking the final counts as of 30 June 2016. Impact Factors were taken from the Scopus project SCImago using the SJR2 indicator.
Results
The LSs combined
Of the 106 papers identified, 16 were from non-peer-reviewed journals such as Population Trends. Four papers used more than one LS for their analysis. (see figure 1)
figure 1. Number of published papers per LS, Jan 2010 – May 2016. n = 106
Papers from the three LSs were published in a total of 59 different journals, spanning 41 SCImago Subject Categories in 11 Subject Areas (figure 2). SJR Impact Factors for the papers ranged from 0.128 to 9.893, with an average of 1.577.
figure 2: Number of LS papers published by SCImago Subject Area [CLICK TO ENLARGE]
The 5 most frequent subject categories for LS papers were:
- Public Health, Environment & Occupational Health (30 papers)
- Medicine(misc) (25 papers)
- Geography, Planning & Development (20 papers)
- Epidemiology (17 papers)
- Health(social science) (16 papers)
The ten most cited papers from the three LSs were:
Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study
During the period January 2010 to May 2016, a total of 29 journal papers were found which had used NILS data, including one paper which had used all 3 LSs. Five NILS publications appeared journals with top-5 ranked impact factor.
NILS journal papers were published in 18 different journals, spanning 8 SCImago Subject Areas and 22 Subject Categories (see below). SJR Impact Factors for the papers ranged from 0.219 to 4.381, with an average of 1.632.
figure 3: Number of NILS papers published by SCImago Subject Area [CLICK TO ENLARGE]
The 5 most frequent subject categories for NILS papers were:
- Public Health, Environmental & Occupational Health (11 papers)
- Geography, Planning & Development (7 papers)
- Health(social science) (7 papers)
- Epidemiology (6 papers)
- Medicine(misc) (5 papers)
The 10 most cited NILS papers were:
ONS LS
During the period in question, 51 journal papers were identified as having been produced from ONS LS projects (including 4 papers which also used other LSs). Of these, 14 appeared in non peer-reviewed journals. Seven papers appeared in top-5 ranked journals.
ONS LS papers appeared in 33 journals, and covered 20 SCImago Subject Categories in 7 Subject Areas. SJR Impact Factors for ONS LS papers ranged from 0.128 to 9.893 with an average of 1.453.
figure 4: Number of ONS LS papers published by SCImago Subject Area [CLICK TO ENLARGE]
The most frequent subject categories in which ONS LS papers appeared were:
- Medicine(misc) (14 papers)
- Public Health, Environmental & Occupational Health (11 papers)
- Epidemiology (8 papers)
- Geography, Planning & Development (7 papers)
- Demography (7 papers)
The most cited ONS LS papers were:
Scottish Longitudinal Study
During the period January 2010 – May 2016, 32 SLS-based journal papers were identified (including 4 papers which also used other LSs). Of these, 2 appeared in non peer-reviewed journals. Three papers were published in top-5 ranked journals.
The SLS papers were published in 26 different journals, spanning 23 SCImago Subject Categories in 8 Subject Areas. Impact Factors for the papers ranged from 0.226 to 5.667, with an average of 1.6.
figure 5: Percentage of SLS papers published by SCImago Subject Area [CLICK TO ENLARGE]
SLS papers appeared most frequently under the following subject categories:
- Public Health, Environmental & Occupational Health (9 papers)
- Medicine(misc) (8 papers)
- Geography, Planning & Development (6 papers)
- Health(social science) (5 papers)
- Epidemiology (3 papers)
The 10 most cited SLS papers were:
Explore the full database of LS outputs
Raw data (Excel, 82kB)
On Friday 18th March we held the largest of our UK LS Roadshows to date and we hope the audience enjoyed the day as much as we did.
