Scottish household survey: how to get results

Geographical Availability

Although the SHS has a large sample that covers the whole of Scotland, it has some geographical limitations because of the sample sizes in small local authorities and because it is designed to be representative only at national and local authority level.

In particular, the SHS is designed to be nationally representative every quarter, and representative for Local Authorities (LA) every year.

It is not appropriate to undertake geographical analysis below local authority level since the sampling techniques used in some local authorities cannot guarantee representativeness in smaller areas.

National

National-level estimates of SHS data are published through the Annual Report - please see the publications webpage for further information.

Sub-Scotland

Sub-national estimates of SHS data are available via the Data Explorer.

For all local authorities, the SHS provides robust estimates over each survey year sweep. The most recent release was for 2019 data, with the next update being 2021 data to be published in 2022.

Please see the webpage for annual publication summary information.