National Adult Learning Survey, 1997

In autumn 1996, The Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) commissioned Social and Community Planning Research (SCPR) to carry out a survey of people's experiences of and attitudes towards learning. This survey followed three earlier studies which had also been conducted by SCPR, the first of which had been a survey of just over 1,400 individuals designed to explore attitudes to learning <i>Individual Commitment to Lifetime Learning : Individual's Attitudes</i> Park, SCPR (1994) (The data for this survey are held at the Data Archive under SN:3305); the second study <i>Monitoring Individual Commitment : Question Development</i> Campanelli and Rutherford, SCPR, (1995), had gone some way to developing the questionnaire to be used in the current survey; and the third piece of developmental work, <i>Feasibility Study for an Adult Learning Survey</i> Lewis and Smith, SCPR (1996) had collated the information needs of policy divisions in the DfEE and had examined the extent to which data needs could be met from existing data sources. <br>
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The 'National Adult Learning Survey 1997' (NALS 1997) was intended to collect data which would meet the information requirements of the Department regarding adult learning, and to provide a basis for future monitoring of adult learning. In particular, the survey aimed to identify the extent to which people were taking part in different types of learning (both vocational and non-vocational), the cost of doing such learning, people's reasons for doing some learning, problems experienced, perceived benefits of learning and barriers towards taking part in learning. There had been several previous studies investigating participation in adult learning, notably the 1996 NIACE study <i>The Learning Divide</i>, but they tended to have been more limited in their scope than the current study. This SCPR survey was the first of its kind to collect such detailed information about both vocational and non-vocational learning.<br>
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The second survey in the series, NALS 2000, conducted by Ipsos-RSL, is held under SN:4578. The third survey, NALS 2001, is held at the UK Data Archive under SN:4455, and was conducted by Social and Community Planning Research (SCPR) under its new name, National Centre for Social Research (NatCen).<br>