UK-based think tanks

A database of UK-based think-tanks including:

• Name    
• Year established    
• Year disbanded or merged    
• Main area    
• A specific education emphasis    
• Description    
• Explicit political stand    
• Focused stand    
• Source for description    
• Date accessed    
• Notes    
• Education emphasis boolean    
• Affiliation

The data on think tanks drew on the Wikipedia page ‘List of think tanks in the United Kingdom’ in 2014 (Wikipedia 2014), crosschecked with other online think tank lists (Harvard Kennedy School Library & Knowledge Services 2013, Telegraph 2008, Guardian 2013), and updated in 2020 (Wikipedia 2020). Websites were accessed to gain additional information about activity, area of interest, and political affiliation. If information on the exact date of foundation was unavailable, the date of its first publication was used, or in a very few cases as a final resort unconfirmed data such as the Wikipedia entry. In some cases we resorted to internet archive sites such as web.archive.org. As a result, eighteen think tanks were excluded, because they were clearly only research institutes with no extensive outreach, they did not function in the UK, or they did not provide enough information about their work. The final sample consisted of 163 think tanks.