Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2025: Technical Report

Footnotes

1 Up until 2020 when the survey moved from being a face-to-face survey, like many national surveys of households or individuals, in order to attain the optimum balance between sample efficiency and fieldwork efficiency the sample was clustered. The first stage of sampling involved randomly selecting postcode sectors. The sample frame of postcode sectors was also stratified (by urban-rural, region and the percentage of people in non-manual occupations) to improve the match between the sample profile and that of the Scottish population.

2 Estimate based on ONS Labour Force Survey (ONS, 2025)

3 Two unique access codes were provided so that up to two adults at that address could participate

4 The web survey remained open two weeks later than intended due to an error in the automated system to close the survey.

5 Estimate based on ONS Labour Force Survey (ONS, 2025 Q3)

6 In previous years, whether anyone in the household had a degree was shown to be significant in the model. Due to an error, this question was not asked on one of the two versions of SSA 2025 and therefore was missing for all respondents in this version. This question will be reinstated in all versions of the SSA survey in 2026.

7 See Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020 for further details on the SIMD.

8 These variables were created by the ScotCen/NatCen Statistics Unit. They were based on SIMD scores for all datazones, not just those included in the sample – so an individual who lives in the most deprived quintile of Scotland will also be included in the most deprived quintile in the SSA dataset.

9 2. Overview - Scottish Government Urban Rural Classification 2022 - gov.scot

10 The National Statistics Socio-economic classification (NS-SEC) - Office for National Statistics

11 2024 for questions on satisfaction with the NHS and attitudes towards taxes and spending; 2023 otherwise

12 This question was not asked of a higher than usual proportion of the sample in SSA 2025 (i.e. all those who completed the version of the questionnaire funded by the Scottish Government and The Cabinet Office). However, this was still found to be a significant variable in the within-household model.