Getting started with the British Social Attitudes Survey
1. Which dataset do I want?
There are a number of British Social
Attitudes Survey (BSA) datasets available, each of
which represents annual data. Separate datasets are available for each year
from 1983 onwards, excluding 1988 and 1992. Also available are the British Social
Attitudes Survey Panel Study 1983-1986 (study number 2197) and British Social
Attitudes Survey 1983-1989 (study number 2824).
2. Consulting the documentation
It will not be possible to analyse
the BSA survey without reference to the documentation. Documentation is available
for viewing before downloading/ordering the data, however you will also obtain
the documentation if you download the data as a zipped file. The documentation
contains:
- information about how the survey was carried out
- information about which variables are available
- information about how the data is coded
- the survey questionnaires
The survey questionnaires can also
be obtained on the Survey Question Bank web site,
which provides readily searchable versions of questionnaires for all major surveys
used by secondary analysts.
3. Explore the data online
A good way of starting to explore
the data is to look at the data in Nesstar
WebView.
Nesstar WebView is available for
the more recent years of the BSA datasets. Nesstar will allow you to look at
univariate frequencies and variable descriptions without needing to have registered
for the data. This is an excellent way of finding out whether the data are likely
to be suitable for your purposes. You can access Nesstar from the BSA datasets
pages.
Once in Nesstar, click on the Help
tab in the top right hand corner of the screen to view a user guide.
Once you have registered with ESDS
you will be able to use Nesstar to its full potential, undertaking more complex
analyses and downloading subsets of data in a wide variety of formats.
4. Registering for the data
Once you have decided which data to
use for your project you will need to be registered
with ESDS to obtain the data. Information about obtaining data
can be found on the ESDS web site .
Registered users can download/order a large and increasing number of datasets
direct (usually in SPSS, STATA or tab-delimited formats)
via its online catalogue record and via the download/order section of the Major
Studies web pages.
5. Downloading the data
Once registered you may either:
- download the data directly as a zipped ASCII, STATA or SPSS file. This download will also include necessary
documentation
- download the file, or a subset of your choice, into a wider range of formats
via Nesstar Light
6. Analysing the data using an appropriate
analysis package
Because the BSA datasets are microdata
you will need to analyse them using an appropriate package.
You can undertake straightforward
analysis, including linear regression, on the whole dataset or a subset, using
Nesstar. However, it is not possible to produce derived variables or do more
advanced analyses using Nesstar, to do this you will need to use a package like
SPSS, STATA or SAS.
If you are unfamiliar with these packages
you can find a STATA
guide on the ESDS Government pages which uses examples from the Labour Force
Survey. A guide to SPSS is also available, based on the HSE 2002 teaching dataset.
Several organisations offer introductory SPSS and STATA courses. CCSR at the
University of Manchester offers one-day courses although there is a charge.
Details of these courses can be obtained through the CCSR
Short Course Pages.
7. Communicating with other users
and obtaining support
The ESDS-govsurveys
JISCmail list is an email list you can join to hear about events and other
news relating to the large-scale government list, including the BSA. To join
the list click on the above link to the ESDS-govsurveys list web page or email
listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk with the following message:
subscribe esds-govsurveys firstname
secondname
If you hit a problem with the data
while doing your work feel free to contact us. Queries relating to the large-scale
government datasets should be sent to:
govsurveys@esds.ac.uk
Alternatively you can telephone +44
(0) 161 275 1980.
A list of Frequently Asked Questions for the British Social Attitudes Survey is also available.
8. Publishing
We need to let other researchers and
data depositors know what publications are available using the BSA. If you publish
using the data, please contact us at govsurveys@esds.ac.uk and give us details
of your publication. If you would be happy for us to publish something on our
web site, for example the research
story on smoking, please let us know.
Data collectors and distributors should
be acknowledged in publications.
