Hi everyone,

I am working on the British Labour Force Survey (LFS) data to explore the effects of migration on the native employment rate using spatial correlations approach. Spatial units are 17 regions. Therefore, I want to aggregate data at the regional level. However, I am not sure how to transform quarterly variables into annual ones?

LFS is a quarterly household data (60,000 households, also includes personal level data) Each quarter's LFS sample of UK households is made up of five "waves". The same number of Wave 1 (new) addresses are selected each quarter. So, in any given quarter, about one-fifth of the addresses in the entire sample are in Wave 1, one-fifth in Wave 2, and so on. Thus, between any two consecutive quarters, about 80% of the selected addresses are in common. In other words, each wave is interviewed in five successive quarters, such that in any one quarter, one wave will be receiving their first interview, one waves their second, and so on, with one wave receiving their fifth and final interview.

I want to regress native employment rate - stock of natives in employment divided by the native working-age population on the ratio of immigrants to the native population, vector of variables for the demographics of individuals, the dummy variable for year t, the dummy variable for region i. But, I am not sure how to get from quarterly variables (gathered as stated above) to annual variables?

I would appreciate if you could offer some help. Thank you in advance.