Politics and social attitudes

The longitudinal nature of Understanding Society makes it an invaluable resource for researchers and policy makers who want to consider these changing attitudes – we can see how political and social attitudes evolve over time.

What data do Understanding Society collect?

Understanding Society is a longitudinal study and follows the same people over time. We collect information on a wide range of political and social attitudes and behaviours that allow researchers to explore any change in attitudes. This includes voter turnout and vote choice in elections and referendums (including the Brexit Referendum and Scottish Independence Referendum), party support, interest in politics, feelings of political efficacy, political trust, perceptions of voting as a civic duty, democratic satisfaction, social trust, social capital, volunteering, charitable giving, associational membership, neighbourhood attachment/interaction.

The Study also includes information on background characteristics such as ethnicity, which means that social and political attitudes can be explored in different ethnic groups.

What can you do with these data

study the link between family background, educational experiences and political attitudes, and voter behaviour
study the relationships between social class, social capital, community activity and social institutions, such as religion or the family
study the effects of various educational experiences, settings and qualifications on adult social and political activity, such as participation in politics, employment, health, income and community activity

You can find out how Understanding Society politics and social attitudes data has already been used by looking in our publications library. This search shows all the results for politics and social attitudes publications.

Data from specific elections

2019 General and European elections data

In 2019 modules on turnout and voter choice were added following the European and the general elections. Items in the normal questionnaire rotation, and specifically included in the wake of the European Parliament elections, cover other aspects of political attitudes and behaviour. The questionnaires can be found here. You can find data relating to the 2019 elections in the 2020 Calendar Year Dataset, which has data from the second half of Wave 11 and the first half of Wave 12.

EU referendum data

Questions relating to the Brexit referendum can be found in Wave 8 of Understanding Society.

In April 2017 Understanding Society provided early access to data from Wave 8 of the Study as part of a special project: Understanding Brexit – digging deeper: what divides Leavers and Remainers? Researchers in this project used these data to analyse pro- and anti- Brexit attitudes, look at the impact of Brexit on individual wellbeing and financial expectations.

Tips for analysts

Index terms

To find out about the variables in the Study use the index terms to search for political and social attitudes variables including Politics: elections and political support and behaviour.

Use the code creator

Create your own Stata code to extract the data you need from the EUL main survey. Save your variables, then use the code creator to generate your code. The code will allow you to create your own data file containing your variable selection, plus a handy set of commonly used sociodemographic variables and cross-sectional and longitudinal weights.

Questionnaire modules

The questionnaire modules show the areas covered in each wave of the Study and allow you to see the actual questions asked in the survey.

Need help?

Visit our new user pathway to explore the data and online resources or contact the User Support forum if you have a question for the Study team.

Insights: Political lessons from Understanding Society

Our 2024 Insights report on political identity and participation identifies messages for parties, campaigners and communities.

Podcast: Education and gender roles

Do men with degrees do more childcare and housework?

Blog: Is there a trade-off between diversity and social cohesion?

Longitudinal data suggests the real problem is deprivation.

ISER Working Paper: The daughter penalty

Looking at the earnings profiles of men and women after their first child is born, a number of studies establish that women suffer a larger penalty in earnings than men—a child penalty. This penalty is larger when the first born child is a girl, but why is this? This paper explores the gender roles and attitudes of parents after the birth of a child.