- Welcome
- Important notice
- About the author
- About this site
- Site guide + Search box
- Dedications
- Acknowledgments
- My personal pantheon (of the great and the good in survey research)
- Recent and planned activities
- Textbooks for Research Methods and Data Analysis
- 1: Survey Analysis Workshop (SPSS)
- 1a: Statistical concepts and methods
- 1b: Teaching with Survey Data
- 1c: Developing research projects using survey data
- 1d: Workshop and presentations for ASSESS (SPSS users in Europe)
- 2: Survey Research Practice
- 2a: Survey Research Methodology, Practice and Training
- 2b: Major survey series
- 3: Subjective Social Indicators (Quality of Life)
- 4: Survey Unit, Social Science Research Council (UK)
- 5a: Polytechnic of North London (1976-1992)
- 5b: Survey Research Unit (1978-1992)
- Village life in Normandy
- Contact
- Origins of the British Crime Survey
- British Crime Survey
Data sets used in Survey Analysis Workshop
[Page last updated 22 March 2020 from earlier 2014 version: page also being re-written to take account of new resources available from UKDS and elsewhere]
NB: Because of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) the raw data files for the 1986 and 1989 British Social Attitudes Survey and (bsa86.txt and bsa89.txt) can no longer be downloaded from my site. Neither can the SPSS saved files bsa86.sav or bsa89.sav. BSAS files can now only be accessed via the UK Data Archive at Essex University. (See: BSAS filenames which has links to files for all waves from 1983 to 2018)
Other raw data sets are exactly as they would arrive from the fieldwork agency, from institutional data-prep services or as typed in by yourself (as Excel files or in 80-column ASCII format, fixed width font).
SPSS saved files for British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS) 1986 and 1989 use mnemonic variable names which are constant for all waves using the same question. In early exercises using BSAS data, variables are (re-) named using the positional naming convention. There are no mnemonic names and no derived variables, but these will be generated during the exercises.
SPSS can open *.sav and *.sps files downloaded from this site and also save them to a drive or USB stick on your computer. Earlier tutorials and exercises require you to define a few variables, read in raw data and add dictionary information, then save the files. However, for surveys with dozens, if not hundreds, of variables, this would be too onerous a requirement, especially for beginners. Later tutorials and exercises will need access to much larger saved files containing hundreds of variables and thousands of cases.
I have therefore prepared and uploaded the necessary raw data (*.txt) and SPSS setup (*.sps) and saved (*.sav) files: these can be downloaded from this site and either opened on your own computer or saved to a folder or drive. For convenience, and because some files on your computer may have very long pathway names, I shall assume this to be a USB memory stick and will refer to them in tutorials by a shorter pathname as x:<filename> or
y:<filename>.
The main SPSS saved files we shall be using will be:
fifthx.sav Fifth Form Survey 0.07 mb
myclass.sav Initial cumulative data from pre-course questionnaire 0.06 mb
qlgb75a.sav Initial working file for Quality of Life in Britain 1975 0.6 mb
(No excuses for the last one as I did it myself! It may be almost 40 years old, but it's a wonderful survey, much copied but never equalled since. If you explore it using the questionnaire, you will see that the subject matter, design logic and data-analytical possibilities are not easy to find in other surveys.)
Pre-course questionnaire on interests and experience
Cumulative data file as used in Block 1: From questionnaire to SPSS saved file.
British Social Attitudes
1986 and 1989 as used on my original course, but with positional instead of mnemonic variable names. Exercises will eventually be developed using later waves, but the SPSS saved files for these, distributed by the UK Data Service (UKDS, based at Essex University) need modifying to meet my professional standards. The SPSS setup files to do this will be available on this site, but to use the actual data you will need to be a registered user. See also British Social Attitudes Information System,
Files and documentation are accessible from UKDS: the list of currently available waves 1983-2018 is on British Social Attitudes 1983 onwards. I am currently working on tutorials using data from later waves and will post these and supporting information when they are ready.
Quality of Life in Britain
Two pilot surveys from 1971, two national surveys from 1973 an 1975 and two local surveys replicated in Stoke-on-Trent and Sunderland simultaneously with the 1973 national survey. Don't be put off by the dates: these are valuable and interesting surveys in their own right and have features not always present in more modern surveys.
