Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2023 - Technical Report

Relationship between Disability/Long-term health condition and National Identity variables with Core Module Questions

Given the differences outlined previously in report with respect to the proportion who (a) report having a disability or long-term health condition and (b) say, when forced to choose, whether they are Scottish or British, it is worth examining the relationship between them and the attitudinal questions in the Core Module. There are two possibilities to consider. First, how strong is the relationship between these variables and people’s responses to the questions in the Core Module? If the relationship is weak or non-existent then the different distribution of responses to these background variables will not have had a material impact on the figures obtained by the Core Module questions. Second, is there any notable difference by mode in the strength of any relationship between these variables and questions in the Core Module? If not, it would suggest that despite the differences in the distribution of responses to these background questions, the relationship between them and items in the module is comparable over time.

Disability/Long-term health condition

Tables 19, 20, and 21 show the relationships between disability and long-term health condition with three Core Module questions, where the wording was not amended for the push-to-web survey.

Although Tables 19 and 20 reveal that in each year there is a statistically significant relationship with people’s long-term health status, in both cases the Cramer’s V score is below 0.2, which indicates a weak relationship.^[xvii] Table 19 does show a change in the direction of this weak relationship, with those with a long-term health condition/disability now somewhat more rather than less likely to say the Scottish Government is very/quite good at listening to people’s views before taking decisions, but this is not true of Table 20. Meanwhile, Table 21 shows that there is no significant relationship between the two variables in any of the years tested.

Given the weakness of the relationships and their consistency in general over time, it would appear that the lower reported prevalence of those with a long-term health condition or disability will not have impacted significantly on the pattern of response to the core module questions.

National Identity

Tables 22 to 24 show the equivalent analysis for people’s national identity when they are forced to choose just one. Given the low base sizes for the other responses, the analysis is confined to those who choose either ‘British’ or ‘Scottish’:

Table 23 : Relationship between National Identity and how much respondents trust the UK Government to work in Scotland’s best interests

Here, the relationship between national identity and our three core module questions is not only significant (with the exception of the 2019 figures in Table 24) but is also relatively strong. However, the strength of the relationship (measured by Cramer’s V) is slightly higher in 2023 than in the two previous years. This though is the opposite of what we would expect if the rise in British identity was solely a result of the order of response options. Such a process should mean that those who are classified as British in 2023 are less distinctive than those who are classified that way in previous years - and thus less likely to express different views from those who call themselves Scottish. Thus while consideration should be given the randomisation of response options to the national identity question if SSAS is fielded online in future, these results suggest that it is reasonable to compare the relationship between items in the core module and national identity with that in previous years.