Research Blog
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.
Published on May 11th, 2021
Windrush migrants in the ONS Longitudinal Study
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
Published on June 25th, 2018
CALLS Hub conference, Friday March 23rd 2018
On Friday 23rd March, we hosted a very successful conference in St Andrews. The goals of the conference were to celebrate what CALLS Hub has achieved in the last 5.5 years by bringing together the 3 UK Census-based Longitudinal Studies, and also to showcase the next generation of young researchers who are using the Studies. We finished the day with an inspiring and challenging discussion panel session from four speakers drawn from experts in the fields of Local Authority research, academic research, charitable organisations and generating impact.
Below you will find a downloadable version of the conference booklet as well as links through to the abstracts of the talks. Many of these already include downloadable copies of the presentation slides.
- CONFERENCE BOOKLET (PDF 2MB)
- Mark McCann ‘Health Inequalities, economic transitions and multimorbidity in Northern Ireland’
- Megan Yates ‘Inequalities in rates of amenable mortality by individual socioeconomic position’
- Matthew Wallace ‘Can the salmon bias effect explain the migrant mortality advantage in England and Wales?’
- Tanya Wilson ‘Long-run Health and Mortality Effects of Exposure to Universal Health Care at Birth’
- Jennifer Thomson ‘Are people healthier when they live closer to forests? A longitudinal study of Scotland’
- Adriana Duta ‘Inequalities in school leavers’ labour market outcomes: do school subject choices matter? Evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study’
- Wei Xun ‘Exploring the economic outcomes of young people Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) in England and Wales using the Longitudinal Study’
- Matthew Iveson ‘Childhood cognitive function and later-life economic activity: Linking the Scottish Mental Survey 1947 to administrative data’
- Evan Williams ‘Neighbourhood Effects and Occupational Mobility in Scotland: limits to the ‘tenure-split’ approach’
- Mark Livingston ‘The processes of poverty decentralisation: evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study 1991-2011’
- Carolina Zuccotti ‘Ethnicity and neighbourhood attainment in England and Wales’
- Deborah Hyden ‘Migration Between Identity (In)congruent Places and its Effects on the Wellbeing of a Northern Irish Sample’
- Brad Campbell ‘Internal Migration in a Religiously Segregated Society, the case of Northern Ireland 1981-2011’
Video filmed and edited by Helen Packwood of the Population & Health Research Group, St Andrews University
Published on April 5th, 2018
Video presentations now available from SLS 10th anniversary event
The SLS-DSU YouTube channel now has presentations from the SLS 10th Anniversary Event held in Edinburgh on 7 Dec 2017. The videos have also now been embedded into each output entry in our database:
Introducing the Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS) – Dr Robin Frost, NRS SLS Project Manager
Introducing the ONS Longitudinal Study (ONS LS) – Dr Oliver Duke-Williams, Senior Lecturer, Department of Information Studies, UCL
Introducing Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (NILS) – Dr Ian Shuttleworth, NILS Director, Queen’s University Belfast
Introducing the Census & Administrative data LongitudinaL Studies Hub (CALLS-Hub) – Dr Fiona Cox, Project Manager CALLS Hub, University of St Andrews
Population Ageing in Scotland – Prof John MacInnes, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh
How the SLS has helped with the understanding of Scotland’s mortality excess – Dr Frank Popham, Senior Research Fellow, MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow
The role of geographical mobility in intergenerational social mobility: Linkage of the Scottish Longitudinal Study and Scottish Mental Survey 1947 data – Dr Lynne Forrest, Researcher, Administrative Data Research Centre Scotland (ADRC-S), University of Edinburgh
Administrative health data linked to the SLS, the potential opportunities for migration research – Dr David McCollum, Senior Lecturer School of Geography & Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews
Equality, religion and mortality in Scotland and Northern Ireland: the SLS on tour – Dr David Wright, Research Fellow, Administrative Data Research Centre Northern Ireland, Queen’s University Belfast
Varying mental health in the population across Scotland during the recent recession: Combining SLS data and other sources – Prof Sarah Curtis, Universities of Durham and Edinburgh
Published on March 16th, 2018
Updated Citation Analysis – ‘Exploring the reach of the Census-based Longitudinal Studies 2010-2017’
(download as a PDF 709kB)
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: Assessing the contributions of the workplace and employment history, the local area, and individual health and social factors from childhood and adulthood to extended working life, 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 7 years. Research featured in over 70 journals, and spanned more than 50 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. Eighteen papers included in the citation analysis were published in journals ranked within the top 5 for one of the following SCImago subject areas:
- Geography, Planning and Development
- Epidemiology
- Demography
- Health (Social Science)
- Urban Studies
- Community and Home Care
- Applied Psychology
- Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine
- Biotechnology
Papers had excellent citation rates indicating the unique contribution LS data offer. Forty papers had been cited 10 or more times, and 13 papers had more than 20 citations.
