Scottish Social Attitudes 2019: Data Trust

Scotland’s Chief Statistician has released results on levels of trust in data from the Scottish Social Attitudes 2019: Data Trust.

The findings are drawn from the latest Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, which took place between August 2019 and March 2020, before lockdown. The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey has been conducted by the independent research organisation, ScotCen Social Research, almost every year since the advent of devolution in 1999.

As part of the latest survey, participants were asked two questions about how much they trust public service organisations and private companies to use personal data for acceptable purposes only.

A greater amount of trust was shown for public service organisations than for private companies regarding the way in which they used personal data: 
• 58% of adults trusted public service organisations ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’, compared with 15% for private companies.
• 17% trusted public service organisations ‘not very much’ or ‘not at all’, compared with 59% for private companies.

While figures for private companies have not changed significantly since 2017, the proportion who trusted public service organisations ‘not very much’ or ‘not at all’ has fallen significantly, from 23% in 2017 to 17% in 2019. The corresponding increase in the proportion who trusted public service organisations ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ was not statistically significant.

Background

Analysis and reporting of the 2019 data was undertaken by ScotCen Social Research. The full publication and supporting data files are available at the https://www.gov.scot/ISBN/978-1-80004-280-3

The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey is based on face-to-face interviews with adults aged 16 and over drawn using probability sampling (from 1999 to 2015, the survey was conducted with adults aged 18 and over).

In the latest survey, the interviews took place between August 2019 and March 2020. The sample size was 1,022.

Further publications from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey can be found on the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey collection page.