Category: research methods

Why Do Voting Opinion Polls Get it Wrong So Often?

Surveys which ask how people intend to vote in major elections seem to get it wrong more often than not, but why is this?

Taking the averages of all nine first and then final polls for the UK general election 2017, the predictions for the Conservatives show them down from 46% to 44%; and Labour up from 26% to 36%.

voting intention 2017 general election

The actual vote share following the result of the general election shows the Conservatives at 42% and Labour at 40% share of the vote.

2017 election result share of vote UK

Writing in The Guardian, David Lipsey notes that ‘The polls’ results in British general elections recently have not been impressive. They were rightish (in the sense of picking the right winner) in 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2010. They were catastrophically wrong in 1992 and 2015. As they would pick the right winner by chance one time in two, an actual success rate of 67%, against success by pin of 50%, is not impressive.’

So why do the pollsters get it wrong so often?

Firstly, there is a plus or minus 2 or 3% statistical margin of error in a poll – so if a poll shows the Tories on 40% and Labour on 34%, this could mean that the real situation is Tory 43%, Labour 31% – a 12 point lead. Or it could mean both Tory and Labour are on 37%, neck and neck.

This is demonstrated by these handy diagrams from YouGov’s polling data on voting intentions during the run up to the 2017 UK general election…

Voting Intention 2017 Election 

Statistics Margin Error.png

Seat estimates 2017 General Election

Seat Estimates

Based on the above, taking into account margin for error, it is impossible to predict who would have won a higher proportion of the votes and more seats out of Labour and the Tories.

Secondly, the pollsters have no way of knowing whether they are interviewing a representative sample.

When approached by a pollster most voters refuse to answer and the pollster has very little idea whether these non-respondents are or are not differently inclined from those who do respond. In the trade, this is referred to as polling’s “dirty little secret”.

Thirdly, the link between demographic data and voting patterns is less clear today – it used to be possible to triangulate polling data with demographic data from previous election results, but voter de-alignment now means that such data is now less reliable as a source of triangulating the opinion polls survey data, meaning pollsters are more in the dark than ever.

Fourthly, a whole load of other factors affected people’s actual voting behaviour in this 2017 election and maybe the polls  failed to capture this?

David Cowley from the BBC notes that…. ‘it seems that whether people voted Leave or Remain in 2016’s European referendum played a significant part in whether they voted Conservative or Labour this time…. Did the 2017 campaign polls factor this sufficiently into the modelling of their data? If younger voters came out in bigger numbers, were the polls equipped to capture this, when all experience for many years has shown this age group recording the lowest turnout?’

So it would seem that voting-intention surveys have always had limited validity, and that, if anything, this validity problem is getting worse…. after years of over-estimating the number of Labour votes, they’ve now swung right back the other way to underestimating the popularity of Labour.

Having said that these polls are not entirely useless, they did still manage to predict that the Tories would win more votes and seats than Labour, but they just got the difference between them oh so very wrong.

The problem of obtaining representative samples (these days)

According to The Week (July 2017) – the main problem with polling these days is that finding representative samples is getting harder… When Gallup was polling, the response rate was 90%, in 2015, ICM had to call up 30 000 numbers just to get 2000 responses. And those who do respond are often too politically engaged to be representative.

 

Research Methods – 4 Mark ‘Outline’ Questions for AS Sociology

One of the questions (worth 4 marks) in the research methods section of the AS sociology 7191 (2) research methods with families and households paper will ask you to ‘outline’ 2 things about any aspect of research methods – below are a few possible questions and some suggested answers….

Each point of your answer to a short answer ‘outline question’ is best thought of as consisting of ‘1+1’ marks -make a point and explain it… as you can see below, each point has two sentences.

Remember it’s always better if you think up these for yourself rather than just reading and copying out the answers from here…

Outline two practical advantages to the researcher of using social surveys in social research (4)

  • Surveys are a quick and cheap means of gathering data from large numbers of people, across wide areas. They are an efficient method because computers can analyse pre-coded answers and quantify the data instantaneously.
  • You don’t need ‘people skills’ to use social surveys, thus anyone can use them to do research. This is because they can be written in advance, and put on-line or sent by post, and thus sociologist’s personal involvement with respondents can be kept to a minimum.

