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.
The Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, 2012: Politics and Good Relations Teaching Dataset is part of a suite of teaching and learning resources created as part of a Higher Education Academy (HEA) strategic project focusing on teaching research methods. The project Learning by numbers: new open educational resources for teaching quantitative methods involved the creation of new teaching datasets from two major surveys focusing on Northern Ireland, with accompanying 'student-friendly' documentation and teaching guidelines. Specifically, two teaching datasets were created using NILT 2012 (see also SN 7546, which covers Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) issues) as well as a time-series teaching dataset drawing on the 2003-2012 Young Life and Times (YLT) surveys (see SN 7548). Documentation combining an edited technical report and codebook accompanies the teaching datasets. This documentation includes details of all the variables included in the teaching datasets as well as a summary technical report, with the main issues outlines in accessible language, for example, research design, sampling and response rates. Teaching guidelines drawing upon the particular variables included in the datasets are also available. This dataset focuses on public attitudes to politics and good relations in Northern Ireland. It is based on NILT 2012, and adapted for the purposes of this project. Some variables have been constructed and/or simplified for this teaching dataset – notes are provided in the codebook. While the teaching datasets contains the same total number of respondents, they are intended for teaching purposes only; it is advisable to use the original NILT 2012 study (see SN 7408) for research. Further information about the teaching datasets may be found on the ARK Teaching datasets: Learning by numbers webpage.
Main Topics:
The topics covered include public attitudes to politics and good relations in Northern Ireland, and some demographic details.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
Compilation or synthesis of existing material
The teaching dataset is a simplified subset created from NILT 2012; see documentation for details.