Playground to Politics
Self-completed questionnaire by all fifth formers (aged 15-16) present on the survey day in a mixed comprehensive school (11-18) in North London in 1981. A survey done under my professional supervision by three of my 2nd year students as a group project, it meets unusually high standards and shows what is possible.
NB: Because of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) the raw data files for the 1986 and 1989 British Social Attitudes Survey and (bsa86.txt and bsa89.txt) can no longer be downloaded from my site. Neither can the SPSS saved files bsa86.sav or bsa89.sav. BSAS files can now only be accessed via the UK Data Archive at Essex University. (See: BSAS filenames which has links to files for all waves from 1983 to 2018)
Other raw data sets are exactly as they would arrive from the fieldwork agency, from institutional data-prep services or as typed in by yourself (as Excel files or in 80-column ASCII format, fixed width font).
SPSS saved files for British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS) 1986 and 1989 use mnemonic variable names which are constant for all waves using the same question. In early exercises using BSAS data, variables are (re-) named using the positional naming convention. There are no mnemonic names and no derived variables, but these will be generated during the exercises.
SPSS can open *.sav and *.sps files downloaded from this site and also save them to a drive or USB stick on your computer. Earlier tutorials and exercises require you to define a few variables, read in raw data and add dictionary information, then save the files. However, for surveys with dozens, if not hundreds, of variables, this would be too onerous a requirement, especially for beginners. Later tutorials and exercises will need access to much larger saved files containing hundreds of variables and thousands of cases.
I have therefore prepared and uploaded the necessary raw data (*.txt) and SPSS setup (*.sps) and saved (*.sav) files: these can be downloaded from this site and either opened on your own computer or saved to a folder or drive. For convenience, and because some files on your computer may have very long pathway names, I shall assume this to be a USB memory stick and will refer to them in tutorials by a shorter pathname as x:<filename> or
y:<filename>.
The main SPSS saved files we shall be using will be:
fifthx.sav Fifth Form Survey 0.07 mb
myclass.sav Initial cumulative data from pre-course questionnaire 0.06 mb
qlgb75a.sav Initial working file for Quality of Life in Britain 1975 0.6 mb
(No excuses for the last one as I did it myself! It may be almost 40 years old, but it's a wonderful survey, much copied but never equalled since. If you explore it using the questionnaire, you will see that the subject matter, design logic and data-analytical possibilities are not easy to find in other surveys.)
Pre-course questionnaire on interests and experience
Cumulative data file as used in Block 1: From questionnaire to SPSS saved file.
British Social Attitudes
1986 and 1989 as used on my original course, but with positional instead of mnemonic variable names. Exercises will eventually be developed using later waves, but the SPSS saved files for these, distributed by the UK Data Service (UKDS, based at Essex University) need modifying to meet my professional standards. The SPSS setup files to do this will be available on this site, but to use the actual data you will need to be a registered user. See also British Social Attitudes Information System,
Files and documentation are accessible from UKDS: the list of currently available waves 1983-2018 is on British Social Attitudes 1983 onwards. I am currently working on tutorials using data from later waves and will post these and supporting information when they are ready.
Quality of Life in Britain
Two pilot surveys from 1971, two national surveys from 1973 an 1975 and two local surveys replicated in Stoke-on-Trent and Sunderland simultaneously with the 1973 national survey. Don't be put off by the dates: these are valuable and interesting surveys in their own right and have features not always present in more modern surveys.
Playground to Politics
Self-completed questionnaire by all fifth formers (aged 15-16) present on the survey day in a mixed comprehensive school (11-18) in North London in 1981. A survey done under my professional supervision by three of my 2nd year students as a group project, it meets unusually high standards and shows what is possible.
Other data sets
Once all the main tutorials are up and running, I hope to include examples using data from the NORC General Social Survey, the European Social Survey, Understanding Society and other major surveys in the public domain.
The UKDS page Open access data lists some data sets specially prepared for teaching: these are derived from major surveys and are freely available without registration or authentication. This is a new initiative and is expected to grow. I will endeavour to co-ordinate future tutorials with surveys used.
The UKDS page Open access data lists some data sets specially prepared for teaching: these are derived from major surveys and are freely available without registration or authentication. This is a new initiative and is expected to grow. I will endeavour to co-ordinate future tutorials with surveys used.