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.
Emergency Care ModuleThe British Social Attitudes Survey: Emergency Care Module, 2018 was collected as part of a grant-funded project called Drivers of Demand for Emergency and Urgent Care (DEUCE). The project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and the lead institution was the University of Sheffield. The project as a whole aimed to understand people’s help-seeking behaviour from their perspectives rather than health professionals’ perspectives, and from the perspective of an emergency and urgent care system. The BSA module was designed to identify factors affecting population tendency to use emergency services for minor or non-urgent problems, partly through the use of vignettes asking what actions people would take in relation to minor or non-urgent health problems.
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 study covers the following topics: tendency to seek emergency healthcare for minor problems, attitudes to Accident and Emergency departments, attitudes to General Practice, use of 999 ambulances, A&E departments and GP appointments, and health literacy.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
See documentation for each BSA year for full details.