The first part of the Roadshow showcased research examples from all three LSs – the Scottish Longitudinal Study, Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study and ONS LS, and you can download slides here:
| Pathways between socioeconomic disadvantage and growth in the Scottish Longitudinal Study, 1991-2001 (PDF 4MB) Dr Richard Silverwood, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine |
| Ethnic differences in intragenerational social mobility between 1971 and 2011 Dr Saffron Karlsen, University of Bristol |
| Are Informal Caregivers in Northern Ireland more likely to suffer from Anxiety and Depression? A Northern Ireland Longitudinal (NILS) Data Linkage-Study Dr Stefanie Doebler, Queen’s University Belfast |
On Nov 10th, our UK LS Roadshow moved to Bristol as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science.
The first part of our Roadshow showcased some of the different types of research that the ONS LS for England & Wales has been used for, and you can download the slides here:
| Family size and educational attainment in England and Wales Prof Tak Wing Chan, University of Warwick |
| Overall and Cause-specific Mortality differences by Partnership status in 21st Century England and Wales (PDF 645 kB) Sebastian Franke, University of Liverpool |
| Ethnic differences in intragenerational social mobility between 1971 and 2011 Dr Saffron Karlsen, University of Bristol |
On October 26th and 28th CALLS Hub hosted two exciting roadshow events in Aberdeen and Glasgow to promote the UK Census-based Longitudinal Studies. The events were well attended and feedback from the audience was very enthusiastic! It was great to be able to share our excitement about the potential of the datasets.
The first part of our Roadshows showcased some of the different types of research that the Scottish Longitudinal Study has been used for, and you can download the slides here:
| Protective effects of nurses’ health literacy: evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study Dr Ian Atherton, Edinburgh Napier University |
| NEETs in Scotland: a longitudinal analysis of health effects of NEET experience (PDF 5MB) Dr Zhiqiang Feng, University of Edinburgh |
| Population Ageing in Scotland: Implications for Healthcare Expenditure Projections (PDF 312kB) Dr Claudia Geue, University of Glasgow |
| How spatial segregation changes over time: sorting out the sorting processes (PDF 285kB) Prof Nick Bailey, University of Glasgow |
| Using the Scottish Longitudinal Study to analyse social inequalities in school subject choice (PDF 766kB) Prof Cristina Ianelli, University of Edinburgh |
| Inequalities in young adults’ access to home-ownership in Scotland: a widening gap? (PDF 1MB) Prof Elspeth Graham, University of St Andrews |
Rachel Stuchbury of CeLSIUS and Kevin Ralston of SLS-DSU share their reflections on this years excellent BSPS conference at the University of Winchester.
BSPS 14 from the England & Wales perspective
Rachel Stuchbury, CeLSIUS
Four CeLSIUS staff attended BSPS and promptly dispersed among the six simultaneous sessions available – going to BSPS entails making hard choices among so many tempting possibilities. Did we sneak off and rubber-neck our way round beautiful Winchester at all? If so, we are certainly not going to admit it.
But you’ll be asking – did we give any presentations? No, not one. We claim this is because we are worker bees rather than honey bees (and definitely not queens). OK, we did muster three posters between us. But personally I spent much time listening admiringly to my SLS and NILS colleagues, a dazzlingly bright lot and a shining example to the rest of us. How they get all that research done as well as supporting large numbers of user-led projects is a mystery.
In addition, of course, we CeLSIUS types sigh with envy at the expanding array of interesting data being linked to SLS and NILS, unlike the dear old LS which hasn’t had a new type of data linked for many decades. (But watch this space, there are agents provocateurs at work.)
On the positive side I was also able to admire presentations of many LS projects which have been supported by CeLSIUS. I’ve lost count but there were around eight of them and all of a quality that would make the heart of any worker bee swell with pride. Which is not to say that I always understood them – some of these young PhD students can pronounce three- and even four-syllable words while simultaneously using a screen pointer, they will certainly all be professors one day and let’s hope they still remember and love the Longitudinal Studies then. But signs are good; it was gratifying to hear the three Studies mentioned so frequently. Apart from in-house events I’ve never been to a gathering where such a high proportion of attenders appeared to know about them.
Will we be going to BSPS next year? You bet. Wherever it is, and whatever the weather’s like, we’ll be there. We might even manage to stand up and say something.
