Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The data are from a large Internet-based survey designed and administered in collaboration with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Between November 2009 and April 2011, 588,014 individuals competed the “Big Personality Test”. Volunteers were told that the survey was designed to assess personality and that by clicking on the link to proceed to the survey they were giving their consent to participate. Informed consent was not requested from the next of kin, caretakers, or guardians on behalf of minors or children because only individuals 18 and older were eligible to participate. Initiating the survey was used as a record of participant consent. To complete the survey, respondents clicked on a link on the BBC’s Lab UK website. Before beginning the survey, respondents were asked to create a BBC ID if they did not already have one. This was used to invite participants to take part in future projects and to prevent individuals from repeat responding – the survey could not be completed more than once with the same ID. After completing the survey, participants received customized feedback about their personalities based on their responses to the survey items. A primary aim of the data was to map the distribution of personality in Great Britain (GB), so of all the participants who completed the survey, only those who reported living in England, Wales, and Scotland were included. Participants who did not complete the personality measure were also excluded. These selection criteria resulted in a total sample of 386,375 respondents. In the present dataset, the researchers are sharing select demographic variables and the personality data used for mapping personality variation across GB. The dataset includes postcode sector information, which allows for aggregating responses for 380 Local Authority Districts. Further information can be found on the BBC Lab UK Big Personality Test webpage. Some participants also took part in other studies hosted by the BBC’s Lab UK (with the same unique ID) so in principle matching is possible across data sets. A combined dataset containing matched respondents who also completed the BBC Big Money Test is available from the UK Data Archive under SN 8132.
Main Topics:
Main topics of the BBC Big Personality Test, 2009-2011 included: personalitydemographicslocation of residence at the postcode district level
Convenience sample
Internet web-based survey
