We analyse the results of experiments on aspects of the design of questionnaire and interview mode in the 2009 wave of the new UK Understanding Society panel survey. The randomised experiments relate to job- and life-satisfaction questions and vary the labeling of response scales, the mode of...

We analyse FRS survey data on the relationship between disability and receipt of the Attendance Allowance (AA) disability benefit by older people. Despite being non-means-tested, we find that AA is implicitly income-targeted and strongly targeted on those with care needs. We focus particularly...

What makes you popular among your high-school peers? And what are the labor market returns to popularity? We investigate these questions using an objective measure of popularity derived from sociometric theory: the number of friendship nom- inations received from schoolmates. We provide novel...

Surveys differ in the way they measure satisfaction and happiness, so comparative research findings are vulnerable to distortion by survey design differences. We examine this using the British Household Panel Survey, exploiting its changes in question design and parallel use of different...

Survey respondents often use simple strategies to answer retrospective questions about their level of consumption expenditure, resulting in the heaping of data at certain round numbers. In the panel context, wave-to-wave ‘leaping’ from one ‘heap’ to another can distort...

We investigate the processes underlying payment of Attendance Allowance (AA) in the older UK population, using a partial identication approach. Receipt of AA requires that (i) a claim is made and (ii) programme administrators assess the claim as warranting an award. These processes cannot be...

We consider the neglected issue of the dynamics of perceptions, as expressed in responses to survey questions on subjective well-being. We develop a simulated ML method for estimation for dynamic linear models, where the dependent variable is partially observed through ordinal scales. This...

Just as poverty analysis has a central part in Development Economics, studies of fertility behaviour have an equally important standing in the Demography literature. Poverty and fertility are two important aspects of welfare that are closely related. In this paper we use unique longitudinal data...