Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

To investigate the background characteristics, attitudes and goals of Essex undergraduate students on entry, and to follow up these data with data on the reactions of graduating students to their experience of university and their responses to certain questions on political and religious attitudes that might have been expected to change and for which data were collected when they entered.
Main Topics:

Attitudinal/Behavioural Questions
Importance of differing educational aims to the individual is assessed. Suggested categories deal with development of vocational and social skills as well as with purely intellectual goals. Characteristics which are important in an occupation are dealt with in a similar format. Another section deals with the chief factors which have influenced the student's decision to come to Essex.
Attitude items deal with capital and corporal punishment, premarital sex, homosexuality, circumstances in which abortion would be justified and interracial marriage.
Background Variables
Type of primary and secondary schooling received by respondent, parental occupation at time of respondent's birth, at age 11, and at time of schedule administration, parental education, grandparents' occupation and education, and respondent and parental party and religious preferences.