More Metrics Ltd has modelled publicly available parliamentary petition data (as submitted to the UK Government and Parliament petitions website) to provide small area estimates of attitudes to COVID-19 expressed through specific parliamentary petition themes and topics relating to the pandemic.

The modelled data are provided at Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) or equivalent scale (2021 England/Wales, 2011 Scotland Data Zone (DZ), 2011 N.I. Super Output Area (SOA)) level, allowing for fine-grained understanding of the attitudes of people to COVID-19 issues.
The available data includes 65 petition topics generated from over 9 million signatures grouped into 21 Attitudes to COVID-19 themes (using a combination of clustering and topic narrative). Population rates for each theme are disaggregated to LSOA or equivalent level for all parts of the UK. These provide estimates of the likelihood of a resident (aged 16 and over) living in each zone who are signing petitions for each theme.

Additional datasets provide insight into the characteristics of individuals most likely to sign petitions based on a combination of their health status, broad age band and household composition.

The themes, clustered from the relevant petitions, are: Keep Schools Closed, Support Key Workers, Prohibit employers testing staff, Open up football, Better Maternity leave, Support Zoos and animal boarding, Vaccine Choice, Open up Gyms, Lockdown the UK, Support housing and low paid, Close Universities and support students, Review Exam Grade process, Support Self Employed, Support the Arts, Support Directors, Public inquiry into Government, Long Covid Research, Prioritise Vaccines, Repeal the Coronavirus Act, Open Up Golf, and Public Inquiry into Vaccine and Other impacts.

Content

1. CatPredictorsByLSOA: For each LSOA or equivalent, this contains scores for the following demographics: Pop16plus, OnePerson66plus, OnePersonOther, Couple, LoneParent, FamilyWithChildren, Other, YoungerGood, YoungerNotGood, MidageGood, MidageNotGood, OlderGood, OlderNotGood
2. PetitionClusterModelBetas: For each petition cluster and demographic group except Pop16plus, + an Intercept for each cluster, it contains a betahat, SE, tval and NumModels value. NumModels is always 500.
3. PetitionClusterModelValues_ByLSOA: For each LSOA and cluster, it contains a Value, a Value Geo and a Value Cat.
4. PetitionToClusterMapping: This is an Excel spreadsheet containing the following tabs:

• A Read me containing various useful notes.
• Petition to cluster (with links to the petition, its name, cluster code, Government department, URL and created/opened/closed data)
• Signatures by Westminster Parliamentary Constituency (Pcon); For each cluster, the number of signatures by parliamentary constituency.
• Petition map: A multidimensional analysis of the clusters, showing their similarities across five dimensions.

For detailed description of the columns contained within the data, see the Variable Dictionary; and for an overview of the characteristics of the data, see the Data Summary. These files can be downloaded from the bottom of this page.

Quality, Representation and Bias

Additional information about the data are available in a contextual note. This note can be viewed via the link at the bottom of this page.