Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

Background
The 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.

For the second edition (May 2016) a new version of the data file was deposited, with previously unavailable variables from two questionnaire modules covering transport and vegetarianism included.


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 BSA 2014 questionnaires included modules covering: attitudes to public spending, social welfare, housing, health, European Union, transport, higher education, trust in statistics, vegetarianism and retirement and pensions.

In 2014, the ISSP module was Citizenship.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) survey was launched by ScotCen Social Research (formerly the Scottish Centre for Social Research) in 1999, following the advent of devolution. Based on annual rounds of interviews of between 1,200 to 1,500 people drawn using probability sampling (based on a stratified, clustered sample), it aims to facilitate the study of public opinion and inform the development of public policy in Scotland, similar to the British Social Attitudes (BSA) series (held at the Archive under GN 33168). The SSA survey has been conducted annually each year since 1999, with the exception of 2008. The survey has a modular structure. In any one year it typically contains three to five modules, each containing 40 questions. Funding for its first two years came from the Economic and Social Research Council, while from 2001 onwards different bodies have funded individual modules each year. These bodies have included the Economic and Social Research Council, the Scottish Government and various charitable and grant awarding bodies, such as the Nuffield Foundation and Leverhulme Trust. Further information on the SSA and links to publications may be found on the ScotCen Social Research Scottish Social Attitudes webpages. The 2021/22 SSA contained modules of questions on attitudes to government and who should make decisions, views on the Scottish economy and living standards, politics and voting, attitudes towards Scotland’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, attitudes towards accessing healthcare services digitally and towards people with problem drug use, all funded by the Scottish Government. Questions on attitudes to the EU, Brexit and Scottish independence were included and funded by the Scottish Centre for Social Research.Latest edition informationFor the second edition (September 2024), the panel survey data and accompanying documentation were added to the study. The 2021-22 panel survey contained questions on attitudes to the Gaelic and Scots languages (funded by Bòrd na Gàidhlig) and attitudes to sovereignty (funded by the ESRC). Questions on attitudes to the EU, Brexit and Scottish independence were included and funded by the Scottish Centre for Social Research. Main Topics: The 2021-22 telephone questionnaire covered the following topics: attitudes to pandemic handling by governmentattitudes to stigma around problematic drug use and wider health issuesattitudes to the EU, Brexit and Scottish Independenceaccessing digital servicespolitical scales left-right, libertarian-authoritarianHousehold income The 2021-22 Panel questionnaire covered the following topics Attitudes to Gaelic and Scots languageAttitudes to sovereigntyAttitudes to the EU, Brexit and Scottish Independence Multi-stage stratified random sample Telephone interview: Computer-assisted (CATI) Face-to-face interview Self-completion 2021 2022 ADULTS AGE ALCOHOL LICENSING LAWS ATTITUDES CHILD BENEFITS CHILDREN DEBILITATIVE ILLNESS ECONOMIC ACTIVITY EDUCATION ELECTIONS ELECTORAL VOTING EMPLOYMENT ETHNIC GROUPS EU REFERENDUM 2016 EUROPEAN UNION Equality and inequa... FATHER S OCCUPATION... GENDER GOVERNMENT POLICY HEALTH STATUS HOURS OF WORK HOUSEHOLD BUDGETS HOUSEHOLDS HOUSING TENURE INCOME INCOME DISTRIBUTION INTERNET USE INTERPERSONAL TRUST LOCAL GOVERNMENT PO... MARITAL STATUS MORAL VALUES MOTHER S OCCUPATION... NATIONAL ECONOMY NATIONAL IDENTITY NEWS NEWSPAPER READERSHIP OCCUPATIONS PERSONAL FINANCE MA... POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE POLITICAL ATTITUDES POLITICAL INTEREST POLITICAL PARTICIPA... Political behaviour... QUALIFICATIONS RELIGION RIGHT TO PRIVACY RURAL AREAS SATISFACTION WITH S... SCOTS GAELIC LANGUAGE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT SELF EMPLOYED SOCIAL ATTITUDES SOCIAL CLASS SOCIAL INEQUALITY SOCIAL MEDIA SOCIO ECONOMIC STATUS SOVEREIGNTY SPOUSE S ECONOMIC A... SPOUSE S EDUCATIONA... SPOUSE S SOCIO ECON... SPOUSES STANDARD OF LIVING STATE HEALTH SERVICES STATUS IN EMPLOYMENT Scotland Social attitudes an... Social behaviour an... TAXATION TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP TRUST TRUST IN GOVERNMENT URBAN AREAS VOTING BEHAVIOUR WEBSITES