In either paper 1 or paper 3 of the A level sociology exam you might get this exact same question as a 10 mark question, in which case you’re expected to develop both points further, and possibly evaluate it. To see how you would do this, please click here for the 10 mark answer to A level sociology question.

Outline two theoretical problems sociologists might face when using social surveys to conduct research (4)

  • The imposition problem—closed questions limit what respondents can say. Interpretivists argue respondents have diverse motives and it is unlikely that researchers will think up every possible response, thus questionnaires will lack validity.
  • Self-completion surveys can also suffer from poor representativeness – those with low literacy skills are less likely to return them as they are unable to do so, thus resulting in a narrow, biased, self-selecting sample.

To see how you might turn this into an A level answer (papers 1 and 3), please click here for the 10 mark answer to A level sociology question.

Outline two ways in which a researcher might improve the response rate of postal questionnaires (4)

  • You could include an incentive, which people could claim when they return them, such as entry into a prize draw. This means people would be motivated by the money to complete and return the questionnaire.
  • You could remind them via phone a few days after the have received the questionnaire. They may have ignored or forgotten the questionnaire, and people may be more likely to respond because of the personal contact from the researcher.  

Outline two ways in which sociologists might ensure respondents do not misinterpret the questions they are being asked in postal surveys (4)

  • You could make sure questions are clearly worded in simple language to reduce misinterpretation. Here a pilot study with an interviewer present might be a useful way of assessing what wording is the easiest to understand.
  • You could make sure the survey is carried out as a structured interview, or if a postal survey, have a phone-line where people can ask questions – this way a researcher could explain the correct way to interpret any difficult questions.

Outline and Explain Two Theoretical Problems of Using Social Surveys in Social Research

Firstly, social surveys suffer from the imposition problem, closed questions limits what respondents can say Interpretivists argue respondents have diverse motives and it is unlikely that researchers will think up every possible relevant question and every possible, response, thus questionnaires will lack validity.

This is especially true for more complex topics such as religions belief – ticking the ‘Christian’ box can mean many different things to many different people, for example.

Interpretivists thus say that surveys are socially constructed—they don’t reflect reality, but the interests of researchers

However, this is easily rectified by including a section at the end of questionnaires in which respondents can write their explanations.

Secondly, self-completion surveys can also suffer from poor representativeness…

Postal questionnaires can suffer from a low response rate, and samples might be self-selecting— due to the illiterate or people who might be ashamed/ scared to return questionnaires on sensitive topics.

Also, you can’t check who has filled them in, so surveys may actually misrepresent the target population.

However, it is possible to rectify this with incentives and booster samples.

The above is a suggested response to a possible 10 mark ‘pure methods’ question which might come up on either paper 1 or 3 of the AQA’s A Level Sociology Papers. It follows the basic formula – make a point, develop it twice, and then evaluate it (which to my mind seems to work well for ‘pure methods’ 10 mark questions. 

Theory and Methods A Level Sociology Revision Bundle 

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Theory and Methods Revision Bundle – specifically designed to get students through the theory and methods sections of  A level sociology papers 1 and 3.

Contents include:

  • 74 pages of revision notes
  • 15 mind maps on various topics within theory and methods
  • Five theory and methods essays
  • ‘How to write methods in context essays’.

Outline and Explain Two Practical Advantages of Using Social Surveys in Social Research (10)

It’s possible that a 10 mark question on A level sociology papers 1 or 3 could simply ask you about a ‘pure’ research method, as with the example above.

You might like to review the fuller material on social surveys first before looking at the answer below!

This post suggests a strategy for how to answer such possible questions and provides one exemplar answer, which I think would get full marks in the exam….

Strategy 

  • Make two, distinct points—as different from each other as possible!
  • For each of the points, explain, develop it twice, and (if it flows) do a linked evaluation.
  • It’s good practice to link to Positivism and Interpretivism and use examples.

Exemplar Answer

Firstly, surveys are a quick and cheap means of gathering data from large numbers of people, across wide areas, because, once sent out, millions of people could potentially fill them at the same time.

