The West Midlands Regional Observatory, in partnership with the West Midlands Public Health Observatory, conducted a region-wide survey between January and April 2005 to explore lifestyle, environmental and wider quality of life issues.
The survey covers all adults aged 18 or over, across the whole region (the counties of Shropshire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire, and the former metropolitan county of the West Midlands – Birmingham, the Black Country, Solihull and Coventry), from which a random sample of potential respondents was drawn using the Public Electoral Register.
Survey and fieldwork
The survey was carried out by BMG Research. More than 170,000 adults across the region selected from the Public Electoral Register were sent a questionnaire (PDF, 354 KB). Just under 60,000 questionnaires were returned in total.
The questionnaires were sent to named individuals, not households, and only those named individuals were asked to complete a questionnaire. This was intended to ensure that we got as close as possible to a random and representative sample of all the people in the region.
The questionnaire covered a range of issues, including:
- Healthy lifestyle and well-being
- Crime and fear of crime
- Economic activity and travel to work
- Local environment
- Quality of life
- Access to services and amenities
- Environmental issues
Interviews
Concurrently with the postal survey, more than 4,000 people were interviewed face to face in Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent. These additional interviews were undertaken on behalf of individual funding partners who wanted to boost the sample size in their area and reach particular groups in the population.
Funding partner annexes
Local partner annexes to the main report were published in January 2006, and provide results specific to the localities or specialist areas of interest of our funding partners.
Publication launch
The survey results were launched at the Observatory's 2005 Annual Conference, at the Villa Park Conference Centre in Birmingham.
Access to dataset
From 13 October 2007, the dataset for the Regional Lifestyle Survey is available free of charge in SPSS or Excel format. Users are required to first sign up to the regional data sharing protocol. Contact Research Enquiries for more details.
