BackgroundThe British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey series began in 1983. The series is designed to produce annual measures of attitudinal movements to complement large-scale government surveys that deal largely with facts and behaviour patterns, and the data on party political attitudes produced by opinion polls. One of the BSA's main purposes is to allow the monitoring of patterns of continuity and change, and the examination of the relative rates at which attitudes, in respect of a range of social issues, change over time. Some questions are asked regularly, others less often. Funding for BSA comes from a number of sources (including government departments, the Economic and Social Research Council and other research foundations), but the final responsibility for the coverage and wording of the annual questionnaires rests with NatCen Social Research (formerly Social and Community Planning Research). The BSA has been conducted every year since 1983, except in 1988 and 1992 when core funding was devoted to the British Election Study (BES).Further information about the series and links to publications may be found on the NatCen Social Research British Social Attitudes webpage. In the 1996 survey, information was collected on number of social issues including the following: political attitudes, housing, public spending, welfare, health care, labour market issues, the National Lottery, social divisions, political trust, Northern Ireland, taste and decency in the media, the countryside, transport, public understanding of science, education, local authority spending and charitable giving. Demographic data were also collected. Standard Measures The questionnaires contain three scales developed by researchers involved in the <i>British Social Attitudes</i> survey series and the <i>British Election Study (BES)</i> series. These are: `libertarian/authoritarian'; `left/right'; and `welfarist'. For details see the Technical Report on the 1996 BSA survey. For the second edition of this study (December 1999), two variables were corrected: the variables affected are LIBAUTHB and LFTRIGHB. These are the scale scores for the 'balanced' or 'BES-version' of the Left-Right and Libertarian-Authoritarian scales (see also SN:3890, <i>British General Election Study, 1997 : Campaign Panel</i>). For further details please see note and read file documentation for this study.