Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.BackgroundThe British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey series began in 1983. The series is designed to produce annual measures of attitudinal movements to complement large-scale government surveys that deal largely with facts and behaviour patterns, and the data on party political attitudes produced by opinion polls. One of the BSA's main purposes is to allow the monitoring of patterns of continuity and change, and the examination of the relative rates at which attitudes, in respect of a range of social issues, change over time. Some questions are asked regularly, others less often. Funding for BSA comes from a number of sources (including government departments, the Economic and Social Research Council and other research foundations), but the final responsibility for the coverage and wording of the annual questionnaires rests with NatCen Social Research (formerly Social and Community Planning Research). The BSA has been conducted every year since 1983, except in 1988 and 1992 when core funding was devoted to the British Election Study (BES).Further information about the series and links to publications may be found on the NatCen Social Research British Social Attitudes webpage.
Latest Edition Information For the third edition (April 2017) data from the Public Health England modules on Alcohol, Dementia, Mental Health and Obesity from the self-completion questionnaires have been added to the dataset, following the publication of reports based on them. In addition, three variables have been replaced with new versions: BNationU (previously unpopulated); TVNews and WebNews (for both, a minor amendment to one value label only).
Main Topics:Each year, the BSA interview questionnaire contains a number of 'core' questions, which are repeated in most years. In addition, a wide range of background and classificatory questions is included. The remainder of the questionnaire is devoted to a series of questions (modules) on a range of social, economic, political and moral issues - some are asked regularly, others less often. Cross-indexes of those questions asked more than once appear in the reports.
The BSA 2015 questionnaires included modules covering: attitudes to public spending, social welfare, politics, health, social class, the European Union, transport, food, alcohol, mental wellbeing, obesity, dementia and retirement and pensions. In 2015, the ISSP module was Work Orientations.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
See documentation for each BSA year for full details.
