Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2013: core module - attitudes to Government, the economy, health and social care services, and social capital in Scotland
This report presents findings from the Scottish Government core module in the 2013 Scottish Social Attitudes survey. It discusses changing attitudes to government, the economy and standards of living, the health service and social care, and social capital and life satisfaction.
Footnotes
1. See Park et al, 2013.
2. The Act also gave the Scottish Parliament borrowing powers of £5bn, control over air guns and drink driving speeding limits, the power to raise taxes on land transactions and on waste disposal to landfill.
3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-21828424
5. The 'Yes' campaign and the 'Better Together' campaign
6. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/patterns-of-pay/1997---2013-ashe-results/index.html
8. 2013 saw the creation of a single national police force, and a single national Scottish Fire and Rescue service, from the merger of 8 pre-existing services.
9. http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/about/Pages/nhsstructure.aspx
10. https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/public-attitudes-tracking-survey
12. Note that the high figure for 1999 (81%) was in response to a prospective question about whether respondents would trust the new parliament.
13. Trust to act is Scotland's best interest is measured on a 4-point frequency scale ranging from 'just about always' to 'never'. Trust to make fair decisions relates to the strength of trust and the answers are on a 5-point scale ranging from 'a great deal' to 'not at all'.
14. This question was also asked in 2007 and 2009.
15. Respondents were asked about their confidence on a scale which ranged from 0 (Not confident at all) to 10 (Very confident). In the analysis, respondents were grouped into those who were very confident (7-10), moderately confident (4-6), not very confident (0-3).
16. Respondents were asked 'How much trust do you have in information provided by statisticians?'
17. Following the question on confidence in the accuracy of official statistics, respondents were asked 'What is your main reason for saying that?'. The responses were then coded by the interviewer according to a pre-specified list, and checked with the respondent to ensure that they had been properly understood and recorded.
18. We use the term 'national identity' to denote the variable which asks how Scottish and/or British the respondent feels.
19. There was no data collection in 2008, so SSA 2009 is the first year following the recession that SSA conducted fieldwork.
20. SSA has data from 2004 onwards and 10% for 'cutting crime' is the lowest figure recorded since 2004.
21. This figure is not significantly different to the -49 in 2012 due to the large confidence intervals around these figures.
22. Regression is a statistical technique that allows you to examine the relationship between a dependent variable (in this case, believing the Scottish Government is responsible for a strengthening economy), and various independent variables (including socio-demographic factors e.g. age, income, education etc and factors such as party identification, national identity and how left or right wing people are). The analysis identifies which of these independent variables are significantly and independently related to the dependent variable, after controlling for the inter-relationships between variables.
23. As measured by a set of questions examining views on the distribution of resources in society, whether government should redistribute income and attitudes to 'big business'. Responses to each question in this set were combined to give an average 'score' on a left-right scale. Respondents were then divided into quintiles - running from 1 to 5, where 1 is left-wing and 5 is right-wing - based on their total scores on this scale.
24. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Health/Support-Social-Care/Support/Older-People/ReshapingCare
25. http://www.jitscotland.org.uk/action-areas/reshaping-care-for-older-people/change-fund-plans/
26. This difference was only marginally significant (p=0.076)
27. Self-rated health was only marginally associated with whether people believed that private companies provided the best quality care: (p=0.086).
28. Gender differences in 2011 were marginally statistically significant but were not significant in 2013 for private companies or charities.
29. Income was not significant for private companies providing the best quality care in either 2011 or 2013.
30. In 2013 self-rated health was only marginally significant for private companies providing the best quality care (p=0.086) and not significant for charities.
31. Occupational sector was only marginally significant for charities in 2013 (p=0.083).
32. Subsets of these questions have been asked in 2000, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2013.
33. This suite of questions replicates those asked on the European Social Survey in 2002 and 2004.
34. In 2006 the second and third questions were phrased slightly differently as follows: 'If my home was empty I could count on one of my friends or relatives in this area to keep an eye on it'; 'I have friends or relatives in this area I feel I could turn to for advice and support'.
35. SSA 2013 featured a single question on volunteering, while the SHS includes a follow up with a
list of specific examples of volunteering. This latter approach may have reminded respondents of activities they had taken part in but not remembered at first, and could account for the difference
of 3 percentage points.
36. The questions asked: 'Say your local council decided to set up regular meetings with people in your area to discuss how to improve local services like schools, transport and parks. How likely or unlikely would you be to go along to these meetings?' and 'Thinking about improving your local area, how much would you agree or disagree with this statement? 'It is just too difficult for someone like me to do much about improving my local area''
37. Regression is a statistical technique that allows you to examine the relationship between a dependent variable (in this case, believing the Scottish Government is responsible for a strengthening economy), and various independent variables (including socio-demographic factors e.g. age, income, education etc and factors such as party identification, national identity and how left or right wing people are). The analysis identifies which of these independent variables are significantly and independently related to the dependent variable, after controlling for the inter-relationships between variables.
38. The 'outcome' or 'dependent variable' in the regression is a recoded version of the question in Table 5.1 which asked 'And all things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole nowadays?' with a 0 to 10 point response scale. The variable was recoded into two groups for the regression analysis. One group (71% of the sample) comprised those with an average score and above (8 to 10) whilst the other group (29% of the sample) comprised those with below average life satisfaction (0 to 7).
39. Our measure of 'social connectedness' is based on respondents' level of agreement with three statements - that they regularly stop and speak to people in their area, that they feel they could count on one of their neighbours to look after their home while they were away, and that they feel there are people in their area to whom they could turn for advice and support. In each case, they were asked to indicate how strongly they agreed or disagreed on a 5 point scale (from agree strongly to disagree strongly). People's responses to these three questions were combined to produce a single score to indicate their level of social connectedness. The resulting values ranging from 3 (indicating the highest level of social connectedness) to 15.
40. This below average score is low because a large proportion of respondents gave an 'average' score of 8. While the exact mean was 8.39, respondents were only able to respond in whole numbers.
41. This relationship was not statistically significant in the regression analysis.
42. It has been agreed that following the introduction of The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, the next UK Parliamentary election will be held in May 2015, and the next Scottish Parliamentary election in May 2016 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/14/contents/enacted
43. Prior to 2009, the question asked about the 'Scottish Executive'
44. Means are calculated on sample excluding 'don't know/ not answered'
45. Prior to 2009, the question asked about the 'Scottish Executive'
46. Like many national surveys of households or individuals, in order to attain the optimum balance between sample efficiency and fieldwork efficiency the sample was clustered. The first stage of sampling involved randomly selecting postcode sectors. The sample frame of postcode sectors was also stratified (by urban-rural, region and the percentage of people in non-manual occupations) to improve the match between the sample profile and that of the Scottish population. For further details of the sample design, see para 6 below.
47. See http://www.scotland.gov.uk2c84fccd-f86c-46b4-b48b-576009c022a8 for details.
48. See http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/SIMD/ for further details on the SIMD.
49. These variables were created by the ScotCen/NatCen Survey Methods Unit. They are based on SIMD scores for all datazones, not just those included in the sample - so an individual who lives in the most deprived quintile of Scotland will also be included in the most deprived quintile in the SSA dataset.
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