Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The project aimed to explore the social and political attitudes of 15-17 year olds through sample surveys of a selection of schools in Hertfordshire in 2000 and 2001. In particular, the aim was to understand the origins of social capital, and what factors affect young people’s political/civic knowledge, engagement and social trust. In addition, the project examined the impact of formal citizenship education, whether exposure to citizenship education was associated with higher civic knowledge, engagement and trust among young people. Finally, the relationship between social capital and other important outcomes in young people, notably educational attainment was also explored, in order to assess to what extent social capital variables, in the home or school, have an impact on exam performance at 16 and the key decision of whether to stay in school post-16. The project had policy aims of feeding the results of the research to policy-makers in central and local government. The level of civic education in each school was ascertained by a prior practice survey to heads (questionnaire is part of the submission to the archive). The researchers surveyed 1250 year eleven students in their classes by means of a written questionnaire.Main Topics:The datasets are the coded responses to the two sample surveys, which covered topics such as social attitudes, psychological well being, attitudes to school and teachers, political knowledge, activities and attitudes as well as collecting information about the respondent’s characteristics and behaviour (e.g. television watching, school grades). The Wave 1 dataset contains the responses to these questions (see codebook) as well as responses to the practice survey and a number of school-level variables (e.g. whether the school is public or private). A year later the same students (including those who had left education) and asked many of the same questions as...