Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2025: Core module

Annex A – Left-Right and Liberal-Authoritarian Scales

The Libertarian – Authoritarian scale

Since 1999, the Scottish Social Attitudes survey has included an attitude scale which is designed to ascertain whether respondents are more inclined to the libertarian or the authoritarian end of the ideological spectrum. The scale consists of six statements to which the respondent is invited to “agree strongly”, “agree”, “neither agree nor disagree”, “disagree” or “disagree strongly”. The statements are as follows:

1) Young people today don’t have enough respect for traditional British values

2) People who break the law should be given stiffer sentences

3) For some crimes, the death penalty is the most appropriate sentence

4) Schools should teach children to obey authority

5) The law should always be obeyed, even if a particular law is wrong

6) Censorship of films and magazines is necessary to uphold moral standards

The scores to all the questions in the scale are added and then divided by the number of items in the scale, giving indices ranging from 1 to 6. A derived variable was produced for the purpose of analysis in which these indices (from 1 to 6) were divided into terciles with the 33% with the lowest scores categorised as ‘Libertarian’, the 33% with the middle scores as ‘Neither’ and the 33% with the highest scores as ‘Authoritarian.’

The Left – Right scale

Since 1999, the Scottish Social Attitudes survey has included an attitude scale which aims to measure respondents’ underlying political views and whether these are situated to the left or right of the political spectrum. The scale consists of five statements to which the respondent is invited to “agree strongly”, “agree”, “neither agree nor disagree”, “disagree” or “disagree strongly”. The statements are as follows:

1) Government should redistribute income from the better off to those who are less well off

2) Big business benefits owners at the expense of workers

3) Ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation’s wealth

4) There is one law for the rich and one law for the poor

5) Management will always try to get the better of employees if it gets the chance

The scores to all the questions in the scale are added and then divided by the number of items in the scale, giving indices ranging from 1 (left) to 5 (right). A derived variable was produced for the purpose of analysis in which these indices (from 1 to 5) were divided into terciles with the 33% with the lowest scores categorised as ‘Left’, the 33% with the middle scores as ‘Neither’ and the 33% with the highest scores as ‘Right.’