Testing Social Change

1
Testing Social Change

• John Curtice
• Strathclyde University

2
A Talk in Four Parts

• Theory
• Manifestations
• Complications
• Implications
• Research Design
• Archives

3
Research Interests

• Electoral Behaviour
• British Election Study
• Social Attitudes
• British and Scottish Social Attitudes

4
Individualisation

• People choose identities and values rather than
  inherit them.
• Communal influences such as class and religion
  weakened
• Demand for self-actualisation
• Product of affluence, education and technology
  ((post-)modernisation)

5
Examples

• Vote less influenced by social position
• Identities are more fluid
• Fewer people have emotional attachments to
  parties
• Attitudes on moral issues more liberal
• Changing patterns of political participation

6
Class Dealignment
7
Trends in NatID - Scotland
8
Partisan Dealignment
9
Attitudes to homosexuality
10
Been on a demo
11
Labours Changed Image
12
Redistributed Attitudes?
13
Trends in NatID - England
14
The Impact of Leaders
15
Attitudes to Immigration
16
Party difference
17
To Summarise

• Considerable evidence of long run change that
  corresponds to claims of individualisation theory
• But political developments and institutions also
  matter
• We cannot be sure how much former matters if do
  not take account of latter

18
Implications for Research

• Have to keep on asking same old boring
  questions
• Cannot be sure if social change matters until
  test theory in different circumstances
• This means not just a long time series, but a
  varied one

19
Implications for Archives

• Central to analysis of social change
• Meta data matters
• Not just repositories of the past, but should
  inform current design
• Insert old questions into new surveys

20
Conclusion

• Just beginning to be able to test theories of
  social change using survey data
• Length of time series required means archives
  have a central role
• Value the documentation as much as the data!