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James Tucker to Mark Pont: Winter Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Study. ONS response to OSR compliance review
Dear Mark
Thank you for your letter of 22 May 2024 detailing the findings from the compliance review of the statistics in development from the Winter Coronavirus (Winter CIS) Infection Study, England and Scotland.
We welcome the findings of the review and have taken action to update the Quality and Methodology Information report (QMI) and the final dataset published as part of the study to reflect the points made as part of the review and in response to feedback received from users.
In the QMI we have included, under the quality summary, separate sections outlining the participant recruitment and participant engagement activities, highlighting the online nature of the questionnaire and the removal of incentives.
In response to user feedback, we have expanded section 6 (study design) to describe in more detail how the study was carried out and the long COVID section to alert users to the data collection methodology used to calculate long COVID duration and the issues identified with this approach.
The weighting section has been re-worked to describe the approach and assumptions made in a format more accessible to the end user, including a diagram setting out the process.
Following feedback from users we previously updated the dataset published on 29 February 2024 to include, in table 6, the response rate to the initial consent survey in addition to the response rate for each wave of the study.
Amendments have also been made to the notes included in the final dataset published as part of the study to clarify why population estimates at local authority level were included in the publication (note 13) and an explanation of why there are a few weeks where the weighted COVID-19 positivity estimates are higher than the unweighted estimates (note 18).
We have been working with the Integrated Data Service support team and our application to include the data on the secure platform has been accepted, this will ensure the data is available to external researchers in due course.
While the Winter CIS has now come to an end, we will ensure that any lessons and good practice identified during the study are shared with future health studies.
Best regards,
James Tucker