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I found an error or problem in the dataset, what should I do?

Please check that the problem is in the original data, not in a new coding or manipulation. If the problem persists, please write a detailed explanation of the problem and send to: [email protected]. We will seek to reply as soon as possible and are grateful for any assistance in ensuring the BES dataset is 100% free of errors.

Why are there some variables in the dataset that don’t appear in the questionnaire?

Several reasons:

  • YouGov’s existing data on panellists
  • Data from the Electoral Commission
  • Linked data sources

The BES includes much of the information that YouGov routinely collects about all members of their panel:

  • Age
  • Highest qualification
  • Home ownership
  • Marital status
  • Age left education
  • Ethnicity
  • Local authority and education authority
  • Household income
  • Personal income
  • Household size
  • Number of children in household
  • Preferred daily newspaper
  • Vote choice in 2010
  • Religiosity
  • Religious denomination
  • Type of organisation worked for
  • Big 5 personality measures

How are missing/not applicable/don’t know responses dealt with?

Not applicable and missing values (due to skipping or routing) are coded as missing (. in stata or NA in R).

 

Don’t know values are coded to 9999 in the dataset and labelled as “don’t know”.

 

This means that it is very important to recode “don’t know” values before analysing scales. We chose a deliberately high “don’t know” value so that any diagnostics will immediately pick up on the outlying value.

Why are some questions not asked to all respondents?

There are several reasons:

  • Some questions are asked in the innovation module to a subset of respondents. This allows user submitted content and other smaller scale research projects to be asked to subsets of the respondents.
  • Some questions are too similar to others to ask a respondent both. In this case we ask half of the sample each version .

How can I analyse the data online?

Our innovative Data Playground will allow you to look at BES data and create your own charts, allowing you to look at answers to questions and their relationships without having to have any specialist software.

Who is on the British Election Study team?

The British Election Study team principal investigators are Professor Ed Fieldhouse (Manchester), Professor Jane Green (Nuffield College, Oxford), Professor Geoff Evans (Nuffield College, Oxford), Dr Jon Mellon (Manchester), Dr Chris Prosser (Royal Holloway, University of London) and research associates Dr Jack Bailey and Ralph Scott (Manchester).

How do you gather your data?

The BES internet panel data is collected by YouGov using an online sample of YouGov panel members.

 

In addition, after each General Election we also conduct a face-to-face survey using a representative sample of the general population. The 2015 and 2017 face-to-face fieldwork was overseen by GfK, while the 2019 fieldwork was overseen by Ipsos MORI, each time surveying the original 2015 sample.

 

The 2019 study was designed as a face-to-face in-home survey administered by an interviewer via Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI). Fieldwork commenced under the original design but was halted in mid-March 2020, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. A second phase of research was implemented, following a push-to-web with a postal follow-up approach with the questionnaire self-administered by respondents, either online via Computer Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI) or on paper (PAPI).

 

More details are available in the technical report for each survey, included alongside the data on the cross-sectional data page.