Rachel Stuchbury
Second time at the BSPS
Kevin Ralston, SLS-DSU
This year saw another successful British Society for Population Studies conference from the point of view of the Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS) research group. I managed see a bit of the historic town of Winchester on the afternoon of the conference dinner. A combination of the weather, the beautiful location, the convenient transport links together with the spellbinding scientific output on show made this one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended.
As usual many of our team were involved across all stands of activities at the conference. I presented: Assessing the potential impact of markers of social support on levels of ‘excess’ mortality in Scotland and Glasgow compared to elsewhere in the UK from a project involving Zhiqiang Feng, Chris Dibben and David Walsh at the Scottish Public Health Observatory.
Dr Beata Nowok presented: Generating synthetic microdata to widen access to sensitive data sets: method, software and empirical examples. This project also involved Gillian Raab and Chris Dibben, and Dr Nowok showcased the results of the SYLLS project which, amongst other things, provides and curates the R package ‘synthpop’ that generates anonymous synthetic data. This is particularly useful for anyone involved teaching and projects using sensitive data.
Dr Zhiqiang Feng gave a presentation entitled The long‐term impacts of NEET experiences on health: evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study. This is part an ongoing project for the Scottish Government and involves me, and Chris Dibben.
There were also two SLS posters on show, with Dr Lee Williamson hosting the Progress and developments of the Digitising Scotland (DS) Project poster. Meanwhile, Susan Carlsey presented An Introduction to the Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS).
In addition to these contributions Dr Zhiqiang Feng, in conjunction with Celia Macintyre from the National Records of Scotland, also ran a training session in How to analyse UK census flow data.
This sample of output illustrates what an outstanding year it has been for the team and we look forward to next year’s conference where the continued development of our work should mean we maintain a large presence.
Kevin Ralston
Note: Information on all SLS, NILS and ONS LS presentations and posters from BSPS 2014 can be found in our outputs database
Adam Dennett (CeLSIUS and CASA, UCL) recently featured in an episode of The Global Lab and discussed his work with Census data and the Synthetic Data Estimation for the UK Longitudinal Studies (SYLLS) project.
You can hear or download the podcast on Soundcloud
On Thursday 6th March 2014 CALLS Hub organised a very successful launch event to mark the linkage of 2011 Census data to the UK LSs on behalf of the LSs, ONS, NISRA, NRS and ESRC. This was held at Church House, Westminster, and over the day a total of 120 people attended.
A special morning event was introduced by Prof Paul Boyle (CEO of ESRC), and the linkage officially announced by Sir Andrew Dilnot (Chair, UK Statistics Authority). We were honoured to hear how highly regarded the LSs are held.
You can see some of the tweets from the day in our Storify roundup, and speaker slides and handouts from the day can be downloaded below.
Morning session
- Delegate list (PDF 2MB)
- Programme (PDF 2MB)
- 2011 Census Data link to the LSs: The Potential for Policy and Influence – Dr Ian Shuttleworth, Director, NILS-RSU (PDF 2MB)
- Using the ONS LS for research on ethnicity and social mobility – Prof Lucinda Platt, Director, Millennium Cohort Study, Professor of Sociology, LSE (PDF 8MB)
Afternoon session
- Delegate list (PDF 2MB)
- Programme (PDF 2MB)
- Beta-test Posters (PDF 4MB)
- Introduction to the UK LS & Census 2011 Data Linkage – Dr Nicola Shelton, Director, CeLSIUS (PDF )
- New LS Developments and Official Announcement of CALLS Hub – Prof Chris Dibben, Director, Longitudinal Studies Centre Scotland, PI Census & Administrative data LongitudinaL Studies Hub (PDF MB)
- Synthetic Data Estimation for the UK Longitudinal Studies (SYLLS) – Dr Adam Dennett, Lecturer, CASA, UCL (PDF 6MB)
- Are we becoming more migratory? An analysis of internal migration rates, 1971- 2011 – Prof Tony Champion, Newcastle University (PDF 234KB)
- Social and economic transitions and their effect on young people’s health and social wellbeing – Dr Mark McCann, Queen’s University Belfast (PDF 23KB)
- Characteristics of and living arrangements amongst informal carers at the 2011 and 2001 censuses: stability, change and transition – Dr James Robards, University of Southampton (PDF 82KB)
- Does religious exogamy (mixed marriage) increase the risk of marital dissolution in Northern Ireland? – Dr David Wright, Queen’s University Belfast (PDF 105KB)
