National Centre for Social Research

The Health Survey for England, sponsored by the Department of Health, is a series of annual surveys about the health of people in England. The Health Survey was first proposed in 1990 to improve information on morbidity by the (then) newly created Central Health Monitoring Unit within the Department of Health. This information is used to underpin and improve targeting of nationwide health policies.

The survey was carried out in 1991-1993 by the Office for Population Censuses and Surveys which is now part of the Office for National Statistics. From 1994 onwards the survey has been carried out by the National Centre for Social Research and the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London.

From the guide to the Health Survey for England, 1991-, 1991- [ongoing], (UK Data Archive)

The British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey series began in 1983, and has been conducted every year since, except in 1988 and 1992 when the core-funding from the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts was devoted to conducting the British Election Study (BES) survey series. However, for reasons of continuity, in 1997 a scaled-down BSA was also fielded in addition to the BES. Core-funding for BSA is supplemented by financial support from a number of sources (including government departments, the ESRC and other research foundations), but final responsibility for the coverage and wording of the annual questionnaires rests with the National Centre for Social Research (formerly Social and Community Planning Research).

The series is designed to produce annual measures of attitudinal movements which will complement large-scale government surveys such as the General Household Survey and the Labour Force Survey, which deal largely with facts and behaviour patterns, as well as the data on party political attitudes produced by the polls. One of its main purposes is to allow 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.

Between 1984 and 1986 the ESRC funded the introduction of a panel element into the series, enabling about half (about 700) of the first year's respondents to be re-interviewed with a slightly adapted questionnaire. Modules within surveys since 1985 allow cross-national comparisons. This is possible as a result of an international initiative funded by the Nuffield Foundation and known as the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP).

From the guide to the British Social Attitudes, 1983-, 1983- [ongoing], (UK Data Archive)