See documentation for each BSA year for full details. 2019 ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT ACCESS TO PUBLIC SE... ADULTS AGE BRITISH POLITICAL P... BUSINESS OWNERSHIP CARE OF DEPENDANTS CARE STANDARDS CAREGIVERS CARS CENSORSHIP CENTRAL GOVERNMENT CHARITABLE ORGANIZA... CHILD BENEFITS CHILDREN CITIZENSHIP CIVIL AND POLITICAL... CONSERVATIVE PARTY ... COST OF LIVING CULTURAL IDENTITY DEATH PENALTY DEBILITATIVE ILLNESS DECENTRALIZED GOVER... DEMENTIA DEVELOPMENT PLANNING DISABILITIES DISCRIMINATION ECONOMIC ACTIVITY ECONOMIC INDICATORS EDUCATION EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND EDUCATIONAL FEES ELDERLY EMPLOYEES EMPLOYERS EMPLOYMENT EMPLOYMENT HISTORY EQUALITY BEFORE THE... ETHICS OF SCIENCE ETHNIC GROUPS EU REFERENDUM 2016 EUROPEAN INTEGRATION EUROPEAN UNION EUROPEAN UNION MEMB... FAMILIES FAMILY MEMBERS FATHER S OCCUPATION FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES FLEXIBLE WORKING TIME FULL TIME EMPLOYMENT GENDER GENDER ROLE GOVERNMENT POLICY GOVERNMENT ROLE Great Britain HEALTH HEALTH SERVICES HIGHER EDUCATION HOME OWNERSHIP HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS HOSPITAL SERVICES HOURS OF WORK HOUSEHOLDS HOUSING CONSTRUCTION HOUSING POLICY HOUSING TENURE IMMIGRATION INCOME INTERNATIONAL RELAT... INTERNET USE LABOUR PARTY GREAT ... LIFE SATISFACTION LIVING CONDITIONS MARITAL STATUS NATIONAL IDENTITY NATIONALITY NEWSPAPER READERSHIP OCCUPATIONAL QUALIF... OCCUPATIONS PART TIME EMPLOYMENT PATRIOTISM PENSIONS POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE POLITICAL ATTITUDES POLITICAL EXTREMISM POLITICAL INTEREST POLITICS POVERTY PREJUDICE PRIVATE SECTOR PUBLIC EXPENDITURE PUBLIC SECTOR PUBLIC TRANSPORT QUALIFICATIONS QUALITY OF LIFE RELIGION RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION RELIGIOUS ATTENDANCE RETIREMENT SATISFACTION WITH S... SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH SELF EMPLOYED SEXUAL IDENTITY SOCIAL ATTITUDES SOCIAL CLASS SOCIAL HOUSING SOCIAL INEQUALITY SOCIAL ISSUES SOCIAL SECURITY BEN... SOCIAL SUPPORT SOCIAL WELFARE SOCIAL WELFARE PHIL... SOCIO ECONOMIC STATUS SPOUSE S ECONOMIC A... SPOUSE S EMPLOYMENT SPOUSES STANDARD OF LIVING STATE HEALTH SERVICES STATE RESPONSIBILITY SUPERVISORY STATUS Social behaviour an... Social conditions a... TELEVISION VIEWING TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP TRADE UNIONS TRANSPORT TRUST TRUST IN GOVERNMENT TRUST IN OFFICIAL S... VAPING WELL BEING SOCIETY WORKING CONDITIONS

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Young Life and Times Survey (YLT) originally began as a companion survey to the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey (NILT) series. It surveyed young people aged 12-17 living in the households of adults interviewed for NILT, and YLT ran alongside it from 1998-2000. Following an evaluation in 2001, the YLT series recommenced in 2003 (see SN 4826) using a completely different methodology and independent of the adult NILT. This new YLT survey uses Child Benefit records as a sampling frame.

