DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03100.v2
title: British Social Attitudes Survey, 1997
title: Version 2

description: 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 to the General
 Social Survey carried out by the National Opinion Research Center
 (NORC) in the United States. The BSA questionnaire has two parts, one
 administered by an interviewer and the other completed by the
 respondent. As in the past, the 1997 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 1997 self-enumerated questionnaire was devoted to a series
 of questions on a range of social, economic, political, and moral
 issues. Topics covered (by section) are: (1) newspaper readership, (2)
 party identification, (3) housing, (4) politics, (5) public spending,
 (6) employment, (7) Europe, (8) countryside and transportation, (9)
 the lottery, and (10) administration. An international initiative
 funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the International Social Survey
 Program (ISSP), also contributes a module to the BSA. The topic of the
 ISSP module in this collection was work orientations. Additional
 demographic data included age, education, income, marital status, and
religious and political affiliations.
description: There is one weight variable in the data file named WTFACTOR.
description: Multistage stratified random sampling. The sample of 
 addresses was drawn from the Postcode Address File. At each address, 
 the interviewer established how many occupied dwelling units it 
 contained. If there were several, one was selected at random for 
 interview (using a Kish grid and random numbers). The interviewer then 
 established how many adults aged 18 and older lived in the (selected) 
 dwelling unit. If there were several, one adult was selected (using a 
 similar procedure as that used for dwelling units). The unequal selection
 probabilities arising from these procedures are taken into account by the
weighting.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: British Social Attitudes Survey, 1997
description: All adults aged 18 or over living in Great Britain.
description: computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); self-enumerated questionnaire(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. (5) The formats for some variables in the SPSS portable
 file (e.g., HOMEKEEN) are not wide enough to accommodate the missing
 value specifications. For some procedures SPSS will display these
 missing values as asterisks. Users can widen the formats to display
 the actual missing value codes. (6) The British Social Attitudes Survey
 series began in 1983 and was conducted every year since, except in 1988
 and 1992 when the core funding from the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts 
 was devoted to conducting post-election studies of political 
 attitudes and voting behavior in the British Election Study (BES) survey
series.