They are especially quick/ efficient if put online because computers can analyse pre-coded answers and quantify/ compare the data instantaneously.

They also make it easier to gain government funding because you can generalise from large data sets and thus use to inform social policy—the census, for example, allows the government to plan for school places in the future.

However, Interpretivists would argue you never get in-depth/ valid data with this method, and so predictions can be flawed—the polls on Brexit didn’t tell us what people really thought about this issue!

Secondly, you don’t need ‘people skills’ to use social surveys, thus anyone can use them to do research.

This is because they can be written in advance, and put on-line or sent by post, and thus sociologist’s personal involvement with respondents can be kept to a minimum.

This also means that busy people with family commitments can easily use social surveys.

However, Interpretivists and Feminist argue this wouldn’t be an advantage for all topics—some areas are so sensitive they require personal contact, such as domestic abuse.

Theory and Methods A Level Sociology Revision Bundle 

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Theory and Methods Revision Bundle – specifically designed to get students through the theory and methods sections of  A level sociology papers 1 and 3.

Contents include:

  • 74 pages of revision notes
  • 15 mind maps on various topics within theory and methods
  • Five theory and methods essays
  • ‘How to write methods in context essays’.

The strengths and limitations of secondary data

Secondary data has already been collected so should be easier to use, but you have to factor in bias!

There is a huge amount of secondary data available, it is often easier to work with than people in primary research, however you are limited to what is available and you are subject to the biases of the people who produced it!

What is secondary data?

Information which has been collected previously, by someone else, other than the researcher. Secondary data can either be qualitative, such as diaries, newspapers or government reports, or quantitative, as with official statistics, such as league tables.

Strengths of using secondary data in social research

  • There is a lot of it! It is the richest vein of information available to researchers in many topic areas. Also, some large data sets might not exist if it wasn’t for the government collecting data.
  • Sometimes documents and official statistics might be the only means of researching the past.
  • Official statistics may be especially useful for making comparisons over time. The U.K. Census for example goes back to 1851.
  • At a practical level, many public documents and official statistics are freely available to the researcher.

Limitations of using secondary data

  • Official statistics may reflect the biases of those in power – limiting what you can find out.
  • Official statistics – the way things are measured may change over time, making historical comparisons difficult (As with crime statistics, the definition of crime keeps changing.)
  • Documents may lack authenticity– parts of the document might be missing because of age, and we might not even be to verify who actually wrote the document, meaning we cannot check whether its biased or not.
  • Representativeness – documents may not be representative of the wider population –especially a problem with older documents. Many documents do not survive because they are not stored, and others deteriorate with age and become unusable. Other documents are deliberately withheld from researchers and the public gaze, and therefore do not become available.
Signposting

This was a brief post, for revision purposes, designed as last minute revision for the AS and A Level sociology exams.

For more detailed posts on research methods, including secondary data, please see my page on research methods.

For more advice on the A-level sociology exams (AQA focus) please see my exams, essays and short answer questions page.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

Qualitative Data – Strengths and Limitations

A summary of the theoretical, practical and ethical strengths and weaknesses of qualitative data sources such as unstructured interviews, participant observation and documents.

Examples of Qualitative Data

  • Open question questionnaires
  • Unstructured interviews
  • Participant observation
  • Public and private documents such as newspapers and letters.

Theoretical strengths

  • Better validity than for quantitative data
  • More insight (Verstehen)
  • More in-depth data
  • More respondent-led, avoids the imposition problem.
  • Good for exploring issues the researcher knows little about.
  • Preferred by Interpretivists

Practical strengths

  • A useful way of accessing groups who don’t like formal methods/ authority

Ethical strengths

  • Useful for sensitive topics
  • Allows respondents to ‘speak for themselves’
  • Treats respondents as equals

Theoretical limitations

  • Difficult to make comparisons
  • No useful for finding trends, finding correlations.
  • Typically small samples, low representativeness
  • Low reliability as difficult to repeat the exact context of research.
  • Subjective bias of researcher may influence data (interviewer bias)
  • Disliked by Positivists

Practical limitations

  • Time consuming
  • Expensive per person researched compared to qualitative data
  • Difficult to gain access (PO)
  • Analyzing data can be difficult

Ethical limitations

  • Close contact means more potential for harm
  • Close contact means more difficult to guarantee anonymity and confidentiality
  • Informed consent can be an issue with PO.