The aims of the YLT series are to:

• monitor public attitudes towards social policy and political issues in Northern Ireland;
• provide a time series on attitudes to key social policy areas;
• facilitate academic social policy analysis; provide a freely available resource on public attitudes for the wider community of users in Northern Ireland;
• give a voice to young people.

An open access time-series teaching dataset has been created from the 2003-2012 YLTs - see SN 7548.

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.

Further information about the YLT, including publications, may be found on the Access Research Knowledge (ARK) YLT webpages.

In 2016 all 16-year-olds who celebrated their 16th birthday in February and March of the survey year were invited to take part.


Main Topics:

In 2016 the following topics were included in the survey: background; community relations (funded by the Executive Office - TEO; previously the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister); respect (funded by the Executive Office); community relations, equality and diversity education - CRED (funded by the Department of Education - DE); sport and physical activity (funded by Sport NI); culture (funded by the Improving Children’s Lives - ICL, initiative at Queen’s University Belfast); BREXIT and Internationalisation (funded by the British Council).

The questions on sport and physical activity and respect were also included in the Kids' Life and Times Survey, 2016. The questions on culture and sport and physical activity contributed to two larger mixed methods projects on these topics.

The overall aim was to conduct a wide-ranging survey of Catholic adults living in Britain, which asked about many aspects of their lives, including their socio-demographic circumstances, the nature and extent of their religious engagement (belonging, behaviour and beliefs), their views of the Catholic Church’s leadership, institutions and teachings, and their social and political attitudes. The survey was conducted online by Savanta ComRes, in October-November 2019. This is a cross-sectional dataset, based on interviews with 1,823 self-identifying Catholics adults in Britain (aged 18 and over).

In recent decades, the religious profile of British society has changed significantly, with a marked increase in 'religious nones', declining proportions identifying as Anglican or with a particular Non-Conformist tradition, an increase in non-denominational Christians, and the spread of non-Christian faiths. Within this wider context, Roman Catholics have remained broadly stable as a proportion of the adult population and represent the second largest Christian denomination in Britain, after Anglicans. However, there have been significant internal and external developments which have affected the institutional church and wider Roman Catholic community in Britain, and which could have shaped how Catholics' think about and engage with their faith and how it impacts their daily lives. Recent years have seen demographic change through significant inflows of Catholic migrants coming from Eastern Europe, the papal visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain in autumn 2010 (the first since 1982), Pope Francis's pontificate from 2013 onwards, Catholic leaders' political interventions against 'aggressive secularism' and in other policy debates, and internal crises and debates impacting on the perceived authority of the Catholic Church. The last major academic investigation of the Catholic community (and only in England and Wales) was undertaken in the late 1970s (Hornsby-Smith and Lee 1979; Hornsby-Smith 1987, 1991). It found that the 'distinctive subculture' of the Catholic community in the post-war period was evolving and dissolving in complex ways due to processes of social change and developments within the wider faith, such as the Second Vatican Council (Hornsby-Smith 1987, 1991). It also demonstrated growing internal heterogeneity in Catholics' religious beliefs, practices and social attitudes (Hornsby-Smith 1987, 1991). However, while there has been some recent scholarship on particular topics relating to Catholics and Catholicism in Britain, using both general social surveys and limited one-off denomination-specific opinion polls (Clements 2014a, 2014b; 2016; Bullivant 2016a, 2016b), there has been no systematic academic inquiry into the Roman Catholic population in Britain. In comparison, an academic-led survey series has profiled the Catholic population in the United States on five occasions between 1987 and 2011, with other large-scale surveys carried out in recent years by organisations such as the Pew Research Center. Most existing research into the waning of religious belief, practice, and affiliation in Britain has focused either on the very large, macro level or on the very small, micro level. While both are important and necessary, largely missing has been sustained sociological attention on how secularising trends have affected - and are being mediated within - individual religious communities. This project would undertake such a task for Roman Catholics in Britain, by conducting a large-scale, thematically wide-ranging and nationally representative survey. It would provide a detailed study of personal faith, social attitudes and political engagement within a significant religious minority with distinctive historical roots and in which 'tribal' feelings of belonging have been strong. The core topics would consist of personal faith, religiosity and associational involvement in parish life; attitudes towards leadership and governance within the institutional church; attitudes on social and moral issues; and political attitudes and engagement. It would be thematically wide-ranging and analytically rich, providing a detailed portrait of contemporary social, religious and attitudinal heterogeneity amongst Catholics. By undertaking this large-scale and wide-ranging survey, an important and distinctive contribution would be made to the sociology of religion in Britain in general and to the study of its Catholic population in particular.

