Official Statistics

DESNZ Public Attitudes Tracker: Technical overview, Spring 2025, UK

Published 3 July 2025

This note covers technical information about the Public Attitudes Tracker (PAT) survey completed in Spring 2025. More detailed technical information on the survey series, including details of the new data collection methodology adopted in Autumn 2021 and previous methodologies, is available in the annual Technical Report.

Alongside this Technical Overview, we have also provided:

• Individual topic reports covering results from the survey grouped by theme
• Tables showing the time series for questions asked on multiple occasions since Autumn 2021
• Tables containing crosstabulations for headline questions by gender, age, highest qualification and geography
• The questionnaire that details both online and paper formats

Overview

This report presents a technical overview of the Spring 2025 survey wave conducted by DESNZ. The results from this wave are based on a representative sample of 3,414 adults aged 16 or over in the UK. Data collection ran from 17 March to 22 April 2025.

From Autumn 2021, the PAT survey moved to a ‘push-to-web’ survey method referred to as Address Based Online Surveying (ABOS). The Spring 2025 wave of the PAT is the thirteenth wave of the new time series following this change in methodology. Significant changes affecting both survey sample and mode mean that the results from this wave are not directly comparable with results collected via surveys conducted using the previous methodology.

Between Autumn 2021 and Summer 2023, surveys were conducted every quarter, although there was no data collection in Autumn 2023. From Spring 2024, the survey moved to a triannual design with waves conducted every Spring, Summer and Winter.

Earlier waves have been conducted as follows:

• Autumn 2021 (15 September to 17 October 2021)
• Winter 2021 (24 November to 22 December 2021)
• Spring 2022 (24 February to 24 March 2022)
• Summer 2022 (9 June to 7 July 2022)
• Autumn 2022 (1 September to 3 October 2022)
• Winter 2022 (17 November to 19 December 2022)
• Spring 2023 (9 March to 6 April 2023)
• Summer 2023 (9 June to 10 July 2023)
• Winter 2023 (7 November to 11 December 2024)
• Spring 2024 (18 March to 22 April 2024)
• Summer 2024 (11 July to 15 August 2024)
• Winter 2024 (7 November to 12 December 2024)

Spring 2025 survey

The Spring 2025 questionnaire covered the following topics:

• Net Zero
• Climate change
• Renewable energy
• Great British Energy
• Clean Power 2030
• Fusion energy
• Small modular reactors
• Hydrogen energy
• Nuclear power stations in the local area
• Carbon capture and storage
• Heat pumps and solar panels in the home
• Energy costs and energy saving behaviours
• Flexible energy schemes
• Demographic and classification questions

Changes to the survey in Spring 2025

A list of changes to the Spring 2025 questionnaire in comparison to previous Spring questionnaire versions is provided below. This includes the addition of questions on new topics and some changes to existing questions.

New questions:

• One new question was added on awareness of the government plan to achieve Clean Power by 2030.
  •     CLEANPOWER2030
• Two new questions were added on awareness of and likelihood to use flexible energy reward schemes.
  •    FLEXENERGYAWARE
  •     FLEXENERGYUSE

Adapted questions:

• Minor wording and/or formatting changes.
  • NEWTECHTRUST
    • Examples of social media updated to include YouTube and to update ‘Twitter’ to ‘X (formerly Twitter)’.
  • WHYWORRYEN
    • Changed answer option from ‘Concerned that prices will go up compared to what I have paid in the past’ to ‘Concerned that prices will go up compared to what I have paid in the past 12 months’ to avoid comparison with peak energy crisis prices.
• Two questions on awareness of and likelihood to install low carbon heating systems were adapted to ask solely about ‘air source heat pumps’ and ‘ground source heat pumps’.
  • LCHEATKNOW/LCHEATINSTALL
    • These adapted questions will allow more frequent tracking of measures related to heat pumps, with the fuller list of all seven low carbon heating system types to be tracked annually in Winter each year.

Addition of new response options based on open-ended responses:

• SOLWHYNO
  • A new option, ‘I’m concerned about the loss in fertile and agricultural land’, was added; this was based on open text data collected within the ‘Other’ response in previous waves.
• NUCHWYNO
  • A new option, ‘I’m concerned about the disposal of radioactive nuclear waste’ was added; this was based on open text data collected within the ‘Other’ response in previous waves.

Questions removed from survey:

• FRACKKNOW^{[footnote 1]} (whether aware of shale gas)
• FRACKSUPPORT (whether support or oppose shale gas)

Changes to demographic questions:

• Reduced level of detail collected:
  • NUMADULTS & CHILDHH
    • For questions on number of adults and number of children in household, highest response option reduced from ‘10 or more’ to ‘3 or more’
  • INCOMEBAND
    • Merged some income bands to reduce number of options offered to respondents
• Demographic questions removed from survey^{[footnote 2]}:
  • JOBEVER (whether ever had a job)
  • EMPSE (whether last job was as an employee or self-employed)
  • COHAB (whether live with another household member, as a couple)

Please refer to the Spring 2025 questionnaire for full question wording.

Survey definitions

In the report, where we refer to ‘Awareness’ this encompasses all respondents who said they had heard of a particular concept or technology, including those who said ‘hardly anything but I’ve heard of this’, ‘a little’, ‘a fair amount’ or ‘a lot’. ‘Knowledge’ is confined to those who said that they knew ‘a fair amount’ or ‘a lot’.

Address Based Online Surveying (ABOS) data collection

ABOS is a type of ‘push-to-web’ survey method.         

