What we learned about some of the key political challenges of our time

Changing attitudes to parenting mean the UK public now rank among the lowest internationally for the importance they place on obedience or responsibility in children, and among the highest for how much they value unselfishness, good manners and imagination, a new study shows.

Of 24 nations, people in the UK emerge as the least likely to say work is important in their life, and among the least likely to say work should always come first, even if it means less leisure time

The UK has internationally high levels of trust in people of different nationalities, people they meet for the first time, and people they know personally

The share of the British public who identify as religious has halved since the 1980s

The UK now has some of the highest levels of neighbourhood trust internationally, while Britons have also become much more comfortable with having neighbours who belong to historically marginalised groups, such as gay people, those of a different race, immigrants, and people who have AIDS

Few people in the UK think politics is working for them, with the country ranking firmly among the bottom half of an international league table for satisfaction with the political system

The UK has long prided itself on the strength of its institutions – but the British public are not as convinced as they once were, and we are now more negative than many other countries.

The UK has internationally low levels of confidence in its political institutions, with confidence in parliament in particular halving since 1990, new data shows.

16% of Britons felt suicide was “justifiable” in 2022, compared with 6% in 1981 – but this is not necessarily cause for concern

The UK now ranks among the most socially liberal countries internationally, following huge shifts in attitudes on issues such as homosexuality, casual sex, abortion, euthanasia and divorce, according to new data

The UK public have among the most positive attitudes to immigration, according to a new study that ranks the country at the top of an international league table as the most accepting of new arrivals.

After a period of such tumultuous change in UK politics, why has so little changed in terms of support for Scottish independence?

The WVS is the Hubble telescope of the social sciences, providing us high-quality data about the entire “universe” of human values

The relation between our “values” and the way we behave seems modest, at best.

While globalisation brought the world closer together economically, are we now really drifting apart as peoples?