Scottish Social Attitudes survey 2021/22: attitudes data

Summary

The Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) survey is run by ScotCen Social Research, with the aim of collecting objective data about public attitudes on issues relevant to Scotland. It has run almost every year in Scotland since the first survey was conducted in 1999.

Fieldwork for this year's survey was conducted between 21^st October 2021 and 27^th March 2022 – all figures included in this report are based on data collected in this period. Interviews were undertaken with 1,130 randomly selected people aged 16+ from 1,043 addresses. The data has been weighted to be representative of Scotland's adult population in terms of age, by sex and area deprivation.

This publication reports the findings from the survey's core module, which focuses on attitudes to government, the economy and public services.

Previously SSA has been administered face-to-face but for the first time this year, as a result of coronavirus restrictions in place at the time of fieldwork, the survey was conducted via telephone. This change in methodology impacted the nature of the sample and responses received, and as a result affected comparability with previous SSA data. This report, therefore, focusses solely on results from this year's survey rather than examining trends over time. Trends in attitudes over the 20 year period since the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament were explored in the 2019 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey report.