Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain: 4 to 14 January 2024

The following information is for the latest survey period, 4 to 14 January 2024, based on adults in Great Britain.

• Around 4 in 10 (39%) agreed or strongly agreed that artificial intelligence (AI) will benefit them, this proportion appears to be remaining stable (38% in the period 1 to 12 November 2023).

• Around 1 in 6 adults (16%) reported they were often or always able to recognise when they were using AI; this proportion has also remained stable (15% in the period 1 to 12 November 2023).

In a period that included planned industrial action by NHS, travel, and refuse workers, we asked respondents about their experiences of industrial action and access to services.

• When asked if industrial action had affected them in the past month, around three-quarters (78%) said they had not been affected; the most commonly reported impacts were spending more money on travel (7%), being unable to take part in leisure activities (7%), and being unable to travel for holiday or leisure as planned (6%).

• Around 1 in 33 (3%) said that in the past month they were unable to attend a medical appointment because of industrial action, similar to when we last asked this question in the period 29 November 2023 to 10 December 2023 (2%).

• Among those who had tried to make contact with their GP in the past month, around 4 in 10 (37%) said it was easy or very easy to make contact, a decrease compared with 45% in the previous period (13 December 2023 to 1 January 2024).

We also continued to ask about people’s experiences related to increases in the cost of living and when food shopping.

• Around half of adults (52%) reported their cost of living had increased over the last month; this proportion has gradually decreased since April 2023 (76% in the period 22 March to 2 April 2023).

• Among those who told us that their cost of living had increased, the most common reasons continue to be rises in the price of their food shopping (90%) or the price of their gas and electricity bills (85%).

• Around 4 in 10 (39%) reported there was less variety in shops than usual when food shopping in the last two weeks, an increase compared with 33% in the previous period (13 December 2023 to 1 January 2024).

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 made changes that reduced the scope of the release and accompanying datasets. This was 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 continue to be provided on a regular basis in other ONS releases. For example, OPN estimates relating to the impact of the cost of living among different sub-groups of the population are provided within the regular Impact of increased cost of living on adults across Great Britain series.

Confidence intervals, as described in our Uncertainty methodology, 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 (4 to 14 January 2024), we sampled 4,985 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 2,594 individuals, representing a 52% response rate.

Survey weights were applied to make estimates representative of the population (based on ONS population estimates). Because of sampling changes in July 2023, some groups in our unweighted sample may be over-represented. Further information on the survey design and quality can be found in our Opinions and Lifestyle Survey Quality and Methodology Information (QMI).