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 2014 we gratefully acknowledge the support of the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Transport, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
We also gratefully acknowledge the support of the UK Statistical Authority.

Thanks are also due to the King’s Fund, the Health Foundation, the Vegetarian Society and the Economic and the Social Research Council (ESRC).

The 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 Politics chapter.

We are also grateful to Professor Richard Topf of the Centre for Comparative European Surveys, 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 asked 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 survey is heavily dependent on staff who organise and monitor fieldwork and compile and distribute the survey’s extensive documentation, for which we would pay particular thanks to Sarah Allcock and her colleagues in NatCen Social Research’s administrative office in Brentwood. Thanks are also due to the fieldwork controllers, regional 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 Malisha Beg and Sue Corbett in our computing department who expertly translate our questions into a computer assisted questionnaire, and to Jackie Palmer who has the unenviable task of editing, checking and documenting the data.

Finally, we must praise all the people who anonymously gave up their time to take part in one of our surveys over the last thirty one years, not least those who participated in 2014. They are the cornerstone of this enterprise. We hope that some of them might come across this report and read about themselves and the story they tell of modern Britain with interest.