Scottish Climate Survey: technical report 2024 to 2025

Survey questionnaire

Questionnaire development

The questionnaire content was developed through an iterative co-design process with the Scottish Government and ClimateXChange. An initial stakeholder workshop was held to confirm priority topics and agree on questionnaire content. Existing relevant surveys were reviewed to identify potential question items for inclusion. The questionnaire was then drafted by Ipsos and refined through rounds of feedback from the Scottish Government and ClimateXChange.

In the interest of reducing drop-out rates, the online questionnaire was designed to take no longer than 20 minutes for the average respondent to complete and the postal questionnaire was 16 pages in length. This limit aimed to minimise the risk of respondents not completing the survey, and the risk of straight-lining (i.e. selecting the same answer consistently) when going through the survey.

Following sign-off of the questionnaire by the Scottish Government, the online survey was scripted by Ipsos’ specialist scripting team and tested thoroughly by the research team to ensure that all routing worked correctly.

Cognitive testing

Prior to fieldwork and the sign-off of the final questionnaire, cognitive testing was conducted to test the usability and understanding of the questionnaire.

Cognitive interviews were conducted with 20 respondents living in Scotland between 17th and 30th September 2024. Interviews were conducted by video link or face-to-face, depending on respondents’ locations and preferences. Respondents completed the questions using either an online survey link (for video interviews) or a paper copy of the questionnaire or the researcher’s laptop (for face-to-face interviews).

After the respondents had answered the survey questions, the researcher asked detailed follow-up questions about how they had found them using a cognitive interviewing guide developed by the research team and signed off by the Scottish Government (see Appendix A).

Findings from the cognitive testing were used to revise and inform the design of the final questionnaire.

Postal questionnaire design

In the third mailing, each household received one copy of the postal questionnaire.

The postal questionnaire was designed by Ipsos. Since not all the questions were asked of each survey respondent, the postal questionnaire contained routing instructions to advise respondents on which questions they were required to answer.

In the interest of not increasing the paper questionnaire length beyond 16 pages, and to help reduce potential drop-out rates, ten questions from the online survey were not included in the paper questionnaire. The questions are shown in Table 3.1 below.

Table 3.1: Questions included in the online survey but removed from the paper questionnaire

Online survey design

As well as allowing the inclusion of a greater number of questions than the paper questionnaire, the online survey also allowed for the checking of responses. For example, on an online survey it is possible to query logical inconsistencies and to design questions to prevent people selecting multiple answers on questions where only one answer is required (e.g. gender). It is also possible to prevent people accidently missing questions. This means that the data from the online survey can be considered more complete than those from the paper questionnaire.

Additionally, the online questionnaire was designed in a way that made it easy for people to adjust colour contrasts and increase font size, thus increasing accessibility for visually impaired people.

Overview of survey content

The questionnaire comprised ten different modules (66 questions in total), asking about respondents’ awareness and understanding of, and engagement with, climate change-related issues across a range of policy areas. These modules are summarised below.

Public views on climate change

This module included questions on knowledge and attitudes towards climate change, talking to others about this topic, trusted sources of information, and feelings about climate change.

Experience of severe weather events

In this module, respondents were asked about their experience of severe weather events. They were also asked about the perceived likelihood of experiencing severe weather events within the next five years and preparedness for these events, and the impact of having experienced a severe weather event in the last 12 months.

Climate change adaptation actions

This module looked at public attitudes towards climate change adaptation and asked about the types of adaptation actions that respondents had most commonly taken, their intentions to take action in the future and the reasons stopping them from taking action to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Mitigation behaviours

The module on mitigation behaviours asked about respondents’ perceptions of which actions aimed at reducing individual contributions to climate change are the most effective, and how often, if at all, they considered the environmental impact of their day-to-day activities.

Transport

The transport module included questions on the use of informal and formal car sharing services and participation in active travel. It also asked about willingness to be involved in local decision making about transport and any perceived barriers to doing so.

Home energy and heat decarbonisation

In this module respondents were asked questions about the perceived affordability of household energy bills, which energy efficiency measures they had installed and any perceived barriers to installing these in future. There were also asked about whether they had installed or were planning to install clean and renewable heating systems and any perceived barriers to doing so. Heat pump owners were asked their motivations for installing a heat pump and the impacts they believed this to have had.

Food and diet

This short module asked about behaviours in relation to food and diet, such as the consumption of meat and dairy products and purchasing seasonal and locally produced food.

Nature and the built environment

This module included questions on awareness of the biodiversity crisis in Scotland and respondents’ interaction with nature – how often they spent time in green and blue spaces and to what extent they see benefits in doing so. It also asked about respondents’ participation in decisions around how public spaces are used in their local area, including willingness to be involved in decision making, ways they have been involved in the past and any barriers to participation.

Impacts of the transition to net zero

This module asked about respondents’ perceptions of the impact of Scotland’s transition to net zero in the next five years and by 2045. It also asked those in full-time or part-time employment about how the transition may affect their jobs and the perceived consequences of any changes.

Demographics

The final module asked respondents various questions about their personal circumstances, including gender, age, ethnicity, health, education and income. The inclusion of these questions was primarily intended to enable subgroup analysis of the data.