Nature of Topic – When would you use it, when would you avoid using it?

  • Useful for complex topics you know little about
  • Not necessary for simple topics.

Signposting

This post has been written as a revision summary for students revising the research methods aspect of A-level sociology.

More in-depth versions of qualitative data topics can be found below…

Covert and Covert Participant Observation  

The strengths and limitations of covert participant observation 

Interviews in Social Research 

Secondary Qualitative Data Analysis in Sociology 

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

Sampling Techniques in Social Research

Five sampling techniques are random, systematic, stratified, quota, multistage and snowball.

Selecting a sample is the process of finding and choosing the people who are  going to be the target of your research.

Five sampling methods used in sociology are:

  1. Random sampling – pick at random
  2. Systematic sampling – every nth person from a list
  3. stratified sampling – 50% males 50% females, for example.
  4. multistage sampling – 50% males, 50% females then within both male and female groups 50% young, 50% old.
  5. snowball sampling – start with one person, ask them to suggest someone else to interview.
  6. quota sample – selecting people with particular characteristics

Choosing a sampling method

The sampling method researchers choose will depend on a variety of factors including theoretical perspective (wether Positivist or Interpretivist), as well as practical and ethical factors.

Most researchers will have a ‘target population’ in mind before conducting research. The target population consists of those people who have the characteristics of the sample you wish to study. If you’re interested in conducting primary research on the experiences of working class school children in 2017 (or whatever year we’re currently in!),  then your target population would be all working class school children.

Many researchers use a sampling frame to choose a sample, which is simply a list from which a sample is chosen – this might be a register of all pupils in a school, if you are conducting research in a school, for example.

NB – The people who are the targets of social research are also known as the ‘respondents’

Positivist researchers are interested in large scale research and so are especially concerned to make sure their samples are representative of wider populations – research is representative if the characteristics of the people in the sample (the people who are actually researched) reflect the characteristics of the target population.

Interpretivists generally prefer smaller scale research and are generally more interested in getting niche samples of deviant groups and don’t need to worry about generalising to wider populations.

Random sampling

An example of random sampling would be picking names out of a hat. In random sampling everyone in the population has the same chance of getting chosen. This is easy because it is quick and can even be performed by a computer. However, because it is down to chance you could end up with an unrepresentative sample, perhaps with one demographic being missed out.

Systematic sampling

An example of a systematic sample would be picking every 10th person on a list or register. This is a very convenient method when you have a list of people on a database that could be used as a sampling frame, and it’s also a method computers can use to automatically generate samples.

However, this method may also be unrepresentative, depending on how the list is organised.

Stratified sampling

This method attempts to make the sample as representative as possible, avoiding the problems that could be caused by using a completely random sample. To do this the sample frame will be divided into a number of smaller groups, such as social class, age, gender, ethnicity etc. Individuals are then drawn at random from these groups. If you are observing doctors and you had split the sample frame into ethnic groups you would draw 8% of the participants from the Asian group, as you know that 8% of doctors in Britain are Asian.

Quota sampling

In this method researchers will be told to ensure the sample fits with certain quotas, for example they might be told to find 90 participants, with 30 of them being unemployed. The researcher might then find these 30 by going to a job centre. The problem of representativeness is again a problem with the quota sampling method.

Multistage sampling

With multistage sampling, a researcher selects a sample by using combinations of different sampling methods. For example, in Stage 1, a researcher might use systematic sampling, and in Stage 2, he might use random sampling to select a subset for the final sample

Snowball sampling

With this method, researchers might find a few participants, and then ask them to find participants themselves and so on. This is useful when a sample is difficult to obtain. For example Laurie Taylor used this method when investigating criminals. It would be difficult for him to find a sample as he didn’t know many criminals; however these criminals know a lot of people who would be willing to participate, so it is more efficient to use the snowball method.

Signposting

This material is fundamental to the research methods topic!

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

YouGov Surveys – What the World Thinks?

The YouGov website is a great source for finding examples of social surveys and results from survey data.