LS | n papers published | Total citation count |
NILS | 41 | 217 (avg 5.6) |
ONS LS | 70 | 454 (avg 7.2) |
SLS | 43 | 421 (avg 11.1) |
All LSs | 139 | 1018 (avg 8.0) |
The subject categories of papers using the LSs reflect the strengths of the data that they offer. Whilst the categories were very similar, ONS LS’s top 5 included ‘Demography’, whereas the SLS and NILS had a higher proportion of ‘Health (social science)’ papers, likely due to their excellent linkages with health data.
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 in this report, LS research has considerable impact in other formats such as briefing notes, books and presentations to government, and has also formed the basis of a variety of PhD Theses. A 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 139 published papers from the period January 2010 – October 2017 were identified from the three LSs. It should be noted that whilst CALLS and the RSUs actively solicit LS users to notify them of all outputs, and also conduct occasional 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 21 November 2017. Impact Factors were taken from the Scopus project SCImago using the SJR2 indicator.
Results
The LSs combined
Of the 139 papers identified, 16 were from non-peer-reviewed journals such as Population Trends. Ten papers used more than one LS for their analysis. (see figure 1)
figure 1. Number of published papers per LS, Jan 2010 – October 2017. n = 139
Papers from the three LSs were published in a total of 73 different journals, spanning 52 SCImago Subject Categories in 13 Subject Areas (figure 2). SJR Impact Factors for the journals ranged from 0.104 to 10.113, with an average of 1.573.
The 5 most frequent subject categories for LS papers were:
- Public Health, Environment & Occupational Health (39 papers)
- Geography, Planning & Development (27 papers)
- Medicine(misc) (26 papers)
- Health(social science) (22 papers)
- Epidemiology (21 papers)
The ten most cited papers from the three LSs were:
Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study
During the period January 2010 to October 2017, a total of 41 journal papers were found which had used NILS data, including 3 paper which had used all 3 LSs and one which used the SLS and NILS. Five NILS publications appeared journals with top-5 ranked impact factor.
NILS journal papers were published in 27 different journals, spanning 13 SCImago Subject Areas and 33 Subject Categories (see below). SJR Impact Factors for the papers ranged from 0.216 to 4.914, with an average of 1.631.
The 5 most frequent subject categories for NILS papers were:
- Public Health, Environmental & Occupational Health (15 papers)
- Geography, Planning & Development (10 papers)
- Health(social science) (10 papers)
- Epidemiology (7 papers)
- Medicine(misc) (5 papers)
The 10 most cited NILS papers were:
ONS LS
During the period in question, 70 journal papers were identified as having been produced from ONS LS projects (including 9 papers which also used other LSs). Of these, 14 appeared in non peer-reviewed journals. Nine papers appeared in top-5 ranked journals.
ONS LS papers appeared in 42 journals, and covered 27 SCImago Subject Categories in 9 Subject Areas. SJR Impact Factors for the journals ranged from 0.104 to 10.113 with an average of 1.443.
The most frequent subject categories in which ONS LS papers appeared were:
- Medicine(misc) (15 papers)
- Public Health, Environmental & Occupational Health (14 papers)
- Demography (12 papers)
- Geography, Planning & Development (11 papers)
- Epidemiology (11 papers)
The most cited ONS LS papers were:
Scottish Longitudinal Study
During the period January 2010 – October 2017, 43 SLS-based journal papers were identified (including 10 papers which also used other LSs). Of these, 2 appeared in non peer-reviewed journals. Four papers were published in top-5 ranked journals.
The SLS papers were published in 33 different journals, spanning 32 SCImago Subject Categories in 12 Subject Areas. SJR Impact Factors for the journals ranged from 0.173 to 5.895, with an average of 1.466.
SLS papers appeared most frequently under the following subject categories:
- Public Health, Environmental & Occupational Health (13 papers)
- Medicine(misc) (8 papers)
- Geography, Planning & Development (7 papers)
- Health(social science) (7 papers)
- Epidemiology (4 papers)
- Agricultural and Biological Sciences (misc) (4 papers)
- Biochemistry, Genetics & Molecular Biology (4 papers)
The 10 most cited SLS papers were:
Explore the full database of LS outputs
Raw data (Excel, 83kB)
Published on December 19th, 2017
SLS migration research to be enhanced with continuous GP registration data
Dawn Everington, SLS-DSU
SLS-DSU have been working on an exciting new data development which will soon be available to researchers. We have been given access to postcode of residence and date of each NHS GP registration since 1 January 2000. This provides users with a means of locating their SLS sample continuously rather than only once every 10 years at the time of the censuses.
