Official Statistics

Participation Survey 2021–22 annual report

The results of the Participation Survey, covering the period from October 2021 to March 2022.

Applies to England

Documents

Participation Survey 2021–22 annual data tables

Details

30 November: We have updated all breakdowns by disability status in our annual publications to align with the harmonised standard. Please see here for further details

The Participation Survey started in October 2021 and is the key evidence source on engagement for DCMS. It is a continuous push-to-web household survey of adults aged 16 and over in England.

The Participation Survey provides nationally representative estimates of physical and digital engagement with the arts, heritage, museums & galleries, and libraries, as well as engagement with tourism, major events, digital, and live sports.

  • Released: 28 July 2022.
  • Period covered: October 2021 to March 2022.
  • Geographic coverage: National and regional level data for England.
  • Next release date: September 2022.

The pre-release access document above contains a list of ministers and officials who have received privileged early access to this release of Participation Survey data. In line with best practice, the list has been kept to a minimum and those given access for briefing purposes had a maximum of 24 hours. Details on the pre-release access arrangements for this dataset are available in the accompanying material.

This release is published in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics (2018), as produced by the UK Statistics Authority. This Authority has the overall objective of promoting and safeguarding the production and publication of official statistics that serve the public good. It monitors and reports on all official statistics, and promotes good practice in this area.

The responsible statistician for this release is Ella Bentin. For enquiries on this release, contact participationsurvey@dcms.gov.uk.

Published 28 July 2022
Last updated 30 November 2023 + show all updates
  1. 30 November - We have updated our breakdowns by disability status in the 2021/22 annual data tables to align with the Government Statistical Service harmonised standard. Please note only the data tables have been updated, and therefore the 2021/22 annual report still uses the previous definition of disability which is adults who answered ‘yes’ to the question “Do you have any physical or mental health conditions or illnesses lasting or expected to last 12 months or more?”. For further information, please see the update on the 2022/23 annual Participation Survey publication.

  2. The Participation Survey 2021 to 2022 Annual Technical Report has been moved to this page.

  3. We made some revisions to this report and the associated tables on 21 December 2022, most of which were due to a small change in the way confidence intervals are calculated. For full details, please see "2021-22 Annual Participation Report Revisions Note" in the Participation Survey 2021–22 annual publications page.

  4. First published.