The British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA) is an annual

statistical survey Survey methodology is "the study of survey methods". As a field of applied statistics concentrating on human-research surveys, survey methodology studies the sampling of individual units from a population and associated techniques of survey da ...

conducted in Great Britain by

National Centre for Social Research The National Centre for Social Research is a registered charity trading as NatCen Social Research and is the largest independent social research institute in the UK. The research charity was founded in 1969 by Sir Roger Jowell and Gerald Hoinvill ...

since 1983. The BSA involves in-depth interviews with over 3,300 respondents, selected using random probability sampling, focused on topics including

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, spor ...

readership,

political parties A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...

and trust,

public expenditure Public expenditure is spending made by the government of a country on collective needs and wants, such as pension, provisions, security, infrastructure, etc. Until the 19th century, public expenditure was limited as laissez faire philosophie ...

welfare benefits Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...

health care Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health pr ...

childcare Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks of age to 18 years. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(r ...

poverty Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse

, the labour market and the

workplace A workplace is a location where someone works, for their employer or themselves, a place of employment. Such a place can range from a home office to a large office building or factory. For industrialized societies, the workplace is one of ...

education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...

, charitable giving, the

countryside In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry typically are desc ...

transport Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipelin ...

and the

environment Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally * Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...

, the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

, economic prospects, race,

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

civil liberties Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties ma ...

immigration Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, ...

, sentencing and

prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, corre ...

s, fear of crime and the portrayal of sex and

violence Violence is the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. Other definitions are also used, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened ...

in the

media Media may refer to: Communication * Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass e ...

. The survey is funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation,

government department Ministry or department (also less commonly used secretariat, office, or directorate) are designations used by first-level executive bodies in the machinery of governments that manage a specific sector of public administration." Энцикло� ...

s, quasi-governmental bodies and other grant-giving organisations. The BSA was not conducted in 1988 and 1992, when funding was devoted instead to studies of voting behaviour and political attitudes in the British Election Study. The

King’s Fund The King's Fund is an independent think tank, which is involved with work relating to the health system in England. It organises conferences and other events. Since 1997, they have jointly funded a yearly award system with GlaxoSmithKline. Th ...

and

Nuffield Trust The Nuffield Trust, formerly the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, is a charitable trust with the mission of improving health care in the UK through evidence and analysis. The Nuffield Trust is registered with the Charity Commission as char ...

stepped in when the government stopped funding the poll.

Findings

Abortion

The proportion of people who believe abortion should be allowed if a woman does not want a child has increased gradually during the period 1983-2016, from 40% in 1983 to 72% in 2016. Similarly an increasing number of people believe abortion should be allowed if a couple cannot afford a child, which reached a high of 68% in 2016. Over 90% of people have consistently believed that abortion is acceptable if the pregnancy is a result of rape.

Capital punishment

Support for the death penalty has gradually decreased from 75% in 1986 to 43% in 2019. From 2014 onwards, less than half of people supported the use of capital punishment.

Economic inequality

Income redistribution

Wealth distribution

LGBT Rights

Same-sex relationships

17% of people believed same-sex relationships were 'not wrong at all' in 1983 and the proportion of people holding this view reached a low of 11% in 1987 during the height of the AIDS pandemic. An increasing number of people were comfortable with same-sex relationships during the period 1989-2017 and as of 2018 66% of people do not consider same-sex relationships to be 'wrong at all'.

Transgender rights

Attitudes towards transgender people were first examined in the 2016 report, which found that 49% of people view prejudice against transgender people as 'always wrong', compared with 6% who believe it is 'rarely or never wrong'. 34% of people believed prejudice against transgender people is only 'mostly' or 'sometimes' wrong.

Social security

From 1983 until the late 1990s, most people thought that benefits for the unemployed were too low and caused hardship. Following the election of the Labour government in

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

, there was a sharp decline in this view and the majority of people now believed that unemployment benefit was too high until 2016, when an increasing number of people began to consider unemployment benefits as too low and the proportion of people holding this view reached a twenty five year high of 51% in 2020.

References

External links

British Social Attitudes SurveyBritish Social Attitudes Survey dataUK Data Service list of Key Data
{{statistics-stub Society of the United Kingdom Social statistics data 1983 establishments in the United Kingdom Recurring events established in 1983 Annual events in the United Kingdom Surveys (human research)