INTIMATE aspects of private lives are to be laid bare in a £2.3 million research project by the University of Kent. The public will be questioned about issues including the anxieties posed by insurance companies failing to honour agreements, pensioners' problems, education, global environment, cultural aspects and sexual problems.

The University's School of Policy, Sociology and Social Research will send out teams of researchers to canvass local opinion on how people cope with risk in everyday life, as part of a five-year programme.

Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby, who is steering the project involving researchers from the universities of Oxford, Bristol, York, East Anglia, Brunel, Loughborough, and University College London, said: "There is more anxiety in life today, despite evidence that people are healthier and live longer. People are more conscious of insecurity. They no longer believe that the welfare state will protect them from the cradle to the grave. No longer is there a gold watch and a job for life. They feel more challenged and some trust in the institutions seems to have gone."

The University researchers will focus chiefly on the insurance industry, and their findings might well ultimately improve the trust that has vanished in recent years with the regulators called in to examine cases of hardship among investors. Prof Taylor-Gooby knows before he begins that pensions and health care, in particular, are much safer in other European Union countries than they are in Britain.