• Visit the Digital Curation pages to download the data: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.14749/1575000020

The South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) is a nationally representative, cross-sectional survey that has been conducted on an annual basis by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) since its inception in 2003.

SASAS was developed with international and local assistance, and modelled on similar long-standing attitudinal survey series in the UK (British Social Attitudes: BSA), USA (General Social Survey: GSS) and Germany (German Social Survey: ALLBUS). The SASAS series is respected as a research infrastructure that provides a unique, long-term account of the changing nature of public values in modern South Africa. It therefore represents an important tool for better understanding our society and promoting evidence-based policies.

The three primary aims of SASAS are:

• To measure and produce rigorous data about changes in public attitudes and behaviour patterns over time as our democracy matures.
• To better understand how the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of South Africans compared with citizens in other countries through collaboration with selected cross-national surveys.
• To develop reliable social indicators of national progress based on the attitudes and judgements of citizens regarding key aspects of their society.