Quantitative Data

 

YouGov is company which collects mainly survey data on a wide range of topics from people all over the world, and publishes it’s findings on a daily basis.

On their intro page they say ‘YouGov is a community of 4 million people around the world who share their views…. w’ere pretty sure its the largest daily updated database of people’s habits and opinions in the world’ – in addition to the structured survey data, some people also comment on the findings of said data, so you get a more qualitative feel added into the mix.

The data is very easy to access – for example below are YouGov’s latest findings on attitudes towards the children of illegal immigrants:

attitudes-to-immigration-uk

 

You can see from the above that we are pretty intolerant of illegal immigrants as a nation, which is one of the advantages of survey data.

You can also ‘drill down’ into the data and find correlations between attitudes and politics/ gender/ age and social class. Below we see that older people are less tolerant than younger people:

young-people-attitudes-immigration

The advantages and disadvantages of social surveys 

The big strength of this site is that it’s very accessible – you can very easily get some quick ‘facts’ about what people think about a lot of different topics, and you can easily see the correlations between attitudes and other variables such as class and gender.

The information contained in the site is also good for illustrating the limitations of survey data – you don’t really get any depth or explanation of why people hold these views (not even with the comments, because relatively few people comment).

Finally, I really like the fact that you get to see the specific question asked, so you can always bung a particular question, or set of questions on Socrative to check out the reliability with your students!

Related Posts

The strengths and limitations of social surveys 

Positivism, Sociology and Social Research – Positivists like the survey method

 

AS and First Year A Level Sociology – Whole Course Overview

An overview of the entire course for AS and first year A level sociology covering the following ‘modules’:

The overview below is taken directly from the AQA’s scheme of work and broken down further into more sub-topics to make it more teachable/ learnable. Within each ‘module’ there are about 7 sub-topics, and any of which could (although not necessarily) form the basis of one essay question, so you need to be able to write on each sub-topic for a solid 30 minutes.

This will relevant to most teachers and students teaching the AQA syllabus, unless you do an alternative option to families and households (which I don’t cover!)

My advice is that students generally need at least one side of revision notes for each of the subtopics below, with three-five points/ explanations/ examples and with evaluations (e.g. one side for Functionalism, another for Marxism etc…)

Education

Education brief

  1. Perspectives on Education

    1. Functionalism

    2. Marxism

    3. Neoliberalism and The New Right

    4. New Labour (a response to the New Right)

    5. Postmodernism

  1. In school process and education

    1. Teacher Labelling and the Self Fulfilling Prophecy

    2. School organisation (banding and streaming)

    3. School Type, School Ethos and the Hidden Curriculum

    4. School Subcultures

    1. Pupil Identities and the Education System

  1. Education Policies

    1. The strengths and limitations of successive government education polices:

      1. 1944 – The Tripartite System – brief

      2. 1965 – Comprehensivisation – brief

      3. 1988 – The 1988 Education Reform Act

      4. 1997 – New Labour’s Education Policies

      5. 2010 – The Coalition and the New New Right’s Education Policies

    1. Evaluating Education Policies

      1. To what extent have policies raised standards in education?

      2. To what extent have policies improved equality of opportunity?

      3. Perspectives on selection as an educational policy

      4. Perspectives on the increased privatisation of education

      5. How is globalisation affecting educational and educational policy?

  1. Social Class and Education

    1. Material Deprivation

    2. Cultural Deprivation

    3. Cultural Capital Theory

    4. In-School Factors

    5. The strengths and limitations of policies designed to tackle working class underachievement

  2. Gender and Education

    1. Out of school factors which explain why girls do better than boys in education

    2. In-School factors which explain why girls do better than boys in education

    3. Explanations for gender and subject choice

    4. Feminist Perspectives on the role of education in society

    5. The strengths and limitations of policies designed to tackle gender differences in educational achievement

  3. Ethnicity and Education

    1. Cultural factors which might explain ethnic differences in educational achievement

    2. In-School Factors which might explain ethnic differences in educational achievement

    3. The strengths and limitations of policies designed to tackle ethnic differences in educational achievement

Methods in Context

Here you need to be able to assess the strengths and limitations of using any method to research any aspect of education.

