Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey (NILT) series began in 1998, and was the successor to the previous Northern Ireland Social Attitudes series, which was discontinued in 1996.The main aims of the NILT series are: to monitor public attitudes towards social policy and political issues in Northern Ireland; to provide a time series on attitudes to key social policy areas; to facilitate academic social policy analysis; to provide a freely available resource on public attitudes for the wider community of users in Northern Ireland. NILT originally had a companion series which also began in 1998, the Young Life and Times Survey (YLT), although the YLT methodology changed in 2003 and it is conducted separately each year. The Kids' Life and Times (KLT) survey of P7 children (10-11 year olds) is also part of the same suite of surveys as YLT and NILT.NILT also forms part of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), although it does not do so every year. Unfortunately, NILT did not run in 2011 due to funding issues, though YLT ran as normal that year; NILT resumed in 2012 (SN 7408). In addition, several open access teaching datasets were created by ARK (Access Research Knowledge) from various years of NILT, covering different topics such as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) issues, politics and community relations, attitudes to ageing and ageism, and dementia. Further information about the series may be found on the ARK NILT webpage.

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The 2008 NILT survey covered:community relationsattitudes to ageism and ageingexperiences of ageismattitudes to minority ethnic groupsattitudes to migrant workersreligion and religious observancepolitical attitudesattitudes to devolutionbackground information on the respondents

Multi-stage stratified random sample