Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2017: technical annex

1. Scottish Social Attitudes Surveys

The Scottish Social Attitudes ( SSA) survey was launched by ScotCen Social Research in 1999, following the advent of devolution. Based on annual rounds of interviews of between 1,200 to 1,700 people drawn using probability sampling (based on a stratified, clustered sample ^[1] ) , it aims to facilitate the study of public opinion and inform the development of public policy in Scotland. In this it has similar objectives to the British Social Attitudes ( BSA) survey, which was launched by ScotCen’s parent organisation, NatCen Social Research in 1983. While BSA interviews people in Scotland, these are usually too few in any one year to permit separate analysis of public opinion in Scotland (see http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/ for more details of the BSA survey).

SSA has been conducted annually each year since 1999, with the exception of 2008. The survey has a modular structure. In any one year it will typically contain a range of modules on different topics (a full module is considered to be 40 questions). Funding for its first two years came from the Economic and Social Research Council, while from 2001 onwards different bodies have funded individual modules each year. These bodies have included the Economic and Social Research Council ( ESRC), the Scottish Government, NHS Health Scotland, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and various charitable and grant awarding bodies, such as the Nuffield Foundation and Leverhulme Trust.

The 2017 survey

The 2017 survey contained modules of questions on:

• Attitudes to Government – funded by Scottish Government
• Attitudes to Dementia – funded by Life Changes Trust
• Attitudes to the European Union – funded by ESRC
• Attitudes to Personal Data – funded by Scottish Government
• Attitudes to young people – funded by Scottish Government

Data from SSA 2017 will be deposited with the UK Data Archive by the end of 2018. Separate programmes of reporting and dissemination are planned for each of the modules. This technical annex covers the methodological details of the survey.