The different methods you need to be able to consider include –

1. Secondary Documents

2. Official statistics

3. Field Experiments

4. Lab experiments

5. Questionnaires

6. Unstructured Interviews

7. Overt Participant Observation

8. Covert Participant Observation

9. Non Participant Observation

The different aspects of education you might consider are

• Researching how the values, attitudes, and aspirations of parents contribute to the achievement of certain groups of children

• Why boys are more likely to be excluded than girls

• Why white working class boys underachieve

• Exploring whether teachers have ‘ideal pupils’ – whether they label certain groups of pupils favourably!

• Assessing the relative importance of cultural deprivation versus material deprivation in explaining underachievement

• Assessing the success of policies aimed to improve achievement such as ‘employing more black teachers’

Families and Households

AS Sociology Families and Households

  1. Perspectives on Families

1.1 Functionalism

1.2 Marxism

1.3 Feminisms

1.4 The New Right

1.5 Postmodernism and Late Modernism

1.6 The Personal Life Perspective

  1. Marriage and Divorce

2.1: Explaining the trends in marriage

2.2: Explaining the trends in divorce

2.3: Perspectives on the consequences of declining marriage and increasing divorce

2.4: Examining how marriage, divorce and cohabitation vary by social class, ethnicity, sexuality and across generations.

3. Family Diversity

3.1 – The underlying causes of the long term increase In Reconstituted families, Single parent families, Multi-generational households, Single person households and ‘Kidult’ households.

3.2 Perspectives on the social significance of the increase of all of the above (covered in 3.1).

3.3 – The extent to which family life varies by ethnicity, social class and sexuality.

4. Gender Roles, Domestic Labour and Power Relationships

4.1. To what extent are gender roles characterised by equality?

4.2. To what extent is the Domestic Division of Labour characterised by equality?

4.3. Issues of Power and Control in Relationships

4.4. To what extent has women going into paid work resulted in greater equality within relationships?

5. Childhood

5.1 – To what extent is ‘childhood socially constructed’

5.2 – The March of Progress view of childhood (and parenting) – The Child Centred Family and Society?

5.3 – Toxic Childhood and Paranoid Parenting – Criticisms of ‘The March of Progress View’

5.4 – Is Childhood Disappearing?

5.5 – Reasons for changes to childhood and parenting practices

Topic 6 – Social Policy

6.1 You need to be able to assess the effects of a range of policies using at least three key perspectives

• The New Right

• New Labour

• Feminism (Liberal and Radical)

6.2 You need notes on how the following policies affect men and women and children within the family

• Changes to the Divorce law

• Tax breaks for married couples

• Maternity and paternity pay

• Civil Partnerships

• Sure Start – early years child care

Topic 7: Demography

7.1: Reasons for changes to the Birth Rate

7.2: Reasons for changes to the Death Rate

7.3: The consequences of an Ageing Population

7.4: The reasons for and consequences of changes to patterns of Migration

Research Methods

Factors effecting choice of research method copy

  1. The Factors Affecting Choice of Research Method – Theoretical, Ethical and Practical Factors.Introduction to Research Methods – Basic types of method and key terms

  1. Secondary Quantitative Data – Official Statistics

  1. Secondary Qualitative Data – Public and Private Documents

  1. Experiments – Field and Laboratory

  1. Interviews – Structured, Unstructured and Semi-Structured

  1. Observational Methods – Cover and Overt Participant and Non-Participant Observation

  1. Other methods – e.g. Longitudinal Studies

  1. Stages of the Research Process

Crucial to the above is your mastery of the TPEN structure

  1. Theoretical factors – Positivism, Interpretivism, Validity, Reliability, Representativeness

  1. Practical factors –Time, Money, funding, opportunities for research including ease of access to respondents, and the personal skills and characteristics of the researcher.

  1. Ethical factors – Thinking about how the research impacts on those involved with the research process: Informed consent, ensure confidentiality, be legal and ensure that respondents and those related to them are not subjected to harm. All this needs to be weighed up with the benefits of the research.

  1. The Nature of the Topic studied. Some topics lend themselves to certain methods and preclude others!

 

Families in the UK – Nine Interesting Statistics

Having an overview of statistics on family life in the UK is a useful starting point for studying families and households.

