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 2012 we gratefully acknowledge the support of the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Transport, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Thanks are also due to The King's Fund, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Nuffield Foundation, the National Council for Palliative Care 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 Gender roles 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 senior researchers, Lucy Lee and Eleanor Taylor who also develop and manage the survey, along with Jerome Finnegan. 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 Charlie Collins and Sarah Allcock 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 Sue Corbett 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. Many thanks are also due to Soapbox who worked with us on producing the report and to our proofreaders, Alice Reeves and Cathy O'Donnell.

Finally, we must praise all the people who anonymously gave up their time to take part in one of our surveys over the last 30 years, not least those who participated in 2012. They are the cornerstone of this enterprise. We hope that some of them might read about themselves and the story they tell of modern Britain with interest.