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.
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.
In 2004, three versions of the questionnaire were used for the fieldwork. Respondents are randomly assigned to one of the versions. Modules may have been included on one, two or three versions of the questionnaire (thus giving different sample sizes). The 2004 questionnaire covered attitudes to social housing, redistribution, views of the welfare state, expectations of and satisfaction with the National Health Service, ways of improving primary and secondary education, management-employee relations and life-cycle events. Version A of the self-completion questionnaire included a module of questions about citizenship, which formed the ISSP component of the 2004 BSA. Standard Measures The questionnaires contain three scales developed by researchers involved in the BSA and British Election Study (BES) series. These are: 'libertarian/authoritarian'; 'left/right'; and 'welfarist'.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
See documentation for each BSA year for full details.
