Official Statistics

Glossary - Community Life COVID-19 Re-contact Survey 2020

Published 8 December 2020

Applies to England

Charitable giving: Donating money to charity excluding donating goods or prizes.

Community Life Re-contact Survey (CLRS): The follow-up re-contact survey to the Community Life Survey. The aim of the Community Life Re-contact Survey is to provide data on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected volunteering, charitable giving, social cohesion, wellbeing and loneliness in England.

Community Life Survey (CLS): The Community Life Survey is a household self-completion survey of adults aged 16+ in England. The survey is a key evidence source on social cohesion, community engagement and social action.

Confidence interval: The confidence interval is a measure of the uncertainty around a population estimate that has been derived from a sample. Confidence intervals usually come with a probability value – 95% is most usual – which reflects the degree of confidence that the (unknown) true population value lies within the interval. The smaller the sample size, the wider the confidence interval. There are also other features of a sample that can increase or decrease the width of the interval (e.g. the extent to which the sample is clustered).

Coronavirus: The term ‘coronavirus’ is used in reference to ‘COVID-19’ in the survey questions. This terminology was used in the questionnaire as it is more widely recognised by the public and is used in media when reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cross-sectional analysis: Cross-sectional analysis involves looking at data from the relevant population at a specific point in time.

Ethnic minorities (excluding White minorities): All ethnic groups except the White British group. Ethnic minorities include White minorities, such as Gypsy, Roma and Irish Traveller groups.

Formal volunteering: Giving unpaid help to groups or clubs, for example, leading a group, providing administrative support or befriending or mentoring people.

Gross change: Change or movement at the individual level. For example, someone who is classified as a volunteer at one point in time might not be at another point in time if they stop volunteering. The net number of volunteers in the population may be the same at two time points but could be compositionally different. Gross change describes this difference.

Informal volunteering: Giving unpaid help as an individual to people who are not a relative. For example, babysitting or caring for children, keeping in touch with someone who has difficulty getting out and about, or helping out with household tasks such as cleaning, laundry or shopping.

Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs): Output areas (OA) were created for Census data, specifically for the output of census estimates. The OA is the lowest geographical level at which census estimates are provided. OAs are combined to form LSOAs, based on population thresholds.^{[footnote 1]}

Net change: The overall difference in prevalence of a measure at wave 1 and wave 2 at the aggregate level (see below for definitions of waves).

Pandemic: This term is used in the report to refer to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some questions in the questionnaire also referred to the ‘virus outbreak’.

Statistical significance: A statistical test to determine whether relationships observed between two survey variables are likely to exist in the population from which the sample is drawn. We only report on findings that are statistically significant with a 95% confidence interval. A significant difference with a 95% confidence interval means that if the survey was conducted 100 times on different random sample of the population, a finding of the same nature would be found in at least 95 cases.

Wave 1: Refers to the baseline Community Life Survey which took place before the COVID-19 pandemic, from July 2018 through to February 2020 inclusive. Wave 1 respondents took part in either the 2018-19 or 2019-20 Community Life Survey.

Wave 2: Refers to the follow-up Community Life Re-contact Survey which took place in the period during the COVID-19 pandemic (July 2018).

Weighting: An adjustment made to the data to ensure that survey results are representative of the target population; in this case this means representative of the population at the time of the wave 2 survey (all adults aged 16+ in England).

1. Further information can be found here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/ukgeographies/censusgeography ↩