NHSSCOTLAND STAFF SURVEY 2014 National Report

4 Response rates

During the survey live period a total of 55,077 NHSScotland staff completed a questionnaire and submitted their views to Capita Surveys and Research. This represents a 35% response rate based on 159,058 employees^[2] and shows an increase in participation of 7 percentage points on the response rate for the 2013 Survey. The majority of staff (88%) submitted their response via the on-line survey; just below 12% were submitted by post using a paper questionnaire with less than 1% using the telephone completion service.

Response rates varied between Health Boards, from 25% to 90%. NHS Health Scotland had the highest response rate (90%), followed by NHS Healthcare Improvement Scotland (82%). NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde had the lowest response rate (25%).

Seventeen of the Health Boards improved their response rates (by between 1 and 23 percentage points) on the 2013 survey. The largest increases in response rates were recorded by NHS Education for Scotland (+23 percentage points), NHS Shetland (+21), NHS Tayside (+14) and NHS Lothian (+13). Of the five Health Boards with response rates lower than in 2013, The State Hospitals Board for Scotland recorded the largest fall in response rate, from 60% to 46%.

Health Boards were grouped into three types for analysis: Mainland Boards; Island Boards and National Bodies/Special Boards.

The Island Health Boards and National Bodies/Special Boards had the highest average response rate (51%), and Mainland Health Boards had an average response rate of 33%. The higher response rate for staff working in some National Bodies/Special Boards may reflect the fact that the majority of these staff are office-based administrative and clerical staff with direct access to a computer. For individual Health Boards, the lowest response rates tended to be in the larger Mainland Boards, whilst the smaller Island Boards had higher response rates.

Three Boards operated their survey entirely online (with the option to complete via a telephone interview), the remaining 19 provided paper questionnaires to a proportion of their staff for whom computer access was limited. Across these Boards, the proportion of responses submitted on paper ranged from 2% to 30%.

As noted above, the sample profile for the 2014 survey is described in Appendix A. Figures 1 to 3 in this appendix shows the employment profile and Figures 4 to 6 provide the socio-demographic profile.

The overall staff group participation profile has shown little change between 2013 and 2014 survey results, which provides a good basis for a consistent comparison between the years.

Figure 1 on the following page shows a comparison of response rates between Health Boards for 2014 and 2013.

Figure 1: Percentage of staff who completed the NHSScotland Staff Survey 2014, by NHS Board (grouped by Board type and ranking of response rate)^[3][4]