BICS weighted Scotland estimates: data to wave 120

Data and Methodology

BICS stands for the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) – previous to Wave 24, the survey was called ‘Business Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey’. The BICS was renamed to reflect the current question set, which goes wider than the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The BICS is a modular survey and as such not all live questions are asked in every wave of the survey. Furthermore, the ONS regularly review the BICS questions and topics, and they often add, remove or amend questions to reflect changing circumstances and analytical priorities. The questions for each wave are published by the ONS here: Business Insights and Conditions Survey questions Articles - Office for National Statistics.

Currently, the main Scottish BICS results published by the Office for National Statistics are unweighted which means that we can only make inferences about the businesses that have responded. Weighting the BICS responses enables us to produce estimates for Scottish businesses more generally, not just those that have responded. The ONS has provided the Scottish Government with the BICS microdata, which we have used to develop the weighted Scotland estimates. More information on the weighting method we have used for these estimates is provided here: BICS weighted Scotland estimates: data to wave 12.

The weighted Scotland estimates, in this publication, are for businesses with 10 or more employees. The weighted Scotland estimates are for businesses that have a presence in Scotland, as opposed to only those businesses headquartered in Scotland. Having a presence in Scotland means that the business has a local unit or site (e.g. shop, office, factory) in Scotland.

Wave 120 was live from 4 November 2024 to 17 November 2024. In terms of the base of the estimates, 10,386 businesses responded to the Wave 120 BICS UK-wide. 1,221 of these businesses had a presence in Scotland, excluding the micro businesses (those with less than 10 employees) takes the base down to 1,130 responding businesses in Wave 120.

The weighted Scotland estimates are derived from results collected from UK businesses for the UK as a whole, but weighted by business counts or employment in Scotland. No account is being made for regional differences between business sites.

Note that on the 5th November 2024 ONS published Business insights and impact on the UK subnational single-site economy - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) – this provides an analysis of weighted data for areas within the UK (including Scotland). This latest ONS sub-national analysis focusses on single-site businesses. This differs to the approach taken for the Scottish Government estimates presented here which include single-site and multi-site businesses together, and the Scottish Government estimates are constrained to businesses with 10 or more employees.

The coverage of the ONS BICS includes most sectors of the Scottish economy; however, the public sector is excluded, as are ‘Section A – Agriculture, forestry & fishing’, ‘Section D – Electricity, gas, steam & air conditioning supply’ and ‘Section K – Financial & insurance activities’.

BICS weighted Scotland data for waves up to and including Wave 120, including the data used in this publication, is available in the BICS weighted Scotland estimates: data to wave 120- tables – time series Excel workbook in the ‘Supporting documents’ section. UK microdata can also be accessed, by accredited researchers, via the Secure Research Service (SRS)