Welfare State under Strain, 2014-2015: A Comparative Study of Diversity, Austerity and Public Opinion

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.Welfare State under Strain, 2014-2015: A Comparative Study of Diversity, Austerity and Public Opinion is a panel study which investigates the dynamics and drivers of public opinion about welfare in Great Britain and the Netherlands. The panel features a series of embedded survey experiments designed to test the impact of diversity, austerity, and various moderators on political attitudes. Identical experiments were conducted in the two countries, enabling examination of how national context mediates the effects of these factors on public opinion. Attitude change over time was also captured by surveying the same voters repeatedly, and the impact of the most powerful source of political information - election campaigns, was captured by timing survey waves before and immediately after European Parliament (2014), national (Britain, 2015) and regional (Netherlands, 2015) elections. The survey was commissioned following an Open Research Area grant awarded jointly by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and NWO Netherlands. The surveys were developed by a team of four based in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Manchester and the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations, University of Utrecht. Further information is available on the Research Councils UK award page. The first edition of this study contains the British data only, as the Dutch data are not yet available for public release. A future update will include the Dutch dataset and the integrated two country dataset. Main Topics:The questionnaire covered the following topics: political attitudes; general welfare support; austerity measures and economic security; deservingness and welfare chauvinism, interethnic/intergroup attitudes; ideological factors and demographic characteristics. The survey also included a vignette experiment