This news release describes the results of the Bank of England’s latest quarterly survey of public attitudes to inflation, undertaken between 11 and 16 August 2020.
Please note, the Government’s social distancing guidance meant that face-to-face interviewing was not possible for either the latest survey or May 2020 survey. These have been conducted online instead. This change resulted in a methodological break in the series in May 2020. For example, the proportions of respondents who answered “Don’t know/ No idea” to the May survey’s questions declined substantially. That perhaps reflected the design of the online questionnaire, where the option of “Don’t know/ No idea” appeared only if the respondent tried to move onto the next question without giving an answer. In the August 2020 survey however, the option of “Don’t know/ No idea” appeared in the same showcard as the other options. This resulted in proportions of respondents answering “Don’t know/ No idea” returning to usual levels for most of the August survey’s questions.
These changes in the mode of collection mean caution should be taken when making comparisons across the latest two surveys and with previous vintages, which were based on face-to-face interviews.
More details about the methodology applied in the August and May 2020 survey can be found in the ‘Methodology and notes – Online survey’ attachment and that of previous surveys in the ‘Methodology and notes – Face-to-face survey’ attachment.