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 http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NILT webpage.

The Food and You Surveys (2010-2018), and Food and You 2 (2020- ) are bi-annual, cross-sectional surveys of adults aged 16 years and over living in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, commissioned by the Food Standards Agency (FSA). Food and You provides data about the prevalence of different attitudes, reported behaviour and knowledge about ways in which food is purchased, stored, prepared and eaten.

Food and You, 2010-2018
From 2010, Food and You became the FSA’s flagship social survey. In addition, the FSA conducted regular tracking surveys including the bi-annual Public Attitudes Tracker and the annual Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS) Consumer Attitudes Tracker (these studies are not held at UKDS). From Wave 4, Food and You included new questions to cover the affordability of food, choice, security and sustainability.

Food and You 2, 2020-
In 2018, the FSA’s Advisory Committee for Social Science (ACSS) recommended that Food and You and the Public Attitudes Tracker be replaced with a new ‘push-to-web’ survey, Food and You 2, which was commissioned in 2019 with data collection commencing in July 2020. Due to differences in the survey methodologies, comparisons cannot be made between the earlier Food and You surveys, or the Public Attitudes Tracker, and Food and You 2. Therefore Food and You 2, 2020 is the start of a new data time series. Data will be collected through Food and You 2 on a bi-annual basis. Unlike the previous surveys, as well as the standard End User Licence (EUL) study for Food and You 2 the UKDS also holds additional variables under Special Licence (see SN 8815).

Further information may be found on the FSA's Food and You Survey webpage.

The Food and You Survey, 2016 included new questions to cover affordability of food, choice, security and sustainability. The main aims of the fourth wave of the study were to provide FSA with data on food hygiene and food safety and other food-related issues in order to: explore public understanding and engagement with food safety; assess knowledge of messages and interventions aimed at raising awareness and changing behaviour; describe public attitudes to food production and the food system; and monitor trends in reported behaviours, as well as, identify target groups for future intervention.

Abstract

The European Social Survey (ESS) is an academically-driven multi-country survey, which has been administered in over 30 countries to date. Its three aims are, firstly - to monitor and interpret changing public attitudes and values within Europe and to investigate how they interact with Europe's changing institutions, secondly - to advance and consolidate improved methods of cross-national survey measurement in Europe and beyond, and thirdly - to develop a series of European social indicators, including attitudinal indicators.

In the eighth round, the survey covers 23 countries and employs the most rigorous methodologies. From Round 7 it is funded by the Members, Observers and Guests of ESS European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ESS ERIC) who represent national governments. Participating countries directly fund the central coordination costs of the ESS ERIC, as well the costs of fieldwork and national coordination in their own country.

