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.
The 1985 interview questionnaire, as with previous Social Attitudes questionnaires, was divided into groups of questions, or modules, according to the substantive topic. Analysis of some subjects however, will require links across modules. A summary of the questionnaire structure appears below; a more complete cross indexing of the 1983, and 1984 and 1985 questionnaires appears in Appendix J of the 1985 <i>Technical report.</i> Section 1: Media, politics, and international affairs Section 2: Economic expectations and evaluations and labour market participation; work orientations Section 3: Attitudes toward the countryside Section 4: Social expenditure, welfare state issues, housing, education, social class, religion, racial prejudice, sexual morality Section 5: Classification information: household composition, education level, tenure, occupation coding, income The self-completion questionnaire contains questions on the role of government (as part of the International Social Survey Programme), and also questions on the welfare state, the environment, new technology and employment, and on nuclear war.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
See documentation for each BSA year for full details.
