DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-8147-1
title: Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, 2008: Politics and Community Relations Teaching Dataset
title: Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, 1998-
title: NILT

description: &lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey&lt;/em&gt; (NILT) series began in 1998, and was the successor to the previous Northern Ireland Social Attitudes series, which was discontinued in 1996.&lt;br&gt;The main aims of the NILT series are:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;to monitor public attitudes towards social policy and political issues in Northern Ireland;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;to provide a time series on attitudes to key social policy areas;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;to facilitate academic social policy analysis;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;to provide a freely available resource on public attitudes for the wider community of users in Northern Ireland.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;NILT originally had a companion series which also began in 1998, the &lt;a href="https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/series/series?id=2000040#!/access-data"&gt;Young Life and Times Survey&lt;/a&gt; (YLT), although the YLT methodology changed in 2003 and it is conducted separately each year. The &lt;a href="https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/series/series?id=2000040#!/access-data"&gt;Kids' Life and Times&lt;/a&gt; (KLT) survey of P7 children (10-11 year olds) is also part of the same suite of surveys as YLT and NILT.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;NILT also forms part of the &lt;a title="International Social Survey Programme" href="http://www.issp.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"&gt;International Social Survey Programme&lt;/a&gt; (ISSP), although it does not do so every year. Unfortunately, NILT did not run in 2011 due to funding issues, though YLT ran as normal that year; NILT resumed in 2012 (SN 7408). In addition, several &lt;a href="https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/series/series?id=2000040#!/access-data"&gt;open access teaching datasets&lt;/a&gt; were created by ARK (Access Research Knowledge) from various years of NILT, covering different topics such as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) issues, politics and community relations, attitudes to ageing and ageism, and dementia.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;



&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Further information about the series may be found on the ARK &lt;a title="NILT" href="http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"&gt;NILT&lt;/a&gt; webpage.&lt;/p&gt; The &lt;I&gt;Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, 2008: Politics and Good Relations Teaching Dataset&lt;/I&gt; is part of a suite of teaching and learning resources created by ARK, and complements a Higher Education Academy (HEA) strategic project focusing on teaching research methods. The project &lt;a href="https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/disciplines/Soc_Sci/TRM_ProjectReports_2012-13-1" title="Northern Ireland by Numbers" target="_blank"&gt;"Northern Ireland by Numbers"&lt;/a&gt; involved the creation of new teaching datasets from two major surveys focusing on Northern Ireland, with accompanying 'student-friendly' documentation. Specifically, two teaching datasets were created using the 2012 NILT survey (SN 7546 and SN 7547) as well as a time-series teaching dataset drawing on the 2003-2012 &lt;I&gt;Young Life and Times&lt;/I&gt; (YLT) surveys (SN 7548). Likewise, ARK created five other datasets to be used on courses teaching quantitative statistical analysis in the social sciences. Further information about these may be found on the &lt;a href="http://www.ark.ac.uk/teaching/" target="_blank"&gt;ARK Teaching Resources&lt;/a&gt; webpage.&lt;br&gt;
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This teaching dataset focuses on politics and community relations in Northern Ireland, using data from the 2008 NILT adapted for the purposes of this project. Some variables have been constructed and/or simplified for this dataset and notes are provided in the accompanying documentation. While the teaching dataset is a valid representation of the data, it is intended for teaching purposes only; it is advisable to use the original NILT 2008 study (SN 6296) for research.&lt;br&gt;
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