Besides projects primarily interested in internal migration, these data will be also useful to those investigating how the local environment affects outcomes, such as the recent project which looked at proximity to green space, forests and health services. The length of time spent at each address could be incorporated into analyses, or location might be explored in relation to wider policy measures or events such as the economic recession.
An early test dataset was supplied to project 2016_003 ‘Economic change and internal population dynamics: an innovative study of new residential mobilities in Scotland’. Results from these analyses have been presented at several seminars and conferences (see list at the bottom of the project page) and there are plans to publish papers.
The online data dictionary has now been updated with Table E10 which contains the raw data and some derived variables. Although many of these cannot be accessed by researchers due to the risk of disclosure (marked as restriction level 2), we are in the process of producing further derived variables such as flags, which users can access. We will soon produce a working paper which will document the data sources and processing of the data, describe the variables in table E10, compare the enumeration postcodes with the postcodes recorded in the NHS data, and provide other information that will be helpful when using and interpreting these data.
For further information see this blog post or contact SLS-DSU at sls@lscs.ac.uk.
Published on October 31st, 2017
ADRN conference 2017 – CALLS Hub strand
As our previous post demonstrates, the UK Administrative Data Research Network Annual Research Conference held on 1-2 June 2017 in Edinburgh provided a great showcase for research from the ONS LS, NILS and SLS studies. The conference included a series of sessions sponsored by CALLS Hub, promoting the use of census longitudinal studies and/or population linkage studies to contribute to the substantive themes of health/mortality inequality or migration. Here we round up the excellent presentations given in those sessions.
Session 1G – Premature mortality
Megan Yates: “Incidence of conditions considered amenable to health care in Scotland” – abstract and slides
Ania Zylbersztejn: “Comparison of under-5 mortality in England and in Sweden using electronic birth cohorts from administrative linked data” – abstract and slides
Session 2G – Health inequalities
Sarah Curtis: “Long term illness and reported mental health conditions during recession: exploring evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study” – abstract
Jonathan Minton: “Profiling, benchmarking and exploring Age- Period-Cohort patterns in mortality in the Affluent World: examples from Scotland and beyond” – abstract and slides
Genevieve Cezard: “Mortality and ethnicity: minorities fare better than the White Scottish majority in the Scottish Health and Ethnicity Linkage Study (SHELS)” – abstract and slides
Session 3G – Internal migration
Annemarie Ernsten: “How can we better understand internal migration?” – abstract
Brian Foley: “Measuring Internal Migration: Comparing Census and Administrative Data” – abstract and slides
Session 4G – Health & migration (full video below)
Anne Kouvonen: “All-cause mortality by income level in working- age migrants and the majority settled population of Finland: a follow-up from 2001 to 2014” – abstract and video
Kishan Patel: “How well does registry data answer questions about migrant mental health? An analysis of author concerns from a scoping review” – abstract and video
Frances Darlington-Pollock: “The move, the person, or the area? Exploring risk of Cardiovascular Disease in New Zealand” – abstract and video
In addition, CALLS Hub were please to sponsor one of the conference Keynote speakers, Prof Johan Mackenbach, Professor of Public Health and chair of the Dept of Public Health at the Erasmus MC in the Netherlands:
Health inequalities in Europe. New insights from comparative studies
Abstract Socioeconomic inequalities in mortality are present in all European countries, but their magnitude and development over time is highly variable. In a series of on-going comparative studies we exploit these variations to identify the macro- and micro-level determinants of these mortality inequalities. In my presentation I will summarize the results of these studies, and relate our findings to current insights into the explanation of health inequalities in modern welfare states.
For more information about the conference please visit adrn2017.net
Published on August 31st, 2017
LS research at the ADRN 2017 conference
The UK Administrative Data Research Network held a very successful conference from 1-2 June 2017 at the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh (find out more at adrn2017.net). You can find information about the CALLS Hub-sponsored sessions in the next post.
