Technical report (ELSA wave 1): health, wealth and lifestyles of the older population in England

<p><p><p><p><p>The English Longitudinal of Ageing (ELSA) is a study of people aged 50 and over and their partners. ELSA has been developed through a collaboration between University College London, the Institute of Fiscal Studies and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), with academics at the Universities of Cambridge, Nottingham and East Anglia and from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Funding for data collection for the early waves of the study was provided by the National Institute on Aging and a consortium of British Government Departments. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p> </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This technical report focuses specifically on the study's methodology and the conduct of the ELSA Wave 1 survey. Throughout, this report is based on data that was available before the Wave 1 data had been fully reconciled. Since the report was written, two minor sources of error have come to light. First, two duplicate households were found (one had, in fact, participated twice at Wave 1). Secondly, a small number of original HSE outcome codes were corrected (fewer than 20 individuals). Additionally further data cleaning activities have been conducted that resulted in a small number of changes to outcome codes. Because the numbers involved with these errors are relatively small they have little to no effect on the overall estimates presented in this report. For example, Table 5-1 shows 12,100 respondents which will decrease to 12,099 in tables produced in the future. This technical report should be used in conjunction with the extensive materials deposited at the <a href="http://www.data-archive.ac.uk">UK data archive</a>, study number 5050 and <a href="http://www.esds.ac.uk/longitudinal/access/elsa/l5050.asp">Economic and Social Data Service</a>. These include a User Guide which shows how to analyse the data and provides information about weights and other information needed for analysis. The UK data archive also provides the route to access core ELSA data. Some sensitive data, such as geographical information, is not available through the archive but can be applied for directly from the <a href="mailto:[email protected]">study team</a>.</p></p></p></p></p>