Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain: 13 December 2023 to 1 January 2024

In the latest survey period (13 December 2023 to 1 January 2024) we continued to ask respondents about their personal well-being and loneliness.

• Around a quarter (27%) of adults reported they felt lonely always, often or some of the time; 7% of adults reported that they felt lonely always or often, and 20% reported they felt lonely some of the time.

• The proportion of adults who reported experiencing loneliness remained relatively stable over time; time series data from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) from March 2020 onwards of loneliness and other measures of personal well-being are available in our accompanying dataset provided with this release.

• Previous research shows that experiencing loneliness appears to be more common among younger people, women or those in poor health; our Loneliness - What characteristics and circumstances are associated with feeling lonely? article examines this in more detail. See Section 4: Related links.

• Average levels of personal well-being remained similar to the same period a year ago (21 December 2022 to 8 January 2023); 6.9 out of 10 for life satisfaction (the same as a year ago), 7.2 out of 10 for those feeling that the things done in life are worthwhile (the same as a year ago), 7.0 out of 10 for happiness (6.9 a year ago) and 3.9 out of 10 for anxiety (the same as a year ago).

• Previous research shows that people's family, health and financial situation are most commonly reported as being important for their well-being; our Individual and community well-being, Great Britain article examines this in more detail. See Section 4: Related links.

• When asked about the important issues facing the UK today, the most commonly reported issues were the cost of living (87%), the NHS (86%), the economy (67%), climate change and the environment (59%) and housing (56%).

For more information on trends in personal well-being and loneliness over time, and for estimates among different sub-groups of the population, please see our Personal well-being in the UK: April 2022 to March 2023 bulletin. There may be some differences in the estimates of, and trends in, personal well-being from the OPN and other sources used in this release because of the different time periods covered or sources used.

This release contains data and indicators from the Office for National Statistics' (ONS's) Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN).

From the 16 June 2023 release onwards, we made changes that reduced the scope of the release and accompanying datasets. This was based on a routine review of the relevance and usefulness of this release.

Breakdowns by age and sex are no longer provided for fortnightly estimates in the latest Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain datasets. All previous versions of the dataset remain available from this page.

Estimates from the OPN by these, and other personal characteristics, continue to be provided on a regular basis in other ONS releases. For example, OPN estimates relating to the impact of the cost of living among different sub-groups of the population are provided within our regular Impact of increased cost of living on adults across Great Britain series.

Confidence intervals are provided for all estimates in the datasets. Where changes in results from previous weeks are presented in this release, or comparisons between estimates are made, associated confidence intervals should be used to assess the statistical significance of the differences.

Sampling and weighting

In the latest period (13 December 2023 to 1 January 2024), we sampled 4,986 households. This sample was randomly selected from people who had previously completed the Labour Market Survey (LMS) or OPN. The responding sample for the latest period contained 2,416 individuals, representing a 48.5% response rate.

Survey weights were applied to make estimates representative of the population (based on ONS population estimates). Because of sampling changes in July 2023, some groups in our unweighted sample may be over-represented. Further information on the survey design and quality can be found in our Opinions and Lifestyle Survey Quality and Methodology Information (QMI).