ABSTRACT
The 1998 British Social Attitudes Survey is the sixteenth of an annual series designed and conducted by the National Centre for Social Research. The survey is designed as a representative sample of British adults aged 18 and over. Overall 3,146 interviews were conducted, with a response rate of 59 per cent. Of these 1,408 were workers in employment, of whom 653 worked in workplaces without a union presence, which fall within the scope of this study (Jowell et al., 1999). The strength of the British Social Attitudes Survey is that it questions workers on aspects of working life and industrial relations, while also providing detailed information on employees’ social and political attitudes and socio-economic backgrounds, which may have an important bearing on their attitudes and actions towards trade unions (Bryson, 1999: 68-9). The weakness of the data stems from the breadth of subjects that the survey examines, which means that key variables are based on single items. This makes it impossible to test the reliability of the measures. However, the data can be used to test Model 2 (Figure 4.1).
