Category 150
Additional exposuresLocal environment ⏵ Home locations

Description

This section holds information on the geographical location of the home addresses of participants before, at and after recruitment. The co-ordinates presented were derived from UK postcode information obtained from a variety of sources including self-report by participants.

Please be aware that there are some inherent inaccuracies with address history data in that some of the addresses are likely to reflect locations where the NHS interacted with the participant rather than their residential address, and that the date of address change corresponds to the date the address was changed in the corresponding IT system, rather than the actual address change. The latter issue largely arises from delays in participants informing UK Biobank or external agencies that they have moved. In addition, however, we have identified a number of dates that have been incorrectly processed in the construction of data-field 22700 and which are up to 30 months different from the participant's change of address notification. We are working to correct these issues and will update the data-fields in due course.

As of November 2022, all location data fields have been made restricted. If you require any location data for your project, you must contact the Access Management team for permission, listing the specific fields you require. Please note that access will only be granted for the lowest resolution fields necessary to complete your project.