British Social Attitudes Survey, 1985 (ICPSR 8551)

Version Date: Sep 23, 2004

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Principal Investigator(s):
Social and Community Planning Research

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08551.v2

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Summary

This survey is part of a continuing series designed to monitor trends in a wide range of social attitudes in Great Britain. The British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA) is similar in purpose to the General Social Survey carried out by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) in the United States. The BSA questionnaire had two parts, one administered by an interviewer and the other completed by the respondent. As in the past, the 1985 interview questionnaire contained a number of "core" questions covering the major topic areas of defense, the economy, labor market participation, and the welfare state. The 1985 self-enumerated questionnaire was devoted to a series of questions on a range of social, economic, political, and moral issues. Topics that received attention include: (1) media, politics, and international affairs, (2) economic expectations and evaluations and labor market participation, (3) social expenditure, welfare state issues, the National Health Service, and education, and (4) social class, religion, racial prejudice, gender issues, and public and private morality. Other questions covered the welfare state, environment, technology and employment, and nuclear war. Beginning in 1985, an international initiative funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), also contributed a module to the BSA. The topic of the ISSP module in this collection was the role of government. Additional demographic data gathered included age, gender, education, occupation, household income, marital status, social class, and religious and political affiliations.

Citation

Social and Community Planning Research. British Social Attitudes Survey, 1985. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], United Kingdom Data Archive [distributor], 2004-09-23. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08551.v2

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Funding

Nuffield Foundation (United Kingdom), Marks and Spencer (United Kingdom), Shell UK Limited, Department of Employment, Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts (Great Britain). Monument Trust, Department of the Environment (United Kingdom), Countryside Commission (Great Britain), Economic and Social Research Council (United Kingdom)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, United Kingdom Data Archive
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Time Period(s)

1985

Date of Collection

1985-04 -- 1985-05

Data Collection Notes

  1. (1) In 1999, Social and Community Planning Research (SCPR) became the National Centre for Social Research. (2) Under agreement with the UKDA, the data are disseminated as they were received, without additional processing by ICPSR. This agreement also provides that ICPSR will disseminate the data only for use within its member institutions. Persons from nonmember institutions may request these data directly from the UKDA. (3) The data are provided as an SPSS portable file. (4) The documentation was converted to Portable Document Format (PDF) by the UKDA. The PDF documentation can also be downloaded from the UKDA Web site at http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/. (5) The codebook is provided by the principal investigator as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web site.
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Sample

Multistage stratified random sample consisting of four stages. The sample was drawn from the electoral register.

Universe

All adults aged 18 or over living in private households in Britain whose addresses were included in the electoral registers (excluding the "crofting counties" north of the Caledonian Canal).

Data Source

personal interviews, and self-enumerated questionnaires

Data Type(s)

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Original Release Date

1987-10-12

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • Social and Community Planning Research. British Social Attitudes Survey, 1985. ICPSR08551-v2. Colchester, Essex, England: United Kingdom Data Archive/Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributors], 2004. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08551.v2

2004-09-23 The data and documentation were resupplied by the United Kingdom Data Archive (UKDA). The data are now available as an SPSS portable file and the documentation has been converted to PDF by the UKDA.

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Notes