A large literature uses parental evaluations of child health status to provide evidence on the socioeconomic determinants of health. If how parents perceive health questions differs by income or education level, then estimates of the socioeconomic gradient are likely to be biased and potentially...

Income is an important correlate for numerous phenomena in the social sciences. But many surveys collect data with just a single question covering all forms of income. This raises issues of quality, and these are heightened when individuals are asked about the household total rather than own...

This paper provides a self-contained introduction to the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), concentrating on aspects relevant to analysis of the distribution of household income. I discuss BHPS design features and how data on net household income are derived. The BHPS net household income...

The aim of this paper is to test the existence of middle class bias in survey cooperation. We do this by carrying out a record check study. Our analysis uncovers no evidence of middle class bias. Instead we find a negative gross bias in estimates of the proportion of persons with highest...

Respondents in long telephone survey interviews may adopt satisficing strategies as they approach the end of the questionnaire (Holbrook, Green and Krosnick, 2003). However, there is inconsistency regarding the relationship between questionnaire length and different forms of satisficing. We...

In the UK, in order to link individual-level administrative records to survey responses, a respondent needs to give their written consent. This paper explores whether characteristics of the respondent, the interviewer or survey design features influence consent. We use the BHPS combined with a...

Household income is difficult to measure, since it requires collecting information about all potential income sources for each member of a household. We assess the effects of two types of edit check questions on measurement error and survey estimates: within-wave edit checks use responses to...

We conduct two large-scale randomised experiments on the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to study methods of reducing panel attrition. The first experiment compares different strategies for tracing and maintaining contact with sample members. We find that change-of-address cards...

Previous research into the correlates and determinants of non-response in longitudinal surveys has focused exclusively on why it is that respondents at one survey wave choose not to participate at future waves. This is very understandable if non-response is always an absorbing state, but in many...

Redistribution differs widely across countries, but our understanding of why this is the case is limited. In democracies, the extent of redistribution should ultimately reflect citizens' preferences. We measure preferences for redistribution in six developed countries through internationally...