A user station for a serial bus system. The user station includes a communication control device for controlling a communication of the user station with at least one other user station, and a transceiver device to serially transmit a transmission signal generated by the communication control device onto a bus and to serially receive signals from the bus. The communication control device generates the transmission signal according to a frame, and inserts a header check sum into the frame, only bits of a frame header that is situated in front of a data field provided for useful data in the frame being included in the computation. For computing the header check sum, the communication control device uses a predetermined starting value and a predetermined check sum polynomial.