UK innovation survey 2021: results for Scotland

Annex A – Methodology

The UK Innovation Survey (UKIS) 2021 is the twelfth UKIS. UKIS has been conducted every two years since 2005. The survey is funded and developed by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and administered by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The UK Innovation Survey 2021 sample selection was conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and followed very similar sampling methodology to the previous surveys. The questionnaire used for the survey remained mostly the same as in the 2019 survey.

The questionnaires for the survey were distributed on 25th of February 2021, with completion date of 16th of April 2021. Comparisons are made with the UK Innovation Survey 2019, 2017, 2015 and 2013.

UKIS 2021 sampled 31,928 UK enterprises with ten or more employees. The survey was voluntary and was conducted primarily through an electronic questionnaire. Businesses that did not complete an electronic response were offered a telephone interview. Responses were received from 13,598 businesses UK-wide - 1,451 of these responses were from businesses based in Scotland.

This report uses weighted data in order to be representative of the business population. The responses were weighted to the total business population using the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR). They were not weighted by factors which would give more weight to larger firms, such as employment or turnover.

Due to smaller sample sizes for sub-groups, the survey's estimates may be affected by sampling errors and therefore apparent differences of a few percentage points may not reflect real differences in the population.

This report summarises the key findings from this survey for Scotland. Further information about the survey is available at the UK Innovation Survey collection.