The British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey is the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen)’s flagship study, and has been tracking social and political attitudes for over 40 years. As a result of its longevity and its random probability sampling, it is considered to be a ‘gold standard’ in attitudinal research. Last year, as part of the Dividing Lines project, NatCen released a new set of profiles of British voters, which was based on decades of data from BSA. This analysis, which created a set of six ‘voter profiles’ to showcase the key divides among the British electorate, provides just one example of how the many years of archived, freely accessible BSA data can be utilised. Given its unique position as a survey, the potential for further re-use of the data to create research of lasting value is high.

In this presentation, Alex Scholes will discuss the history of BSA and the key findings from the Dividing Lines study. He will also cover the relationship between BSA and open research more generally to answer: how can NatCen maximise the impact that BSA has as an open-access dataset? Is there anything that could be done in addition to data archiving that would increase levels of engagement with the survey among the research and policy communities, as well as with the general public? And how would this fit in with NatCen’s approach to open data, both for BSA and the wider research we conduct? Reflecting on the last four decades of BSA can help to answer these questions, and provide a guide to how to most effectively deliver open access research into the future. 
 

Opening ORW 2025: Professor Luca Csepely-Knorr

Luca Csepely-Knorr is Chair in Architecture at the Liverpool School of Architecture. Luca worked as a landscape architect for the Municipality of Budapest before starting her academic career. She has been since involved in architectural and landscape architectural education and research both in the UK and in Hungary.

Speaker: Alex Scholes

Alex Scholes is Research Director at NatCen, and works on the British and Scottish Social Attitudes Surveys, the NatCen Panel and also contributes to the What UK Thinks:EU and What Scotland Thinks websites. He joined NatCen in 2018, and has contributed to numerous BSA reports on a variety of topics, including on the role and responsibilities of government, constitutional reform and, most recently, on national pride and identity.