Acknowledgements 

British Social Attitudes could not take place without its many generous funders. A number of government departments have regularly funded modules of interest to them, while respecting the independence of the study. In 2010 we gratefully acknowledge the support of the Departments of Health, Work and Pensions and Education (previously the Department for Children, Schools and Families) as well as the Departments for Business, Innovation and Skills, Communities and Local Government, and Transport. Thanks are also due to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Hera Trust.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) continued to support the participation of Britain in the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), a collaboration whereby surveys in over 40 countries administer an identical module of questions in order to facilitate comparative research. Some of the results are described in our Environment chapter.

We are also grateful to Professor Richard Topf of London Metropolitan University for all his work in creating and maintaining access to an easy-to-use website that provides a fully searchable database of all the questions that have ever been carried on a British Social Attitudes survey, together with details of the pattern of responses to every question. This site provides an invaluable resource for those who want to know more than can be found in this report. It is located at www.britsocat.com.

The British Social Attitudes survey is a team effort. The report editors could not do their job without the invaluable editorial support provided by the two British Social Attitudes researchers, Lucy Lee and Eleanor Taylor. The survey is heavily dependent too on staff who organise and monitor fieldwork and compile and distribute the survey’s extensive documentation, for which we would pay particular thanks to Pauline Burge, Emma Fenn, and their colleagues in NatCen’s administrative office in Brentwood. Thanks are also due to the fieldwork controllers, area managers and field interviewers who are responsible for all the interviewing, and without whose efforts the survey would not happen at all. We are also grateful to Sandra Beeson in our computing department who expertly translates our questions into a computer assisted questionnaire, and to Roger Stafford who has the unenviable task of editing, checking and documenting the data. Meanwhile the raw data have to be transformed into a workable SPSS system file – a task that has for many years been performed with great care and efficiency by Ann Mair at the Social Statistics Laboratory at the University of Strathclyde. Many thanks are also due to Natalie Aguilera and Imogen Roome at our publishers, Sage, and BergHind Joseph who have worked with us to design a new format for the report.

Finally, we must praise the people who anonymously gave up their time to take part in our 2010 survey. They are the cornerstone of this enterprise. We hope that some of them might come across this volume and read about themselves and the story they tell of modern Britain with interest.