Nine important stats to know about families and households in the UK in 2022:

  • There are 19.4 million families.
  • There are 28.2 million households.
  • 57% of families are classic nuclear family households with either dependent or adult children living in the same house.
  • 30% of households are single person households.
  • 31% of men who live alone are 65 or over as are 48% of women.
  • 31% of adult males live with parents compared to only 22% of adult females, aged 20-34.
  • The marriage rate has halved between 1991 and 2019.
  • The average age of marriage was 35.4 and 33.2 for men and women respectively in 2020.
  • Single parent families are twice as likely to be in poverty than two parent families.

The rest of this post explores these statistics in more depth. Sources are towards the bottom of the post!

Family types in the UK in 2022

There was a total of 19.4 million families in the UK in 2022, an increase of 1 million since 2012.

bar chart showing family types in the UK IN 2022.
  • There were 12.8 million married couple families in the UK in 2022, representing 66% of all families.
  • There were 3.7 milion opposite-sex cohabiting families, 19% of all families.
  • There were 2.9 million lone parent families, 15% of all families.
  • There were 110, 000 same-sex cohabiting couple families and 110, 000 civil partner couple families (both types around 0.6% of all families).
  • The number of married coupe families and lone parent families have decreased slightly since 2012.
  • Cohabiting and civil-partner families have increased slightly since 2012.

NB: the statistics above only show family households, they don’t include single person households, which make up about 30% of all households in the UK today.

The nuclear family is still the main type of family

  • 11.1 Million households had children living in them, so this means 57% of families are classic nuclear families.
  • 8.2 million of these families had dependent children in them and 2.9 million had only non-dependent children.
  • 8.3 million families had no children living within them.

So for all the talk of the decline in the nuclear family, the statistics suggest the nuclear family is still the predominant family type.

Households types in the UK in 2022

There were 28.2 million households in the UK in 2022. This means the average household size is 2.36 people per household.

bar chart showing household types in the Uk in 2022.
  • One family households are the main households type. There were 18.8 million one family households, 67% of the total.
  • There were 8.3 million single person households in the UK in 2022, 30% of the total.
  • Houses of unrelated adults (house shares) were 3% of the total.
  • Multi-family households made up 1% of the total.

Living Alone: younger men and older women!

Men aged 45-64 are most likely to live alone. Of men who live alone, 34% are aged 45-64.

Of women who live alone, 37% of them are aged 75 or over!

Age group% of those living alone men% of those living alone women
16-243%2%
25-4424%11%
45-6434%27%
65-7419%24%
75+16%37%

Graphics on living alone from the ONS…

bar chart showing ages of men living alone UK 2012 to 2022.
bar chart showing ages of women living alone in the UK in 2022.

The number of adults living with their parents has increased.

The number of adults living with their parents rose by over 14% between 2011 and 2021 to 4.9 million adults.

Young adult males are more likely to live with their parents than young adult females.

In 2022 31% of males aged 20-34 lived with their parents compared to only 22% of females aged 20 to 34. (Source).

The marriage rate almost halved between 1991 and 2019

In 1991 there were just under 40 marriages per 1000 unmarried men. By 2019 this had halved to just under 20 per thousand. The trend is similar for women but not quite as dramatic.

The marriage rate then plunged to around 6/1000 during covid, but it will probably bounce back in coming years!

declining marriage rate in england and wales.

The average age of marriage has increased since

The average (median) age of men marrying in 2020 was 35.4 years and for women this was 33.2 years.

Marriage ages were around 26 for men and 24 for women in the early 20th century, then declined to 22 for men and 21 for women between 1940 and 1970.

From 1970 the average age of first marriage has increased to the mid 30s for both men and women, but it now seems to be levelling out!

Single parent families are twice as likely to be in poverty

poverty rates for single parent compared to dual parent families.

Almost 50% of lone parent families are in relative poverty, double the rate of two parent families, according to the IFS. (NB: Pre-pandemic figures!)

Sources

Families and Households 2022 (Office for National Statistics).

Nine Facts about Marriage (Office for National Statistics).

ONS More Adults Living with their Parents.

ONS Marriages in England and Wales.

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