Scottish Social Attitudes survey 2021/22: public attitudes to children and young people's decision making

Methods

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

Fieldwork for the survey was conducted between 21 October 2021 and 27 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 and above from 1,043 addresses. The data has been weighted to be representative of Scotland’s adult population in terms of age, sex and area deprivation.

Previously the SSA survey has been administered face-to-face but, as a result of coronavirus restrictions in place at the time of fieldwork, the survey was conducted via telephone in 2021/22. This change in methodology impacted the nature of the sample and responses received, and as a result affected comparability with previous SSA survey data. This report, therefore, focusses solely on results from the most recent survey rather than examining trends over time.