Acknowledgements 

British Social Attitudes (BSA) 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 2017 we gratefully acknowledge the support of The Department for Work and Pensions, The Department for Transport, The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, The Department for Education and The Government Equalities Office.

Thanks are also due to The King’s Fund, The Nuffield Trust, The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, The Health Foundation, The National Housing Federation, Scope and The Economic and 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 45 countries administer an identical module of questions in order to facilitate comparative research. Some of the results are described in our Social trust 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 BSA survey is a team effort. The report editors could not do their job without the invaluable editorial support provided by BSA Senior Researchers, Eleanor Attar Taylor and Pete Dangerfield. We also thank Ian Simpson and Elizabeth Clery for their work on the management of the 2017 survey, and Chloe Robinson for her project management support. 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 our colleagues in the National Centre for Social Research’s operations office in Brentwood. Thanks are also due to the regional managers, field performance 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 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-five years, not least those who participated in 2017. 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.