Challenges facing small housing developers: survey

Annex A: Method and Detailed Tables

Method

The research consisted of an electronic survey of small developers. The sample was not intended to be statistically representative of all small developers, but efforts were made to include a full range of small developers from across Scotland (urban and rural, and of different sizes). This method means that the findings have been reported as the absolute number of responses and as patterns in answers.

The survey was distributed by email to members of Homes for Scotland, to members of the Federation of Master Builders, and to developers registered on at least one of the Help to Buy (Scotland) schemes.

A note on timeframes

Respondents were asked about their experiences over the previous three years and their expectations for the following five years. These timeframes were kept from a similar survey conducted three years prior to this one.

A note on sample size

Fifty-seven responses were received. Every response was valid and represented a developer's experience and expectations. Given the number of responses, the spread across the country, the spread of sizes of enterprise and the degree of consensus in the responses, it was possible to say that the responses may overall have been suggestive of the perspectives of small developers in Scotland in general. On the contrary, when respondents were grouped by size and geography, the smaller categories were unlikely to have represented the majority of experiences and expectations of the particular group due to the very small sample sizes. Consequently, detailed analysis by size and geography has not been undertaken.

A note on 'base' sizes

The base set out in each table was the number of respondents that answered each particular question. In the most cases, the base was 57, as all questions were compulsory. In a few cases, questions were only presented to respondents who had answered a previous question in a particular way, resulting in a base below 57. Occasionally, invalid responses had to be removed from the data. It is key to understanding the findings to know the bases because they gave an indication of the weight of the issue. So for example, if 10 of 57 respondents had answered the question in a particular way, it was likely that the answer, although valid and significant for those 10, was less of an issue than if 10 of 14 did so.

Respondents by local authority area

Table A.1 below sets out the number of respondents by each local authority area. Respondents were asked to indicate the local authority area in which they had undertaken most of their business during the past three years. This is detailed in the first column. Respondents were then asked to indicate any other local authority areas in which they had undertaken business during the past three years. These results are detailed in the second column. The 'Total' column indicates the total number of respondents who had undertaken business in each local authority area.

Table A.1: Numbers of respondents doing main and other business by local authority area