Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2025: Core module

Introduction

Background

The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (SSAS) has been conducted annually (with the exception of 2008, 2018 and 2020) by the independent research organisation ScotCen since the advent of devolution in 1999, gathering nationally representative data on the social and political views of the Scottish public. In 2023, SSAS was run as a push-to-web survey for the first time in its history, having been a face-to-face survey between 1999 and 2019, and run once as a push-to telephone survey in 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions^[1]. Detailed analysis of this change in methodology from face-to-face to push-to-web is available in an accompanying technical report. SSAS has a modular structure, with a ‘Core Module’ which has been consistently commissioned by the Scottish Government since 2004^[2], and modules on different topics being commissioned by a number of funders each year. The Core Module typically consists of thirty questions on attitudes towards government and public services.

In 2025 the Core Module included questions covering attitudes towards government and Parliament, government priorities, the health service, the economy and general standard of living, tax spending and redistribution, the importance of voting, and trust and democratic engagement.

In particular, ‘trust and democratic engagement’ includes two new questions not previously included in the Core Module, on participation in politics and drivers of trust in the Scottish Government.

Fieldwork and analysis

Fieldwork was carried out between 16 September and 11 November 2025 (web mode) and between 16 September and 29 October (alternative telephone mode).

A stratified, random probability sample of Scottish private households was drawn from the Postcode Address File to produce a representative sample. Letters were then sent to the selected addresses inviting up to two adults aged 16 and over to take part online, followed by two subsequent reminder letters to addresses which had not yet completed the survey.

The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey Core module achieved a sample size of 1,549 completed surveys, with an overall response rate of 15%, in line with the 15% achieved the last time the Core Module was run in 2023.

Demographic data on health and disabilities

During fieldwork for the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2025, a routing error resulted in the earliest respondents not being asked background questions on general health and long-standing health conditions. These questions are used in particular to derive disability status. This error was identified and corrected for subsequent responses. Additionally, a follow-up survey was used to collect responses to these questions only, from respondents who had given consent to be recontacted about further research by email, with the resulting data matched to the original response. As a result, for 570 respondents no data on these variables were collected.

As a consequence of this, the degree of missing data for these questions is greater than for other background variables. In particular there is greater uncertainty around disability status breakdowns than for other background variables. More information on this issue is included in the associated technical report.

Proportion of people with a long-term health condition

It was noted in the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2023 Core Module findings that the weighted proportion of respondents identified as having a long-term health condition was lower than in previous face-to-face years (30%). The data collection issue noted above means there is no equivalent figure for the 2025 Core Module. However, both the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2024 (not Core Module) and Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2025 (not Core Module) have a weighted proportion of 41% and 38% respectively, more in line with the proportion found in previous SSA face-to-face surveys (between 44% and 46% in the years 2016, 2017 and 2019). More information is available in the associated technical reports for 2023 (on mode change in general) and 2025 (for this survey specifically).

Analysis and reporting

All percentages cited in this report are based on the weighted data and are rounded to the nearest whole number. A percentage may be quoted in the text for a single category that aggregates two or more of the percentages shown in a table. The percentage for the single category may, because of rounding, differ by one percentage point from the sum of the percentages in the table.

Estimates from a survey are affected by sampling errors, and so apparent differences between percentages may not reflect real differences in the underlying population. It might be the case that the true values for the population are similar but the random selection of respondents has produced, by chance, a lower estimate in one year and a higher estimate in another.

A difference between two estimates is statistically significant if it is so large that a difference of that size or greater is unlikely to have occurred purely by chance. Conventionally, significance is tested at the five per cent level, which means a difference is considered significant if it would only have occurred once in 20 different samples.

Testing significance involves comparing the difference between the two estimates with the 95 per cent confidence limits for each of the two estimates. Statistical sampling theory suggests that the absolute value of the difference between the two estimates is significant if it is greater than the square root of the sum of the squares of the limits for the two estimates.

Within this report, year-on-year differences for each question were tested by comparing the latest year with the previous year^[3] in which the same question was asked with the same mode of collection (push-to-web). Differences between percentages from different survey modes (e.g. from years prior to 2023, where collection was through face-to-face interview) were not significance tested due to the uncertainty introduced by mode change on attitudinal questions.

Where questions have been significance tested, this is made clear in the text. Apparent differences are described as either ‘the same’ or ‘in line’ to indicate no significant difference, or as a statistically significant increase or decrease. Where questions are not described in this way, significance testing was not done.

Broader trends over time, including those described in the relevant time series charts, were not tested for significance.

Differences between subgroups (for example by demographic subgroups) were tested for significance using chi-squared tests, with the Holm-Bonferroni method used to correct for false positives. A list of significant associations between questions and subgroup variables is provided in the supplementary tables.

More detail on the fieldwork and analysis of the survey are published in a separate technical note.

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.