Scottish Surveys Core Questions 2014

Guide to this report

This publication provides statistics centred around protected equality characteristics and sub-national geographies: age and sex, disability, ethnic groups, religion, sexual orientation, country of birth, deprivation and Health Board/Police Scotland Division.

For each of the groups, relative values for a set of key indicators is provided.

Indicators are defined throughout Chapter 1

Wherever possible, the following analyses of each indicator are reported:

• A comparison of subgroups, identifying inequalities where they arise.
• Changes within subgroups over the period 2012-2014. Statistically significant changes over time are marked with for an increase from the earliest year or for a decrease.
• The age profile of subgroups. Due to differences between subgroups in this respect and the age and/or sex dependence of many of the indicators, age standardised analysis has also been undertaken. This allows us to determine whether differences between equalities subgroups are a result of their different age and sex distributions or due to some other underlying correlation. See section 11.10 for further details

In the report text the term "significant" is used to mean "statistically significant" differences.

Confidence intervals are provided throughout this report. Commentary is generally confined to statistically significant comparisons unless otherwise stated. Under normal conditions where confidence intervals do not overlap then there is a significant difference between two points, but if they do overlap it does not necessarily mean there is no significant difference. ^[2] In some cases formal statistical tests are performed to check for statistically significant differences. Details of these tests is provided in section 11.10.

The accompanying supplementary tables contain worksheets with full analyses of each topic across all possible social and geographic breakdowns for 2014 ^[3] alongside the 95% confidence intervals on each estimate. Table numbering in the supplementary tables has been kept consistent with previous publications. All tables break down percentages in rows. 'Refused' and 'don't know' responses are excluded, so row totals may not add to 100%, and numbers of adults and sample across subgroups may not add to the Scotland total for each cross-variable. Overall, presentation of supplementary tables across data years is consistent so that users can construct their own time series of SSCQ data.

Charts in this report are presented as "confidence clouds", familiar to readers of the 2013 report ^[4] :

• Dots represent the point estimates for each indicator.
• Dotted lines surrounding the central series provide the 95% confidence intervals around each estimate, allowing for visual inspection of statistical differences.
• Grey bands represent the 95% confidence interval of the national average for that indicator.