Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The Wales Life and Times Studies (WLTS) have grown out of a programme of work conducted by the Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends (CREST) in collaboration with the Institute of Welsh Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in response to the constitutional changes brought about by devolution. In 1997 a referendum study was conducted in Wales and Scotland (held at the UK Data Archive under SN:3952), followed by election studies covering the first elections in 1999 to the Welsh National Assembly (held under SN:4180) and Scottish Parliament, both funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). When the ESRC announced its intention to carry out surveys in all parts of the UK in 2001 and 2003 under the Devolution and Constitutional Change Programme, the Welsh component became WLTS. An earlier Welsh election study, covering the 1979 general election, is also held at the UK Data Archive under SN:1591, but is not part of the WLTS series. The Welsh Election Study (Wales Life and Times Study), 2001 covered the Welsh element of the general election held that year. CREST was responsible for designing compatible questions for the study that were also fielded in England on the British Social Attitudes Survey, in Scotland on the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, and in Northern Ireland on the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey.
Main Topics:
The dataset contains the replies of 1,085 respondents in Wales to questions on: media consumption, electoral registration, party identification and voting (including recall of 1997 and 1999 vote), evaluations of the government's performance, political issues, political trust, national identity, constitutional issues, effectiveness of the new institutions, public expenditure and taxation, whether various political parties work for the interests of various social groups, left-right values and Welsh language. Classificatory information was also collected, including national and ethnic origin, religion, geographic origin, tenure, marital status, economic activity and socio-economic status, union membership, income, education and internet access. Standard Measures: Left-right scale - self-completion questionnaire Q1a-f.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
Face-to-face interview
Self-completion
