Scottish Employer Perspectives Survey: 2019

Methodology

2019 is the first year that the EPS has been published as Official Statistics. EPS 2016 figures referred to in this publication were published in the research report by the UK Government Department for Education (DfE).

The population for the Scottish EPS 2019 is all ‘establishments’ in Scotland that had at least two people working there (including owners and working proprietors). This approach has been taken as it tends to be much easier for survey respondents to think in terms of the overall ‘headcount’ for their site – including both working proprietors and employees – than to separate out these two groups. This is particularly when the lines between the two are not clear-cut. For example, it is typically easier for employers to answer about recruitment channels for all managers/staff, rather than ‘only those managers who are not working proprietors’. 

The Scottish EPS 2019 also excluded the self-employed (with no employees). The question approach for this group would need to be somewhat different, since they are by definition not ‘employers’. There is also an absence of robust population figures for this group, meaning robust and representative sampling and weighting is difficult to achieve. 

Telephone interviews were conducted between February and March 2019.

Further detailed information is available in the accompanying technical report.