Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain: 14 to 25 February 2024

The following information is for the latest survey period 14 to 25 February 2024, based on adults in Great Britain.

• When asked about the important issues facing the UK today, the two most commonly reported issues were: the cost of living (88%), which has seen a general decline since August 2023; and the NHS (88%), which has increased slightly from a month ago (84% in the period 17 to 28 January 2024) to reach the same proportion as the cost of living since we started asking this question in late 2022.

• The economy (75%) remained the third most commonly reported important issue; this increased from a month ago (69% in the period 17 to 28 January 2024).

• A similar proportion of adults reported climate change and the environment (62%), housing (63%) and crime (63%) as important issues; the proportion reporting crime has been increasing recently, up this period compared with a month ago when it was 55%.

• More than half of adults reported that immigration (56%) and international conflict (56%) were important issues in the latest period.

For more information on the important issues facing the UK today, visit our personal well-being and loneliness dataset.

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 the 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 (14 to 25 February 2024), we sampled 4,968 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 2,364 individuals, representing a 48% 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).

Authors

The Policy Evidence and Analysis team, Office for National Statistics.