Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The project aimed to explore the social and political attitudes of 15-17 year olds through sample surveys of a selection of schools in Hertfordshire in 2000 and 2001. In particular, the aim was to understand the origins of social capital, and what factors affect young people’s political/civic knowledge, engagement and social trust. In addition, the project examined the impact of formal citizenship education, whether exposure to citizenship education was associated with higher civic knowledge, engagement and trust among young people. Finally, the relationship between social capital and other important outcomes in young people, notably educational attainment was also explored, in order to assess to what extent social capital variables, in the home or school, have an impact on exam performance at 16 and the key decision of whether to stay in school post-16. The project had policy aims of feeding the results of the research to policy-makers in central and local government. The level of civic education in each school was ascertained by a prior practice survey to heads (questionnaire is part of the submission to the archive). The researchers surveyed 1250 year eleven students in their classes by means of a written questionnaire.
Main Topics:
The datasets are the coded responses to the two sample surveys, which covered topics such as social attitudes, psychological well being, attitudes to school and teachers, political knowledge, activities and attitudes as well as collecting information about the respondent’s characteristics and behaviour (e.g. television watching, school grades). The Wave 1 dataset contains the responses to these questions (see codebook) as well as responses to the practice survey and a number of school-level variables (e.g. whether the school is public or private). A year later the same students (including those who had left education) and asked many of the same questions as well as some new ones (e.g. GCSE results, intentions about voting, hours spent watching television news). For Wave 2, 702 students replied, a 60 per cent response rate from the Wave 1 survey. The Wave 2 data file contains responses to both first and second wave questions for those 702 cases. The data is a complete representation of the questionnaires bar the answers to one qualitative question: "In your opinion what are the most serious problems or opportunities facing you and your generation? Use as much of the space as you need." The project researchers coded some of this information and used the rest of it in non-quantitative form for the study reports. Standard Measures Some repeats of standard questions were adopted, such as the social trust question "Generally speaking do you think that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?", which appears in the World Values Survey (held at UKDA under GN: 33239). Some political knowledge questions on the EU and numbers of Members of Parliament were taken from Stradling, R. (1977), The Political Awareness of the School Leaver, London: Hansard Society. The well-being question was taken from the British Social Attitudes survey (see under GN: 33168). Other sources used included: Mischel, W. (1961) 'Preference for delayed reinforcement and social responsibility' Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 62(1), pp.1-7 for the discount rate question. Flanagan, C.A et al (1998) 'Ties that bind: correlates of adolescents' civic commitments in seven countries' Journal of Social Issues, 54(3), pp.457-475, for the social responsibility question.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
the 27 schools (24 state and three private) were selected by stratifying the sample of schools in Hertfordshire according to wealth (number of children in receipt of free school meal, or fees for independent schools), examination results and civic education.
Postal survey
Self-completion
