This study is part of a regional study in industrial South Wales on the determinants of participation and non-participation in post-compulsory education and training, with special reference to processes of change in the patterns of these determinants over time and to variations between geographical areas. The study combines contextual analysis of secondary data about education and training providers with a regional study of several generations of families in South Wales (a door-to-door survey of 1,104 representative householders), semi-structured interviews, and taped oral histories conducted in 1996-97. This study reports evidence emphasizing the importance of social background as a determinant of patterns of participation in adult education and training. By investigating the potential predictors of these patterns, the study finds that school-based qualifications are not particularly significant but are themselves predictable from an individual's background characteristics. Lifelong patterns of participation are highly predictable, although the theoretical model used here to explain them also involves individual rationality. The situation is changing, however. Over the 50 years covered by the survey data, while initial education has lengthened, later participation in formal learning has decreased in frequency, duration, and the proportion funded by employers. Thus, while extended initial education is now far less determined by socioeconomic characteristics, including gender, later education and training is slightly more determined by socioeconomic characteristics, especially gender. (Contains 40 references.) (KC)