Citizenship in Britain: Values, Participation and Democracy

Abstract

Citizenship in Britain: Values, Participation and Democracy. By Charles Pattie, Patrick Seyd, and Paul Whiteley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 364 pages. 29.99 paper.What does it mean to be a British citizen in the early part of the twenty-first century? The authors of Citizenship in Britain address this question through the lens of the Citizen Audit, comprehensive surveys carried out as part of the Economic and Social Research Council's democracy and participation program. The Citizen Audit had three components: “wave 1” face-to-face interviews of 3,145 respondents (62.2% response rate) conducted between September and December 2000, “mail-back survey” questionnaires with 9,023 respondents (37.5% response rate) between January and May 2001, and follow-up “wave 2” face-to-face interviews with a subset of the original interviewees (809 respondents; 67% response rate) between September and December 2001. The wave 1 interviews consisted of 62 questions, while the mail-back surveys and wave 2 interviews included a subset. The authors weighted the raw data by age, sex, and employment status to make them consistent with census data to compensate for nonresponse.