The survey involves strict random probability sampling, a minimum target response rate of 70% and rigorous translation protocols. The hour-long face-to-face interview includes questions on a variety of core topics repeated from previous rounds of the survey and also two modules developed for Round 8 covering Public Attitudes to Climate Change, Energy Security, and Energy Preferences and Welfare Attitudes in a Changing Europe (the latter is a partial repeat of a module from Round 4).

Geographic coverage

1) European Union countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom 2) Non-European Union countries: Iceland, Israel, Norway, Russian Federation, Switzerland

Analysis unit

Individuals

Universe

All persons aged 15 and over, residing within private households, regardless of their nationality, citizenship, language or legal status, in participating countries.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Sampling procedure varied by country. Please see the "Documentation Report" available in the 'Documentation' section for detailed information on how sampling was conducted in each of the 23 countries.

Mode of data collection

Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Research instrument

Austria - structured questionnaires in German Belgium - structured questionnaires in Dutch, French Czech Republic - structured questionnaires in Czech Estonia - structured questionnaires in Estonian, Russian Finland - structured questionnaires in Finnish, Swedish France - structured questionnaires in French Germany - structured questionnaires in German Hungary - structured questionnaires in Hungarian Iceland - structured questionnaires in Icelandic Ireland - structured questionnaires in English (we had produced a localised Polish language survey, but all Polish households participated using English) Israel - structured questionnaires in Hebrew, Arabic and Russian Italy - structured questionnaires in Italian Lithuania - structured questionnaires in Lithuanian and Russian Netherlands - structured questionnaires in Dutch Norway - structured questionnaires in Norwegian Poland - structured questionnaires in Polish Portugal - structured questionnaires in Portuguese Russian Federation - structured questionnaires in Russian Slovenia - structured questionnaires in Slovenian Sweden - structured questionnaires in Swedish Spain - structured questionnaires in Spanish and Catalan Switzerland - structured questionnaires in German/Swiss-German, French, Italian United Kingdom - structured questionnaires in English

Response rate

Response rate varied by country. Please see the "Documentation Report" available in the 'Documentation' section for detailed information on the response rate in each of the 23 countries.

The Health Survey for England series was designed to monitor trends in the nation's health, to estimate the proportion of people in England who have specified health conditions, and to estimate the prevalence of risk factors associated with these conditions. The surveys provide regular information that cannot be obtained from other sources on a range of aspects concerning the public's health. The surveys have been carried out since 1994 by the Joint Health Surveys Unit of NatCen Social Research and the Research Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at UCL. Each survey in the series includes core questions and measurements (such as blood pressure, height and weight, and analysis of blood and saliva samples), as well as modules of questions on topics that vary from year to year. New topics this year include hearing and mental health. The achieved sample for the 2014 survey was 8,077 adults (aged 16 and over) and 2,003 children (aged 0-15). This year tables are in excel spreadsheets and the way the findings are presented in the report and summary has changed. We would very much like to hear readers' views about these changes. Please tell us via the short reader survey at the bottom of this page in Related links. Please note this release was updated on 15 January 2016 to add chapter 2 - Mental Health Problems and chapter 3 - Attitudes towards Mental Illness and their associated excel tables and to update the Summary of Key Findings.

Next Steps (also known as the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE1)) is a major longitudinal cohort study following a nationally representative group of around 16,000 who were in Year 9 attending state and independent schools in England in 2004, a cohort born in 1989-90.

The first seven sweeps of the study were conducted annually (2004-2010) when the study was funded and managed by the Department for Education (DfE). The study mainly focused on the educational and early labour market experiences of young people.

In 2015 Next Steps was restarted, under the management of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) at the UCL Faculty of Education and Society (IOE) and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The Next Steps Age 25 survey was aimed at increasing the understanding of the lives of young adults growing up today and the transitions out of education and into early adult life.

The Next Steps Age 32 Survey took place between April 2022 and September 2023 and is the ninth sweep of the study. The Age 32 Survey aimed to provide data for research and policy on the lives of this generation of adults in their early 30s. This sweep also collected information on many wider aspects of cohort members' lives including health and wellbeing, politics and social participation, identity and attitudes as well as capturing personality, resilience, working memory and financial literacy.

