Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This dataset arises from the survey work undertaken by four closely co-ordinated projects, which were part of the Devolution and Constitutional Change research programme of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The principal aim of the projects was to establish whether initial reactions to the introduction of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland enhanced (or otherwise) the legitimacy of the United Kingdom and the new institutions themselves. More specifically the projects aimed to find answers to the following questions:Did the introduction of devolution change the distribution of national identity?Did support for the UK political system rise or fall?Were patterns similar or different across the four territories?Can any changes that have occurred in national identity and so on be attributed to devolution or to other processes such as generational change?There were in addition a number of country-specific issues, for example, support for regional government in England. The objective of the survey research was to provide a firm empirical basis on which to study these questions. This dataset is derived from several existing sources:British Social Attitudes Surveys, 2001 and 2003, produced by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) Scottish Social Attitudes Surveys, 2001 and 2003, produced by NatCen and the Scottish Centre for Social ResearchWales Life and Times Study (Welsh Election Study), 2001 (held at the UK Data Archive (UKDA) under SN 4546), and Wales Life and Times Study (Welsh Assembly Election Study), 2003, (SN 5052), which were produced by the universities of Wales (Aberystwyth) and Oxford, and NatCenNorthern Ireland Life and Times Survey, 2001 and 2003, produced by the Northern Ireland Social and Political Archive (ARK)The copyright of the data taken from these surveys rests with the original producers (see copyright statement below).

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The dataset contains both common questions asked in all four territories in a standard form and territory-specific questions that are relevant to the particular context. There are over 30 common items, covering measures of national identity, national sentiment, attitudes towards the constitutional status of each of the four territories, measures of system efficacy, indicators of post-materialist attitudes and exposure to globalisation, knowledge of the settlement and perceptions of the costs and benefits of devolution. In addition, there is a comprehensive range of relevant demographic information about the respondents. Variable names and labels have been standardised in order to facilitate comparisons both across territories and over time. Standard Measures: Likert scales of social and political values: 'Left-right scale' (see variables 'leftrigh' and 'leftrigh1'), and 'Libertarian-authoritarian scale' (see variable 'libauth').

One-stage stratified or systematic random sample

Multi-stage stratified random sample

see documentation for individual study series for full details.

Compilation or synthesis of existing material

data taken from existing datasets