Data Library Catalogue: British General Election Study, 2001

British General Election Study, 2001

A full study description is available via the UKDA catalogue using the study number :4619

Background:

The British General Election Study (BGES) series is the longest academic series of nationally representative probability sample surveys in the country. Its purpose is to investigate the changing elements of electoral behaviour in modern Britain and has been conducted after every general election since 1964.
As a research project, the British Election Study has 3 general aims:

to collect data with a view to describing and explaining the outcome of general elections
to analyse long-term changes of political attitudes and behaviour from the early 1960's to the present
to organise and make available these data in a form suitable for a wide range of research.

Principal Investigators:

H. Clarke & M. Stewart (University of Texas (Dallas). School of Social Sciences), D. Sanders & P.F. Whiteley (University of Essex. Department of Government)

Description:

The ESRC-funded British Election Study (BES) for the 2001 general election was based at the University of Essex and comprised three components:

the main British Election Study consisting of a pre-election, pre-campaign 'benchmark' survey (Wave 1) and a second longer interview conducted with as many respondents from the previous wave as possible (Wave 2) - see Data Archive Study Numbers 4619 & 4620.
a free-standing 4500-person rolling election campaign survey. Respondents interviewed in the pre-election rolling cross-section survey were reinterviewed immediately after the election - see Data Archive Study Number 4621.
a separate post-election survey conducted in Northern Ireland with a sample of the Northern Ireland electorate - see Data Archive Study Number 4622.

The 2001 BES also has two supplementary components. The first being the construction of an aggregate, 'ecological' data file, based on census and other data, which describes the enumeration district-level, ward-level and constituency-level context for each panel respondent. The second involved conducting a content analysis of national press coverage of the election campaign - see Data Archive Study Number 4623.

The following subjects were covered in the survey: political preferences and values; economic perceptions; social attitudes; disposition to engage in different forms of political activity; individual and household socio-demographic characteristics.

Time Dimensions:

Cross-sectional study: each election since 1964.

Source of Data:

This survey was obtained from the Data Archive .

Documentation:

Machine-readable codebook in Abobe PDF.

Data Format:

SPSS portable file.

File Descriptions:

1 data file and 4 documentation files:

xsectionagg.por is the SPSS portable file.
a4619uab.pdf is a Portable Document Format file.
*.txt are citation, SPSS label and readme text files.

File Storage:

Written to CD-ROM 7/4/03.

Data Access:

Users must register before receiving a copy of data files. Edinburgh University users may contact the Data Library for access.

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