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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 1998 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 1998 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) role of grandparents, (5) public spending/social welfare, (6) health care, (7) economic activity/labor market, (8) education, (9) citizenship, (10) local government, (11) miscellaneous voting habits and preferences, and (12) race, religion, and class. 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 religion. Additional demographic data included age, education, income, marital status, and religious and political affiliations.

The weight variable WTFACTOR accounts for the fact that not all of the units covered in the survey had the same probability of selection. This weighting reflected the relative selection probabilities of the individual at the three main stages of sample selection. There are also six weight variables (WTGRCHMO, WTGRCHRA, WTGRPAMO, WTGRPARA, WTPARGMO, and WTPARGRA) in the datafile that are used with a series of questions about the role of grandparents. These additional weights, when applied, bring various parts of the sample into their correct proportions. Please see the codebook for further explanations on the derivation of these weight variables.

Datasets:

• DS1: Dataset