Scottish Household Survey User Engagement Report 2020

1. Executive Summary

This report outlines the user engagement undertaken by the Scottish Household Survey (SHS) team. There have been a number of changes to the Scottish Household Survey reporting, some which have been planned and part of strategic long-term development and others which have been necessitated by the COVID-19 crisis. Throughout the change process and modernisation of the reporting, user views have been sought. This report details the methods, results, implementation and impact of user engagement.

Firstly, views were sought when designing, developing and releasing the Scottish Household Survey’s new survey data dissemination tool; The Data Explorer. Previously, the Scottish Household Survey released over 7,000 local authority tables through MS Excel. The production of these tables was resource intensive and took around 3 months to compile. The Excel tables product was cumbersome to use and prone to error and corruption. There was an identified need to improve data dissemination to users. Based on the reported functionalities needed by users, a prototype interactive data dashboard was developed, tested and then expanded into the current Data Explorer dashboard. Users have been consulted prior to, during, and after the release of the new data dissemination tool, which has received overwhelmingly positive feedback. An advantage of this approach is that the Scottish Household Survey team were able to publish Scotland and local authority level data at the same time, rather than publishing the national figures first and the local authority figures up to 3 months later.

Secondly, views were sought from users on the modernisation of the reporting. In place of the annual report (approximately 320 pages last year), in 2020 the SHS team produced a much shorter report of around 20 pages with a one page summary for each topic highlighting the key findings from the survey and background information. Additionally, a separate infographic summary of the key findings and a supplementary analysis were published. Furthermore, films with a summary of a few of the statistics in a new form designed by young people and co-produced with YoungScot were published. Childcare and Culture and Heritage topic areas produced separate topic reports which were published on the same day as the main SHS release. Views were sought from users on the new style of reporting in a questionnaire sent to users. The majority of respondents are happy with the new reporting format and content that the long annual report is no longer produced.