Jonathan Burton

by Rory Fitzgerald (@surveyprof.bsky.social), Nhlanhla Ndebele, Olga Maslovskaya, Cristian Domarchi, Peter Lynn, Tim Hanson, Ruxandra Comanaru (@rucsandra.bsky.social)

PDF: surveyfutures.net/wp-content/u...

Still the gold standard in survey research? Comparing face-to-face and self-completion data collection in a repeat cross-sectional general social survey in Great Britain

New Working Paper from Survey Futures:
surveyfutures.net/working-pape...

Professor Peter Lynn gives expert view to BBC Radio 4 on the issues at the Office for National Statistics with the Labour Force Survey

www.iser.essex.ac.uk/research/new...

Professor @annettejackle.bsky.social debates survey methods on BBC Radio 4

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/news/2025/10...

The Radio 4 programme, More of Less, looked into the survey statistic by Resume Templates claiming 77 percent of young people brought a parent along to their job interviews.

PODCAST: Does pollution affect immigrant populations disproportionately?

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/podcasts/bre...

Chris Coates looks at air pollution and in particular how common is it for immigrant populations to live in more polluted areas. With @ruettenauer.bsky.social and L’myah Sherae

BLOG: Young people’s aspirations rise with parents’ income, by Alexander O’Donnell & Alexandra Wake

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/blog/2025/10...

What? Hang on... Only Connect is on tonight???

Field an experiment or suggest questionnaire content for the next wave of the @usociety.bsky.social Innovation Panel.

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/news/2025/10...

Two types of proposal can be submitted:

New survey content and Experiments and methodological tests.

What? Hang on... there's no Only Connect on tonight???

"Do you resist change?" @jdickerson.bsky.social on @slate.com Plus Political Gabfest <applause>

BLOG: How do you build a survey that works? by Peter Lynn

"In an article published today in the journal Nature: Human Behaviour, I attempt to tackle this question."

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Research has found that children who have been in childcare were more likely to come from higher-income households, and to have parents with higher education qualifications. It also showed differences in children’s emotional behaviour, depending on the type of childcare they’d received.

Childcare more common in higher income families.

Welsh Government uses @usociety.bsky.social to investigate childcare and effects on children

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/impact/welsh...

The data give researchers a view on the the entire family before and after childbirth. Parents answer questions on fertility, pregnancy and child development, and children complete their own survey from the age of 10.

The latest Pregnancy and Early Childhood data from @usociety.bsky.social are now available from the UK Data Service.

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/news/2025/09...

Understanding Society collects information on social, economic and behavioural factors, and information on babies/children

This follows in the trail of great User Guides, such as:
BHPS – Harmonised User Guide
Calendar Year Datasets User Guides
Family Matrix User Guide
Marital and Cohabitation Histories User Guide
Ethnicity Research
Cognitive Ability Measure
National Pupil Database Wave 1 Linkage
DVLA User Guide

New User Guide for @usociety.bsky.social with information on the geographical identifiers and geographical classifications datasets available in Understanding Society and provides information on how they can be used.

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentatio...

- Indoor environments and energy use
- Adaptation to eco-climate emergency
- Youth online survey

User Guide: www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentatio...

Data:
beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogu...

New data from @usociety.bsky.social Innovation Panel is now available.

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/news/2025/09...

What new experiments are now available?
- Youth survey invite mailing
- Consent decision process
- Identification of informal caregiving
- Labour market expectations
...

Pets and life satisfaction - Understanding Society Can we put a monetary value on what pets bring to our lives?

Our podcast is back from its summer break! Our new episode has Adelina Gschwandtner @kent.ac.uk and Ashleigh Brown from RSPCA discussing pets and life satisfaction, and how it’s possible to work out a monetary value for the benefits we get from cats and dogs

Is there a trade-off between diversity and social cohesion? - Understanding Society Material deprivation, not social diversity, threatens to stretch and tear the social fabric diversity and social cohesion

New blog: Tak Wing Chan @ioe.bsky.social with a detailed look at immigration and social cohesion. Pundits and some research tell us that diversity undermines trust and solidarity, but can we accept findings which don’t take poverty and inequality into account?

Wellbeing boost from disability benefits outweighs cost - Understanding Society Wellbeing boost from disability benefits worth £12,300 per person New case study shows wellbeing boost from disability benefits worth £12,300 per person

New case study! Charity @pbe.co.uk used our data to show that the £28 billion annual bill for disability benefits creates £42bn in positive effects

Online course: Survey Measurement of Health: Implications for Social Science Research

A short online training course on the implications of survey measurement of health for future social science research online on 22 and 23 September.

www.iser.essex.ac.uk/research/new...

Each webinar takes place 13.00 to 14.15.
- Linked data: 2 October
- Employment: 9 October
- Family, households and children: 16 October
- Income, wealth and housing: 23 October
- Ethnicity and immigration: 30 October

Topic webinars are free to attend, but you do need to register in advance.

Join the Understanding Society user support team for lunch-time learning on some of the key topic areas covered by @usociety.bsky.social. The free, one-hour online courses are designed for both new and experienced users of Understanding Society.

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/news/2025/09...

PODCAST from @usociety.bsky.social about pets!

Can we put a monetary value on what pets bring to our lives?

Interviews with Adelina Gschwandtner (Kent) and Ashleigh Brown (RSPCA)

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/podcasts/pet...

Topic webinars
One-hour, lunch time webinars on key topics in @usociety.bsky.social

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/help/trainin...

Linked data – 2 October
Employment – 9 October
Family, households & children – 16 October
Income, wealth & housing – 23 October
Ethnicity & immigration – 30 October

Reviewing our questions on ethnicity and immigration.

Let us know your views on this important part of the @usociety.bsky.social survey.

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/news/2025/06...

Two year postdoc at @universityofessex.bsky.social to work with my amazing colleague (see below) on her ERC project "Applied stereotypes, social networks and self-fulfilling prophecies: How stereotypes reinforce social inequalities" Closing date 28.09.2025
vacancies.essex.ac.uk/tlive_webrec...

This paper reports on a novel approach using smartphone technology to collect expenditure data in a probability household panel of the general population in Great Britain. Respondents were asked to download an app on their smartphone and report their purchases of goods and services over the period of one month. The app directed respondents to use the built-in camera to photograph all paper receipts that they received at a point of sale. In a separate diary section of the app, they were able to manually enter other expenditures, such as non-receipted payments. In this paper, we compare the quality of the reported expenditure with benchmark data from the Living Costs and Food Survey, the national budget survey in the United Kingdom. The results suggest that total expenditure reported with scanned receipts plus direct entry aligns closely with the national budget survey whereas app data from scanned receipts only clearly underestimate expenditure. Examining category-level expenditure similarly shows that for most categories, the reported expenditure from scanned receipts plus direct entry aligns more closely with the benchmark than scanned receipts only. In addition, the app data align more closely with the national budget survey for respondents who are older, male, have an above-median income, and live in rural areas. The implications of measurement differences vary: comparisons of estimated budget shares are closer to the benchmark for some categories than others.

Quality of Expenditure Data Collected With a Mobile Receipt Scanning App in a Probability Household Panel - by Alexander Wenz, @annettejackle.bsky.social @jonburton.bsky.social Mick P. Couper & Brendan Read.

doi.org/10.18148/srm...