Centre for Longitudinal Studies

The text of responses to open-ended questions was keyed by Eurodata and used to facilitate the coding of these questions by the Social Statistics Research Unit at City University (which later moved to the Institute of Education and became CLS).

Coding frames were selected to be compatible with those used for earlier BCS70 follow-ups, and to facilitate comparison with NCDS data. The coding was undertaken by especially trained SSRU staff, and was in all cases
computer-assisted.

The information coded by SSRU includes responses to: ‘fully open’ questions, where no precode was offered to the respondent; and ‘other answers’, where space was provided on the questionnaire for respondents to write in a response which was not matched by any of the precodes provided.