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Glossary of terms

ESRC	Economic and Social Research Council The UK's leading research agency addressing economic and social concerns
HRP	Household Reference Person The person within the household who is chosen to characterise the household's social position. The official definition was introduced in 2001.
ISCO 88	International Standard Classification of Occupations 1988 The classification of occupations developed by the International Labour Office and revised in 1988.
ISCO 88 (COM)	International Standard Classification of Occupations 1988 (Community) Eurostat-commissioned variant of ISCO 88 to improve the comparison of statistics on occupations across the countries of the European Union.
NS-SEC	National Statistics Socio-economic Classification The new classification, with a defined conceptual basis, that has been developed to replace SC and SEG.
OUG	Occupational Unit Group A group within the most detailed tier of the occupational classification, more specifically one of the 353 unit groups of the Standard Occupational Classification 2000.
SC	Social Class based on occupation, formerly Registrar General's Social Class A scale for classifying people into five groups (represented by roman numerals), one subdivided. The composition of the classes brought together, as far as possible, people with similar levels of occupational skill. The allocation of occupations varied when Social Class was re-based on the revised occupational classification with the intention of preserving the gradient rather than literal continuity. It was derived from occupational unit group and employment status. The final version was based on the 1990 edition of the Standard Occupational Classification.
SEG	Socio-economic Group The classification aimed to bring together people with similar social and economic status into 17 groups, three subdivided. It was derived from occupational unit group, employment status and size of establishment. The final version was based on the 1990 edition of the Standard Occupational Classification.
SOC90	Standard Occupational Classification 1990 The United Kingdom's occupational classification first published in 1990 to provide one standard and replace two previous official classifications used by government.
SOC2000	Standard Occupational Classification 2000 The latest edition of the United Kingdom's official occupational classification, revised, updated and published in June 2000. It will be used in most government sources from 2001, with the exception of the Employment Service which started using the classification to help match job vacancies to job seekers' preferences in October 2000.