Amongst the many fascinating talks and posters at the conference, the SLS, NILS and ONS LS were well represented. Here we have gathered together information about these talks to showcase the range of high quality LS research presented. Click through to read the abstracts and download slides (where available):
- Exploring the ‘Scottish Excess’ with eDatashield and linkage of an adjusted Index of Multiple Deprivation Ball, W., Kyle, R. & Atherton, I. [SLS, ONS LS]
- Forests, health and inequalities in Scotland: a longitudinal analysis using linked administrative data Thomson, J., Pearce, J., Shortt, N. & Ward Thompson, C. [SLS]
- Why do escalator regions increase upward social mobility? Linkage of the Scottish Mental Survey 1947 with Scottish Longitudinal Study data and Census data Forrest, L., Dibben, C., Feng, Z., Deary, I. & Popham, F. [SLS]
- Measuring Internal Migration: Comparing Census and Administrative Data Foley, B., Champion, T. & Shuttleworth, I. [NILS] – slides available (PDF 1MB)
- Health consequences of young people not in employment, education or training: analysis of mortality risk in Scotland Feng, Z., Everington, D., Ralston, K. & Dibben, C. [SLS]
- Creating a postcode history from medical sources for longitudinal analyses Everington, D., Huang, Z. & Feng, Z. [SLS]
- Inequalities in school leavers’ labour market outcomes: do school subject choices matter? Iannelli, C. & Duta, A. [SLS]
- Childhood cognitive function and later-life economic activity: Linking the Scottish Mental Survey 1947 to administrative data Iveson, M., Deary, I.J. & Dibben, C. [SLS] – video recording available
- Linked datasets to model occupational mobility in Britain Nightingale, G., Ernsten, A. & McCollum, D. [SLS] – slides coming soon
- A sibling study of whether maternal exposure to different types of natural space is related to birth weight Richardson, E., Shortt, N., Pearce, J. & Mitchell, R. [SLS]
- Selective Religious Migration across the Life course: Evidence from Northern Ireland 1981-2011 Campbell, B., Shuttleworth, I. & McName, C. [NILS] – slides available (PDF 3MB)
- Long term illness and reported mental health conditions during recession: exploring evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study Curtis, S., Pearce, J. & Dibben, C. [SLS]
- How can we better understand internal migration? Ernsten, A., McCollum, D., Feng, Z., Everington, D. & Huang, Z. [SLS]
- The ‘art’ of cohort and study construction in administrative datasets: examples from Scotland Williamson, L. [SLS] – video recording available
- Adding contextual admin data to the ons longitudinal study for england and wales: the example of house price data Dennett, A., Duke-Williams, O. & Shelton, N. [ONS LS]
- Who are the Laggards and the disengaged – address accuracy of NHS registration data Randall, M., Newman, J., Jathooni, R. & Hayter, C. [ONS LS]
Published on August 28th, 2017
CALLS Hub/UK Data Service Webinar recording now available
Fiona Cox, CALLS Hub
Fiona Cox of CALLS Hub recently took part in a joint webinar with the UK Data Service on ‘Flexible individual-level data from the Census: Census micro data and longitudinal studies’, introducing the census-based longitudinal studies (ONS LS, NILS and SLS).
Conventional census outputs take the form of counts of persons, households or other units with particular characteristics. Census microdata, on the other hand, is a flexible form of data which provides a wide range of characteristics for large samples of anonymous census respondents. The data look a lot like the sort of data you would get if you conducted a survey yourself, however they have additional interesting features, most notably that they have unusually large sample sizes.
This introductory webinar discussed the two types of census microdata available for researchers to use:
- Cross-sectional census microdata (known simply as ‘census microdata’ or samples of anonymised records) which take samples of data from individuals at one point in time, to allow comparisons between groups
- Longitudinal census microdata held in datasets which link census records over time with other key records such as those from birth and death registrations
We describe some of the key features of the data, show how they can be used in research and explain how users can access the data.
Published on May 31st, 2017
New 1936 Birth Cohort Study
Zengyi Huang, SLS-DSU
The SLS Birth Cohort of 1936 (SLSBC1936) is now available to external researchers. This cohort is structured around the existing SLS. We took the SLS birth date sample from the Scottish Mental Survey of 1947 (a cognitive ability test that included almost all Scottish children born in 1936) and linked it to the 1939 National Register, the NHS Central Register and the SLS. The outcome of the project is a powerful life-course dataset containing information from childhood to old age.
A new SLS Technical Working Paper 7: ‘The Scottish Longitudinal Study 1936 Birth Cohort’ describes the methodology used in creating the SLSBC1936, the quality of linkage and the data included in this cohort. A short description of this data linkage project can be found on the poster: The creation of an administration data based 1936 Birth Cohort Study.
The SLSBC1936 is a general-purpose resource, which is available for researchers via the SLS administration. Anyone interesting in accessing this dataset should contact the SLS-DSU at sls@lscs.ac.uk.
More detail: SLS Technical Working Paper 7
Published on March 30th, 2017