Finding data

The European Working Conditions Surveys (EWCS) has provided an overview of working conditions in Europe since 1990. The survey aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the everyday reality of men and women at work.

Themes covered  include employment status, working time duration and organisation, work organisation, learning and training, physical and psychosocial risk factors, health and safety, work-life balance, worker participation, earnings and financial security, as well as work and health.

The Secure Data Service (SDS) is hosted by the UK Data Archive, in partnership with the Economic and Social Data Service. The SDS provides researchers with secure access to data in the fields of social science, economics and the humanities that are too detailed or are considered to be too confidential, sensitive or potentially disclosive to be made available under the standard licences of the ESDS.

The security of the service is achieve by means of:

• state-of-the-art secure data technology and procedures,
• training and convenience for approved researchers,
• standards backed by a professional code of practice, and
• meaningful penalties for breaches.

Researchers are able to access the data remotely from a safe room in their home institution, for the purposes of analysis and collaboration only; the data may not be downloaded.

The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) commenced in 2001 as the result of a Government decision in 1999 to mark the coming Millennium with a new birth cohort study. The MCS, which aims to chart the diversity of children's backgrounds in the UK, is a longitudinal study that follows a sample of 19,517 babies in 19,244 families born between 1 September 2000 and 31 August 2001 in England and Wales, and between 22 November 2000 and 11 January 2002 in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Although the sample, selected through Child Benefit Records, was designed to provide a proper representation of the total population, the MCS includes an intentional over-sampling of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The main topics covered by the MCS are: child behaviour, parenting activities, child health, parent health, employment, income and education, housing and local area, older siblings’ leisure time activities, extra activities at school, classes outside school, home life, health, school, behaviour and perceptions of the local area.

Four surveys of the MCS cohort have been carried out to date:

• 2001-2003 (9 months)
• 2003-2005 (3 years)
• 2006 (five years)
• 2008 (seven years)

Full information about the history and design of the MCS may be found on the website of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the University of London's Institute of Education.

A central part of the Scottish Government's strategy for the monitoring and evaluation of its policies for children, the Growing up in Scotland (GUS) study is a cohort study undertaken to fill a perceived gap in the evidence available to those concerned both with policy monitoring and evaluation of the early years of children. It is hoped that the data collected from the study will also be of use to the wider policy research and cross-sectional analysis needs of those concerned with the general range of issues affecting children and young people. The study was developed by the Scottish Centre for Social Research (ScotCen) together with the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, based at the University of Edinburgh, which collaboration will also undertake the first four years of fieldwork and analysis.

• Sweep 1: April 2005 - February 2006
• Sweep 2: April 2006 - April 2007
• Sweep 3: April 2007 - May 2008
• Sweep 4: April 2008 - May 2009
• Sweep 5: April 2009 - May 2010 [Note: Data for this sweep collected from the birth cohort only]

Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and run by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) Understanding Society is a study of the socio-economic circumstances and attitudes of 100,000 individuals in 40,000 British households and will allow deeper analysis of a wide range of sections of the population as they respond to regional, national and international change. Understanding Society will provide insight insight into the pathways that influence peoples longer term occupational trajectories; their health and well-being, their financial circumstances and personal relationships.

The study both replaces and incorporates the British Household Panel Survey, retaining the latter's longevity whilst adding not only to the sample size but also extending the scope of the study. Understanding Society also has an interdisciplinary focus. The study will capture biomedical data on 20,000 participants and place this alongside rich social histories which may ascertain the extent to which people's environment influences their health relative to their genetic make-up.

Wave 1, 2009-2010, of the survey was released in January 2012. Due to the sensitive nature of the data, special access conditions apply.

LIS is a cross-national data centre located in Luxembourg that provides important micro-datasets for cross-national comparisons, particularly with regard to the study of poverty:

• Luxembourg Income Study Database (LIS): An international comparative study on income distribution, with harmonised datasets from 36 countries in Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia and Australasia since 1968.
• Luxembourg Wealth Study Database (LWS): The first ever cross-national wealth database with datasets from 12 countries (Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States). The LWS includes household-level harmonised data that includes variables on assets and debt, market and government income, household characteristics, labour market outcomes and expenditures and behavioural indicators.

The data may be accessed through three routes:

• LISSY: a remote-executiion system
• Web Tabulator: an online table-maker
• Key Figures: two sets of national indicators generated by LIS, viz.
  • inequality and poverty
  • employment by gender

The LIS and LWS data may be used  for scholarly, research or educational purposes only; commercial use is not permitted.

The aim of the Wealth & Assets Survey (WAS), a longitudinal survey of a sample of all private households in Great Britain, is to address identified gaps in the existing data on the economic well-being of British households. Note: People in residential institutions and homeless people are not included in the sample.

The WAS comprised two questionnaires for each of the households sampled: a questionnaire for completion by the head or partner and individual questionnaires for each member. 

Household level topics included: demographics, relationships, mortgages and the value of household assets. The individual questionnaire  covered economic status, education and employment, business and financial assets and other income, investments and non-mortgage debt, benefits and tax credits, attitudes to debt and saving.

Further information is available on the National Statistics website.

The Social Disadvantage Research Centre at the University of Oxford's Department of Social Policy and Social Work was commissioned by Communities and Local Government to update the Indices of Deprivation 2004 for England.

The resulting Indices of Deprivation 2007 provies a ranking of areas within England according to level of deprivation as indicated by the following deprivation domains:

• Income deprivation
• Employment deprivation
• Health deprivation and disability
• Education, skills and training deprivation
• Barriers to housing and services
• Crime
• Living environment deprivation