Volunteering - Scottish Household Survey Statistics, 2025

Introduction

This publication contains key findings from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS) 2025 relating to volunteering. The 2025 SHS asked respondents about any formal volunteering (giving unpaid help to organisations or groups) or informal volunteering (giving unpaid help directly to people or the local environment – not via an organisation or group) that they had undertaken in the last 12 months. The questions covered the type of volunteering activity as well as the frequency and amount of time spent volunteering. The 2025 SHS also included a question on what would help encourage respondents to provide unpaid help to groups or organisations in the future. 

Methodology

The Scottish Household Survey (SHS) is an annual survey of the general population in Scotland, carried out since 1999. It aims to collect reliable and up-to-date information on a range of topics, through a random sample of people in private residences. It is a voluntary and interviewer-led survey, usually carried out face-to-face in people’s homes. The 2025 methodology and fieldwork outcomes report provides details of the methods used.

This publication contains the 2025 Scottish Household Survey results relating to Volunteering. Results for other topics are available on the Scottish Household Survey results webpage.

The 2025 results are published as official statistics (see below). Throughout this report, tables are referenced. These are published in Excel format as a supporting document to the report, and include specific results for groups in the population (e.g. urban and rural areas). Some of the differences between groups may be due to random sampling variation i.e. chance. Similarly, some apparent differences between 2024 and 2025 results may occur by chance. We use standard statistical tests of significance to determine the likelihood of differences being due to chance. When this report refers to differences between groups or years, these differences are statistically significant at the 95% confidence level unless explicitly stated otherwise. Some differences between groups in the Excel tables that appear large may not be mentioned in this report, because they are not statistically significant.

An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland

These statistics are official statistics. Official statistics are statistics that are produced by crown bodies, those acting on behalf of crown bodies, or those specified in statutory orders, as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

More information about Scottish Government statistics is available on the Scottish Government website.