- Inter-cohort trends in intergenerational mobility in England and Wales: income, status, and class (InTIME) – Dr Franz Buscha, University of Westminster (PDF 27KB)
Adam Dennett, UCL
As we head into a new year, we draw closer to the end of the SYLLS project. Starting in April 2013, the project has been run as a joint venture between the three Longitudinal Studies Research Support Units (RSUs) and the CALLS-Hub, with the aim of generating Synthetic Longitudinal data which are not subject to the same access restrictions as the real Census-based longitudinal microdata for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The project has been split between teams based at CeLSIUS at UCL and the SLS-DSU in Edinburgh / St Andrews. The London team have been tasked with generating the ‘Synthetic Spine’ dataset. This is a partial replication of the full set of individuals contained in the 1991 LSs of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, who then were also enumerated in the 2001 Census. The replication is partial as we have not attempted to synthesise every variable contained in the LSs for every individual, rather we have focused on a selection of some of the most frequently requested variables in previous LS-based research projects (age, sex, ethnicity, health, births, deaths, geography).
In order to generate the synthetic spine dataset, we have used publicly available data from the 1991 Samples of Anonymised records (SARs) as our base. The SARs are similar to the LSs in that they are microdata records and so are prefect for this task. A bespoke microsimulation model has been built by Belinda Wu to generate the synthetic spine from the SARs data. We began with England and Wales: A baseline population for the 1991 synthetic LS was generated by constraining aggregated (local authority) area level from the SARs to similar area level data from the LS using the tried-and-tested iterative proportional fitting technique – individuals were then sampled from this new data set to build our synthetic LS population. Once the 1991 baseline population is created, transitional probabilities are calculated from the LS to age our simulated individuals on 10 years and give them the same characteristics that we would see for those LS members enumerated in both the 1991 and 2001 Censuses.
The England and Wales LS Synthetic Spine is now complete; we are currently working on finishing a similar dataset for the SLS and will soon be tackling the Northern Ireland LS. Northern Ireland is a slightly different case as the 1991 to 2001 link has not yet been completed, but as the NILS sample is around a quarter of the resident population, the aggregate distributions are likely to be very similar to the distributions for the full Census. We will therefore use the 1991 Census distributions to generate our 1991 baseline and calculate the transitions to 2001 using our microsimulation software as soon as the link project is complete.
While the London team have been beavering away on the synthetic spine, the team based in Scotland have been working feverishly on the other half of the synthetic project. The second half of the project is approaching the generation of synthetic data from a different angle entirely: rather than attempting to create a large, general use dataset, here we are tailoring synthetic data to the individual needs of the user. Very soon, if you formulate a project and submit a request to access data from any of the national LSs, you will be asked if you would like to also receive a bespoke, fully synthetic version of your specific data request to work with as you wish on your own computer – something which is not possible with the real data.
The bespoke data are generated using a new R package called ‘synthpop’ developed by Beata Nowok and Gillian Raab in the Scotland team. Synthpop is a multiple synthesis package which allows user support officers to quickly generate fully synthetic versions of the data requested by the user. The data are generated through a series of models which estimate the values of one variable from the values of all others in the dataset sequentially. One of the benefits of this approach is that the resulting data are statistically equivalent to the real data, despite containing no real values.
We are now in the process of testing the synthpop package, with the Edinburgh team coming to visit London and the ONS LS virtual microdata lab to train the CeLSIUS user support officers and test the package on different data. A similar visit to Belfast and the NILS-RSU ‘safe-setting’ is scheduled shortly after that.
On the 6th of March we will be very excited to launch both Synthetic data products at the UK LS 2011 Census Linkage Launch event, and we hope to be able to provide user access to both the synthetic spine and bespoke synthetic tabulations very shortly afterwards.