Next Steps survey data is also linked to the National Pupil Database (NPD), the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), the Individualised Learner Records (ILR) and the Student Loans Company (SLC).

There are now two separate studies that began under the LSYPE programme. The second study, Our Future (LSYPE2) (available at the UK Data Service under GN 2000110), began in 2013 and will track a sample of over 13,000 young people annually from ages 13/14 through to age 20.

Further information about Next Steps may be found on the CLS website.

Secure Access datasets:

Secure Access versions of Next Steps have more restrictive access conditions than Safeguarded versions available under the standard End User Licence (see 'Access' section).

Secure Access versions of the Next Steps include:

• sensitive variables from the questionnaire data for Sweeps 1-9. These are available under Secure Access SN 8656.
  
• National Pupil Database (NPD) linked data at Key Stages 2, 3, 4 and 5, England. These are available under SN 7104.
• Linked Individualised Learner Records learner and learning aims datasets for academic years 2005 to 2014, England. These are available under SN 8577.
  
• detailed geographic indicators for Sweep 1 and Sweep 8 (2001 Census Boundaries) are available under SN 8189, geographic indicators for Sweep 8 and 9 (2011 Census Boundaries) are available under SN 8190, and geographic indicators for Sweep 9 (2021 Census Boundaries) are available under SN 9337. The Sweep 1 geography file was previously held under SN 7104.
• Linked Health Administrative Datasets (Hospital Episode Statistics) for financial years 1997-2022 held under SN 8681.
• Linked Student Loans Company Records for years 2007-2021 held under SN 8848.

When researchers are approved/accredited to access a Secure Access version of Next Steps, the Safeguarded (EUL) version of the study - Next Steps: Sweeps 1-9, 2004-2023 (SN 5545) - will be automatically provided alongside.

SN 5545 - Next Steps: Sweeps 1-9, 2004-2023 includes the main Next Steps survey data from Sweep 1 (age 14) to Sweep 9 (age 32).

Latest edition information
For the eighteenth edition (February 2025), the Sweep 9 Derived Variables data file has been updated with some newly derived variables categorised under the household (W9DCHNO12, W9DTOTCH, W9DTOTOWNCH) and education (W9DAQLVLH, W9DVQLVLH) sections. The Longitudinal data file have been updated with changes to the weight variables. Three out of the four weights in the previous version have been removed. W9FINWTALLB has been renamed to W9FINWT in line with previous sweeps. The user guide has been updated to reflect these changes. Furthermore, the derived variables user guide has been merged into the main user guide and can be accessed via Appendix 1.

This Dataverse contains data from an original survey conducted in Britain in September 2016 as part of a project on public attitudes towards PrEP, an anti-HIV drug, and treatments other lifestyle disease.

This collection is comprised of data resulting from five internet surveys, conducted between 2015 and 2018. (1) A survey of 1193 Conservative Party Members, 1180 Labour Party Members, 730 Liberal Democrat Party Members, 802 United Kingdom Independence Party Members, 845 Green party Members, 968 Scottish National Party Members, conducted between 12th - 26th May 2015. It includes 347 variables relating to the political attitudes and activities, and demographic attributes of the respondents. (2) A survey of 5219 members of six British political parties (Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green, UKIP and SNP) run immediately after the general election of June 2017; contains 436 variables on political attitudes and social background. (3) A survey of the political attitudes and social background of 2026 members of the British Labour Party, run in May 2016. (4) A survey of 2249 members of the Labour and Conservative parties undertaken in December 2018 on their attitudes towards Brexit. (5) A survey of 6378 strong partisan identifiers of six main British political parties, undertaken in May-June 2015. 258 variables on political attitudes and social background. (6) A survey of the political attitudes and social profile of 1759 trade union members. 224 variables.

