Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2025: Technical Report

9 Analysis variables

Most of the analysis variables were taken directly from the questionnaire and are self-explanatory. The variables set out below require explanation.

9.1 Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD)

The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD)^[7] measures the level of deprivation across Scotland – from the least deprived to the most deprived areas. It is based on 38 indicators in seven domains of: income, employment, health, education skills and training, housing, geographic access and crime. SIMD is presented at data zone level, enabling small pockets of deprivation to be identified. The data zones were ranked from most deprived (1) to least deprived (6,976) on the overall SIMD and on each of the individual domains. The result is a comprehensive picture of relative area deprivation across Scotland.

The analysis in this report used a variable created from SIMD 2020 data, based on the respondents’ postcodes. This indicated the level of deprivation of the data zone in which the respondent lived in quintiles, from most to least deprived^[8].

9.2 The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey two-fold urban-rural classification (UrbRur2Cat)

The 2-fold version of the urban-rural classification is included on the dataset (UrbRur2Cat). Areas in this version were classified as ‘urban’ (codes 1-3 below) and ‘rural’ (codes 4-6 below):

9.3 The Libertarian – Authoritarian scale (LibAuth)

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.’

9.4 The Left – Right scale (LeftRigh)

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.’

This scale and the Libertarian-Authoritarian scale above were not analysed as part of the attitudes towards discrimination module report but are often analysed as part of the Core module data and will be included in the dataset.

9.5 Other analysis variables

These are taken directly from the questionnaire. The principal ones are as follows, with the last four applying only to the attitudes towards discrimination module rather than the Core module:

• Sex
• Gender identity (respondents are asked whether the gender they identify with is the same as their sex registered at birth, and there is an optional free text for respondents to enter their gender identity)
• Age
• Ethnic group (only a binary grouping could be analysed in the tables and report due to base sizes)
• Religion
• Highest education
• Household income
• Self-classification of the type of work they do, based on NS-SEC^[10] (e.g. Managerial and professional occupations, intermediate occupations, Semi-routine and routine occupations etc)
• Whether living comfortably or struggling on present income
• Whether or not they personally know anyone from any of the equalities groups asked about in the survey (i.e. groups that share a protected characteristic such as those who are gay, lesbian or bisexual or transgender
• Whether or not they would prefer to live an area “where there are lots of different kinds of people” as asked on the survey
• Whether they think the number of immigrants to Scotland should be increased, stay the same or reduced
• The extent to which they agree or disagree that “People from outside Britain who come to live in Scotland make the country a better place”