Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain: 1 to 11 June 2023

The following information is for the latest survey period 1 to 11 June 2023, based on adults in Great Britain.

• When asked about the important issues facing the UK today, the most commonly reported issues continue to be the cost of living (91%), the NHS (83%), the economy (75%), and climate change and the environment (62%).

• Around 6 in 10 (62%) adults reported that their cost of living had increased, compared with a month ago; this proportion appears to have gradually decreased since early April 2023, when it was at 76%.

• Commonly reported reasons among adults who said their cost of living had increased compared with a month ago were: an increase in the price of food shopping (97%), an increase in gas or electricity bills (64%), an increase in the price of fuel (39%), or an increase in their rent or mortgage costs (23%).

In the latest survey period, we continued to ask respondents about their personal well-being, finding among adults in Great Britain:

• around a quarter (26%) of adults reported that they felt lonely often, always or some of the time; 6% of adults reported that they felt lonely often or always, 20% reported they felt lonely some of the time

• around a third (31%) of adults reported having high levels of anxiety

• around 1 in 10 adults reported low levels of happiness and life satisfaction (11% and 9% respectively), while 7% reported low levels of feeling that the things done in their life were worthwhile

• estimates of the proportion of adults experiencing loneliness appear to remain relatively stable over time; time series data of these and personal well-being estimates are available in the personal well-being and loneliness dataset

This release contains data and indicators from the Office for National Statistics' (ONS's) Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN).

From the 16 June 2023 release onwards, we have made changes that reduce the scope of the release and accompanying datasets. This is based on a routine review of the relevance and usefulness of this release.

Breakdowns by age and sex are no longer provided for fortnightly estimates in the latest Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain datasets. All previous versions of the dataset remain available from this page. Estimates from the OPN by these and other personal characteristics will continue to be provided on a regular basis in other ONS releases. For example, OPN estimates relating to the impact of cost of living among different groups of the population are provided within the regular Impact of increased cost of living on adults across Great Britain series.

Confidence intervals are provided for all estimates in the datasets. Where changes in results from previous weeks are presented in this release, or comparisons between estimates are made, associated confidence intervals should be used to assess the statistical significance of the differences.

Sampling and weighting

In the latest period (1 to 11 June 2023), we sampled 4,976 households. This sample was randomly selected from people who had previously completed the Labour Market Survey (LMS) or OPN. The responding sample for the latest period contained 2,034 individuals, representing a 41% response rate.

Survey weights were applied to make estimates representative of the population (based on ONS population estimates). Further information on the survey design and quality can be found in our Opinions and Lifestyle Survey Quality and Methodology Information (QMI).