Few, if any, fully-fledged democracies prosper without political parties. But parties are in trouble almost everywhere - both in terms of public perceptions, which are becoming more and more negative, and in terms of membership numbers, which (with the exception of some newer, more radical entrants into the market) dropped considerably from the 1950s. However, most of the main British parties experiences unexpected upturns in membership recruitment from during the period covered by this project. Unless we are willing to see parties become essentially elitist, hollowed-out institutions, this should give us cause for concern. In a healthy democracy, parties cannot simply be brands run by elites for their own and for our collective convenience. They need to be rooted in, rather than disconnected from, society. Their programmes need to reflect meaningful differences. Their leaders and their parliamentary candidates are best chosen by competitive election rather than appointment or inheritance. Party members can help ensure that all this occurs in practice as well as in theory. They can also, of course, make the difference between a party winning or losing an election since contests are decided not merely nationally, in the media, but locally, on the ground. In spite of this, we do not know as much as we might do about party members in the twenty-first century. The Conservatives have, it is true, been reasonably well served recently, not least by our own surveys carried out in 2009 and 2013. However, the last academic survey of Labour members prior to this project was carried out in 1997 and the last survey of Liberal Democrat members in 1999. UKIP members had never been surveyed. Just as importantly, there has never previously been a study of the members of several parties carried out concurrently, thereby enabling researchers to ask them exactly the same questions at exactly the same time. Nor has there been any systematic study of people who leave political parties after joining them. The Party Members Project (PMP) changes this. Shortly after the general election of May 2015, using samples gleaned from the massive panels collected by internet pollsters, and therefore minimizing the logistical and other problems posed by enlisting the parties themselves, PMP conducted simultaneous surveys of the members of the UK's six biggest parties, along with Labour's trade union affiliated members and those citizens who felt strongly attached to one party or another yet did not choose to join them. Then, in the summer of 2016, the project surveyed Labour members again, following the unprecedented surge in that party's membership over the course of the preceding 12 months. Following the general election of June 2017, the members of the major six parties were surveyed again about their activities in the election campaign (among other things); those who had left their parties were also identified and surveyed about reasons for doing so. In December 2018, members of the Labour and Conservative parties were surveyed specifically about the attitudes towards Brexit.

This data deposit includes qualitative and quantitative data that help answer the question: Which people do the public think should be classified as 'incapacitated'? How should this be assessed? And should they be threatened with benefit sanctions if they don't do what Jobcentres ask them to do? More people claim out-of-work incapacity benefits than unemployment benefits in the UK, and this has been true throughout the recent recession - but we know little about what the public think about incapacity benefits. The data collection consists of: (1) Quantitative data: includes a comparative YouGov study of the UK and Norway, giving each respondent three pen-portraits ('vignettes') of different sorts of disabled and non-disabled benefit claimant to see which factors influence the public's responses. It also includes a follow-up study in the UK using the NatCen online panel. (2) Qualitative data include the results from six focus groups with the general public in the England in 2016, which also used vignettes but allowed a deeper investigation of how the public debated the situation of each one.Over a million older people claim incapacity benefits in Britain, on the grounds that their health or disability stops them from working - four times as many as those claiming unemployment benefits, despite the downturn. But what does it actually mean to say that someone is 'incapacitated'? Take two people with identical impairments: a London-based graduate and an unskilled person in Merthyr Tydfil. The graduate may have better working conditions, an employer who is more willing to change the job to fit them, or be able to find another job that their health permits them to do. The unskilled worker may have none of these options, particularly if they are older and therefore more likely to have lower qualifications, to be biologically 'slowing down', and to face age-related discrimination. It is these ‘non-medical factors’ that are the focus of this project. The research firstly involves a statistical analysis of working conditions, adjustments and the availability of work in the UK and Europe. It then looks at whether the public and elites think that non-medical factors should be taken into account in assessing incapacity, using both a new survey and a series of workshops with different groups. This data deposit includes three data sources: 1. YouGov UK/Norway survey, sampled from YouGov's opt-in panel 2. NatCen UK survey, sampled from the NatCen online follow-up of the representative British Social Attitudes survey 3. Focus groups from the UK