The basic ABOS design uses a stratified random sample of addresses drawn from the Royal Mail’s postcode address file. An invitation letter is sent to each selected address, containing username(s) and password(s) plus the URL of the survey website. Sampled individuals can log on using this information and complete the survey online. Once the questionnaire is complete, the specific username and password cannot be used again, ensuring data confidentiality from others with access to this information.

One reminder letter is sent to each sampled address where no response has been achieved by a designated cut-off date.

Paper questionnaires ensure coverage of the offline population and are especially effective with sub-populations that respond to online surveys at lower-than-average levels. However, paper questionnaires have measurement limitations that constrain the design of the online questionnaire and add considerably to overall cost. For the DESNZ PAT, paper questionnaires are used in a limited and targeted way, to optimise rather than maximise response.

To ensure the survey was accessible to the offline population, some mailings included paper questionnaire alternatives based on addresses where external data indicated that all residents were aged 65 or over. Paper questionnaires were also available on request.

Spring 2025 sample design

The sampling was designed to yield a respondent sample that was representative with respect to geography, neighbourhood deprivation level, and age group.

Table 1 shows the (initially issued) sample structure with respect to the major strata. Higher sampling fractions were applied to the three least populous International Territorial Level (ITL)^{[footnote 3]} (NE England, Northern Ireland and Wales) so that the expected number of completed questionnaires was at least 200 in each one.

Table 1: Addresses issued by area deprivation and household age structure: Spring 2025

Expected household age structure	Most deprived	2nd	3rd	4th	Least deprived
All <=35	1,465	1,330	998	671	515
Other	3,195	3,069	2,433	2,996	2,713
All >=65	558	533	539	534	499

Spring 2025 Fieldwork

The data collection took place from 17 March to 22 April 2025.

All resident adults aged 16+ at each sampled address were invited to complete the survey, although for practical reasons the number of logins was limited to up to four adults per household, with more available on request. The number of logins was based on the estimated number of adults living in the household, based on external data. In Spring 2025, the mean number of logins per address was 2.8.

• 22,048 invites were sent out initially and 19,099 reminders were sent in the second week of fieldwork.
• 230 cases were identified as invalid based on quality assurance checks and were removed from the dataset, representing 6% of initially achieved cases.
• The achieved sample size (after data cleaning) was 3,414 individuals, of which 2,882 (84%) were completed online and 532 (16%) on paper.
• The household response rate was 12.5% and the estimated individual response rate was 8.9%.
• The average (median) time to complete the survey online was 15 minutes and 17 seconds.

Spring 2025 Weighting

Weighting was used to compensate for differences in both sampling probability and response probability. The DESNZ PAT weighting matrix includes nine variables (sex, age group, highest educational qualification, working status, ethnic group, internet use, region, housing tenure, and household size). For more detailed information please see the latest published Technical Report. Several of these are intersected with age group to ensure a consistent weighted sample distribution per age group per wave, although most are marginal controls on the sample distribution.

Further information

Future updates to these statistics

The next release will cover Summer 2025 and is scheduled to be published on 28 October 2025. Note that not all tracker questions are included in each wave.

Revisions policy

The Department’s statistical revisions policy sets out the revisions policy for these statistics, which has been developed in accordance with the UK Statistics Authority Code of Practice for Statistics

Related Statistics

There are various other surveys which seek the general public’s opinion on topics related to those covered by the DESNZ Public Attitudes Tracker. These include:

National Travel Attitudes Study (NTAS)

The Department for Transport (DfT) publishes a wide range of reports on the public’s attitude to various modes of transport

Transport and Transport Technology: Public Attitudes Tracker

DfT also publishes an attitudes tracker to monitor trends in public attitudes to and awareness of transport technologies in England

The English Housing Survey (EHS)

The English Housing Survey is a continuous national survey commissioned by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government. It collects information about people’s housing circumstances and the condition and energy efficiency of housing in England.

Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN)

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes a monthly survey covering topics relating to people’s experience of daily life and events, including questions on climate change

Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS)

ONS publishes a fortnightly survey about issues impacting UK businesses and the economy. BICS covers a range of topics including a module on climate change. The latest release of data on climate change coincides with this release and can be found here.

A wealth of energy statistics, which provide context for the attitude data collected by the PAT are available on the Statistics at DESNZ website.

Uses of these statistics

These statistics were commissioned by DESNZ to guide departmental policy, and are also used by other government departments, academics, ministers and the general public. Some examples on the uses of previous waves of the PAT include:

• Understanding public awareness of key DESNZ policies such as the concept of Net Zero.
• Monitoring public attitudes to climate change and government policies associated with this and understanding how concern varies between demographic groups.
• Measuring public understanding and acceptability of different clean energy sources which relate to the Government’s clean energy superpower mission.

User engagement

Users are encouraged to provide comments and feedback on how these statistics are used and how well they meet user needs. Comments on any issues relating to this statistical release are welcomed and should be sent to: PAT@energysecurity.gov.uk.

The Department’s statement on statistical public engagement and data standards sets out the department’s commitments on public engagement and data standards as outlined by the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Pre-release access to statistics

Some ministers and officials receive access to these statistics up to 24 hours before release. Details of the arrangements for doing this and a list of the ministers and officials that receive pre-release access to these statistics can be found in the Department’s statement of compliance with the Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008.

Contact

Responsible statistician: Jack Gibson

Email: PAT@energysecurity.gov.uk

Media enquiries: 020 7215 1000; newsdesk@energysecurity.gov.uk

1. Questions on shale gas have been removed due to the current policy position on shale gas and to allow space for other questions that relate to DESNZ priorities. These questions will be reviewed and included in future waves if required. ↩

2. These demographics have been removed to maintain an appropriate survey length as new demographic questions were added into previous waves. ↩

3. https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/whatwedo/programmesandprojects/europeancitystatistics ↩