Data

Survey data supplied by the BFI and DCMS:

The DCMS’s (2017) ‘Taking Part’ survey is a one year of a longitudinal face-to-face household survey of adults who are aged 16 and over, and children aged 5 to 15 years old in England that has run since 2005. We have used the adult data set in this analysis. The survey’s main objective is to provide a central, reliable evidence source of data to analyse cultural, sports and digital engagement, providing a clear picture of why people do or do not engage in various cultural activities. The survey collects data on engagement in the arts, museums and galleries, archives, libraries, heritage and sport. It includes information on frequency of participation, reasons for participating, barriers to participation and attitudes to cultural sectors, and it gathers information on demographics (e.g. age, education, income and socio-economic status). ‘Taking Part’ is designed to yield a representative sample of 10,000 adults aged 16+ who are normally resident in England. The data collected in 2016-2017 sample (N=10,171) is a mixed sample, evenly divided between fresh sample cases and re-interview cases (DCMS, 2017).  When creating the current dataset we used the ‘Taking part’ survey to model the latent classes of general arts and cultural attendance.

The BFI’s ‘Opening Our Eyes’ study (Northern Alliance and Ipsos MediaCT, 2011) had a mixed methods research design, composed of qualitative paired interviews, a survey and case studies. While creating the current dataset we have solely drawn on the publicly-available survey data which comprises 2,036 online self-completion questionnaires. The sample is representative of 46 million UK individuals aged 15 to 74. The online sample was also compared with offline UK samples of the same age group, and is comparable in terms of working status, income, marital status, children in household and urban through to rural location (Northern Alliance and Ipsos MediaCT, 2011, p. 13).