Rihab Dahab, member of the User Support and Training team for the UK Data Service, introduces new teaching and learning resources that have been developed for the British Social Attitudes survey (BSA).
The BSA is a key survey of public attitudes and opinions in Britain. It tracks changes in the public’s attitudes, values, and beliefs on a wide range of social and political issues over time. The survey is a great resource for teaching, in a dissertation, or for research.
The BSA is particularly useful for teaching and learning as it has various topics that interest both students and researchers. Also, its relatively simple design makes it easy for survey data beginners to use and understand. Additionally, the BSA documentation is clear and easy to follow.
The UK Data Service has recently created three new ways to use the BSA data for teaching and learning including a new open access teaching dataset, a quick start guide to the survey for dissertation students (among others!), and a new online learning module introducing the survey and how to use the data.
A bit about the British Social Attitudes survey
The BSA is the longest running study of public attitudes in Britain, conducted by the largest independent social research organisation in the UK, the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen).
Since its start in 1983, the BSA has been a leading survey for measuring political, social and moral values in Britain. Interviewing around 120,000 people over the past four decades, with nearly 4,000 participants every year, the survey is designed to assess the views and attitudes of the public on a range of topics. The survey also asks participants about their backgrounds, health status and well-being, employment, equalities and more.
The longevity of the survey not only allows the assessment of how public opinions and attitudes have changed over the years, but also makes the survey an important source to policy makers, academics, social researchers, charities and the media.
The British Social Attitudes survey after COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic was a turning point for many. People, businesses and surveys had to adapt to change. The BSA was no exception!
Until 2019, the BSA data were collected by NatCen through face-to-face interviews and self-completion questionnaires. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic – when it was not possible to knock on doors – the BSA had to adopt a different approach to reach all the participants needed to maintain the survey’s robust estimates.
In 2020, the BSA became an online survey for the first time. Those who were not able to complete the survey online had the chance to participate through telephone interviews. Since then, the BSA has continued with this mixed-mode design of web self-completion and computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI).
The BSA team continuously takes all the necessary measures to ensure that the new data collection approach does not compromise the quality of the survey estimates, maintaining their commitment to high data standards. Therefore, the web survey questionnaire was meticulously designed. Also, since a push-to-web survey is expected to have lower response rates compared to the traditional face-to-face survey, the BSA team increased the gross sample size and created weights to adjust for non-response.
New from the UK Data Service using the BSA
We like the BSA! We have created three teaching and learning materials using the BSA to help our users engage easily with real-world data and get to know the survey better. These free online materials include:
British Social Attitudes survey, 2021, Health Care and Equalities: Open Access Teaching Dataset
Following up the BSA 2017 Environment and Politics and the BSA 2019 Poverty and Welfare open access teaching datasets that were published in 2022, we recently published a third dataset, the BSA 2021 Health Care and Equalities open access teaching dataset that is based on the original British Social Attitudes survey, 2021.
This new dataset is designed for teaching and learning purposes. Lecturers, teachers and students can download, share and upload these open access teaching datasets to platforms without registration or login.
For this dataset, we chose some interesting variables on health care including views and satisfaction with the National Health Service (NHS), and variables on attitudes towards equality such as equality in the workplace and sexual relationships. The 2021 BSA open access teaching dataset retains many of the same variables as the 2017 and 2019 open access teaching datasets, which gives users the perfect opportunity to perform time-based and comparison analyses.
The British Social Attitudes Open Teaching Dataset: Health Care and Equalities, 2021 is available from the UK Data Archive under SN 9236.
The Quick Start Guide: British Social Attitudes (BSA)
The Quick Start Guide: British Social Attitudes (BSA) is the mini user guide for the full version of the BSA user guide. It is concise and to the point!
This Quick Start Guide is one of many resources we have for students to provide guidance when using survey data in their dissertation projects.
It gives a brief overview of the survey, its topic, and some statistics of views on Brexit before the referendum based on a pre-release from 2015 of the BSA 33 report Brexit: What will it mean for Britain?. Now that Brexit has happened, isn’t it interesting to look back on how most people felt about what would happen if Britain left the EU?
The BSA quick guide presents many key features of the survey including:
- Core questions and rotating modules.
- Split sample.
- Unit of analysis.
- Sample design and weights.
The Quick Start Guide British Social Attitudes (BSA) is one of four quick start guides to data available on the Students page from our Learning Hub.
A snapshot of the Quick Start Guide: British Social Attitudes (BSA) (source: UK Data Service).
Introduction to the British Social Attitudes survey: an interactive data skills module
Our new online module Introduction to the British Social Attitudes survey is a fantastic resource for those with limited experience of surveys and who want to know how to get started with the BSA in just 1.5 hours (or so!). This interactive module is aimed at those who want to learn for themselves about the BSA.
It covers basic material about the BSA such as survey design, questionnaires, weights, how to access the data from the UK Data Service, and how to explore variables using documentation. It also covers how to create population estimates using weights and survey design variables with worked examples using the BSA 2017 and the BSA 2020.
The module was created using Rise 360, uses many interactive features like videos and quizzes, and is fully accessible. This module is one of several data skills modules that we are creating on commonly used surveys in collaboration with the data producers.
In this module, we collaborated with NatCen’s BSA team to create some of the materials. Prof. Sir John Curtice (Senior Research Fellow at NatCen) introduces the BSA, why the survey was created and the importance of the survey for social researchers. Also, he takes us through various interesting differences in attitudes that change over time using many examples, including attitudes towards same-sex relationships, and one of the most interesting changes of all in British social attitudes, people’s views about the running of the banks over the last 40 years.
Also, Natalie Maplethorpe (Research Director at NatCen) presents key information about the BSA. She outlines the main methodological features of the BSA data collection, takes us through some consideration when using the BSA data in Time Series analysis, and provides information about the annual BSA reports.
A snapshot of the Data Skills Module: Introduction to the British Social Attitudes survey (source: UK Data Service).
The BSA research datasets
It is worth noting here that the full set of BSA data for research is available from the UK Data Service. In addition, our dedicated helpdesk team is always ready to provide advice and support research and projects based on the BSA and other types of data and resources that the service provides.
About the author
Rihab Dahab is a Research Associate at the University of Manchester and a member of the User Support and Training team for the UK Data Service (The Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research). Rihab develops resources to support researchers and data users from non-academic sectors. Her research focuses on the impact of armed conflict on children undernourishment, and using multilevel modelling to address research question