DOI: 10.3886/icpsr07869.v1
title: British Election Study: 1969-1970, February 1974 Panel
title: Version 1

description: This data collection is part of a continuing series of
 surveys of the British electorate, begun by David Butler and Donald
 Stokes at Nuffield College, Oxford, in 1963, and continued at the
 University of Essex. This panel study about the British general
 election of February 1974 was conducted with a sample of electors in
 80 constituencies who had previously been interviewed twice, once in
 1969 and again after the 1970 general election. This data collection
 contains information gathered in the third wave of the study, known as
 the February 1974 cross-section panel survey. It includes data
 gathered from participants who were interviewed in 1970, of whom about
 half had also been interviewed in 1969. As with other surveys in the
 series, electors in Northern Ireland and the Scottish Highlands and
 Islands were excluded from the sampling frame. Interviewed in
 March-April 1974, respondents answered questions relating to the mass
 media (e.g., attention to newspapers and television and perceived bias
 in newspapers), their first and second choices in the 1974 general
 election, and their opinions of the Conservative, Labour, Liberal,
 Scottish Nationalist, and Plaid Cymru political parties (e.g.,
 perceived difference among parties, knowledge of party
 position/record, party identification, and the strength of party
 preference). Respondents were asked for their views on a range of
 social issues relating to domestic and foreign affairs, with emphasis
 on the economy and the Common Market. Respondents were then asked how
 the parties stood on each issue, and how much that influenced the
 respondent's vote. Some of the issues included rising prices, strikes
 in general, the miners' strike, taxation, the Common Market, social
 services, nationalization, wage control, and the amount of power held
 by unions and by big business. Respondents were also asked for their
 perceptions of class conflict and their predictions for Britain's
 future economy. Finally, respondents rated the political parties and
 several politicians, and commented on the effect of government on
 their own well-being. Background information includes age, sex,
 marital status, place of residence during childhood, subjective class,
 forced subjective class, family class, tenure, type and length of
 residence, employment status, degree of responsibility in and training
 for job (respondent and spouse), experience of unemployment in
 household, income trade union membership (respondent and spouse), and
socioeconomic group.
description: Respondents were selected into a multistage,
self-weighting, stratified, probability sample.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: British Election Study: 1969-1970, February 1974 Panel
description: The eligible British electorate living south of the
Caledonian Canal and excluding Northern Ireland.
description: personal interview(1) There are 2,207 respondents in this dataset,
 comprising persons interviewed in either 1969 or 1970. If a respondent
 was not reinterviewed in 1974, his/her record was padded with missing
 data. (2) The first 18 of the 22 cards for each respondent are taken
 directly from POLITICAL CHANGE IN BRITAIN, 1969-1970 [ICPSR 7004], and
 are only documented by the codebook for that study. For a full
 description of the variables included therein, see ICPSR 7004. (3)
 Users are advised that the following studies were provided by the
 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Survey Archive, University
 of Essex, England:
 
 British Election Study: February 1974, Cross-Section (ICPSR 7868)
 British Election Study: 1969-1970, February 1974 Panel (ICPSR 7869)
 British Election Study: October 1974, Cross-Section (ICPSR 7870)
 British Election Study: October 1974, Scottish Cross-Section
 (ICPSR 7871)
 British Election Study: EEC Referendum Study, 1975 (ICPSR 7872)
 British Election Study: May 1979, Cross Section (ICPSR 8196)
 British Election Study: [June] 1983 (ICPSR 8409)
 British Social Attitudes Survey, 1986 (ICPSR 8910) 
 (4) The data and accompanying documentation are disseminated, under an
 agreement with the UK Data Archive, exactly as they were received,
 without modification by ICPSR. This agreement also provides that ICPSR
will disseminate these data only for use within member institutions.