Implementing the biosocial component of Understanding Society – nurse collection of biomeasures

Abstract

The design of Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study calls for enhanced health content relative to its precursor study, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). This paper documents the design and implementation of the collection of biomeasures by trained nurses in Understanding Society. It reports response outcomes for participation in the nurse visits. As an illustration of the utility of the data, we compare mean blood pressure and prevalence of hypertension with published figures from the 2009 Health Survey for England. This paper will be useful for Understanding Society users and be relevant to those implementing a longitudinal survey with biosocial data collection.