British Social Attitudes Survey Panel Study, 1983-1986

<p>Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.</p><b>Background</b><br> The <i>British Social Attitudes</i> (BSA) survey series began in 1983. The series is designed to produce annual measures of attitudinal movements which will complement large-scale government surveys such as the <i>General Lifestyle Survey</i> and the <i>Labour Force Survey</i> (held under GN 33090 and GN 33246 respectively), which deal largely with facts and behaviour patterns, as well as the data on party political attitudes produced by the polls. One of its 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 a number of sources (including government departments, the Economic and Social Research Council and other research foundations), but 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 <I>British Election Study</i> (BES).<br> <br> Further information about the series and links to publications may be found on the NatCen Social Research <a href="http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/" title="British Social Attitudes" target="_blank">British Social Attitudes</a> web page. In addition, a compilation of BSA data and documentation, including interactive descriptive statistics, is available via the <a href="http://www.britsocat.com/"title="BritSoCat"target="_blank">BritSoCat</a> web site, maintained by the Centre for Comparative European Survey Data.<br> <br> <b>International Social Survey Programme (ISSP)</b><br> The ISSP is run by a group of research organisations in different countries (currently 48 countries), each of which undertakes to field annually an agreed module of questions on a chosen topic area. Since 1985, an ISSP module has been included in one or more of the BSA self-completion questionnaires. Each module is chosen for repetition at intervals to allow comparisons both between countries and over time. See the ISSP catalogue record for further details, held under SN 7259.<br> <br><B>Main Topics</B>:<br>The BSA questionnaire normally comprises two parts, one administered face-to-face and one for self-completion (since 1985, one of the self-completion option questionnaires includes the ISSP module). Each year the 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 asked regularly, others less often. Cross-indexes of those questions asked more than once appear in the reports.In the 1983-1986 Panel Study the design of the panel and cross-section questionnaires was similar, but not identical, although where the same question was asked on both surveys, it was asked in an identical form. In 1983-1984 and 1985 a self-completion questionnaire was also asked. In 1986 the panel questionnaire was considerably shortened and no self-completion element was included