The Scottish Government

General Research Findings No.1

The People's Panel in Scotland: Wave 1 (June - September 1998) 1999
Dr Nuala Gormley

Main Findings

• Scottish residents are generally more satisfied with the public services they receive than are their counterparts elsewhere in the UK.
• The five most important public services in Scotland are identified as GPs, NHS hospitals, refuse collection, the police and fire and emergency services.
• The majority of Panel members in Scotland have their expectations of public services met or exceeded.
• Panel members in Scotland are satisfied with a larger number of public services than are their UK counterparts, and report the highest national satisfaction levels for train companies and street lighting.
• There is strong Scottish support for the 'one-stop shop' concept of service delivery, and also for certain measures of electronic government.
• Those respondents in Scotland, who demonstrated more reluctance to embrace new technologies in general, are concerned about confidentiality issues in the electronic management of personal details by government.
• While respondents in Scotland, in common with those in the UK as a whole, identify major disease and health risks as priorities for government, they express a keener awareness of the importance of smoking and diet as health priorities than do the rest of the UK.
• Generally, when compared to the UK overall, the Scottish response to health awareness questions reveal a strong belief in an association between indicators of general well-being, such as employment and personal wealth, and health.
• Panel members in Scotland indicate high satisfaction levels with schools and educational institutions, but are less satisfied with secondary schools than their UK counterparts.

Introduction

In April 1998, the Service First Unit in the Cabinet Office commissioned MORI, the market research company, and the School of Public Policy at Birmingham University to set up the 'People's Panel'. The Panel was set up as part of a wider programme to modernise government and make services responsive to users.

In October 1998, national results from the first wave of the People's Panel were published. However, the size of the Panel means that it is possible to examine the data at a regional level, and still retain robust results for many, although not all issues. Regional analysis of this type is particularly useful and interesting for Scotland which has its own separate services in a number of areas such as education and health, its own local government structure and its own legal system.

This paper reports on some of the most interesting Scottish findings, drawn from a base of 401 respondents (giving a weighted sample of 444). The paper draws particular attention to occasions where Scottish responses differed from the national UK response.

Views on public services

The 5 public services that Scottish members of the Panel felt were the most important to them were GPs (46%), NHS hospitals (38%), refuse collection (31%), the police (27%) and fire and emergency services (23%) 1 - a ranking broadly similar to the UK pattern.

Base: People's Panel baseline - Panel members in Scotland.

Question: Which four or five services are the most important to you and the members of your household?

Panel members in Scotland valued refuse collection services highly. Thirty one percent ranked this amongst their 5 most important public services - higher than either the police (27%) or fire and emergency services (23%), and Scotland recorded the second highest ranking of all the UK regions for this service.

Satisfaction with public services

Scottish Panel members held public services and their providers in high regard. While a strong belief that service providers are friendly, hardworking and keen to help was held in all regions, Scottish respondents found public services provision significantly less faceless, less infuriating and more responsive than the UK panel generally. Panel members in Scotland, however, shared the common perception that public services are bureaucratic and underfunded.

Almost half of Scottish Panel members (49%) described public service as about what they would expect, and the expectations of another 6% were exceeded. However, 4 in 10 of Scottish respondents thought that public services fell slightly or a long way short of expectations 2. This closely reflected the national Panel response.

Two thirds of Panel members in Scotland felt that public services had stayed the same (41%) or improved (25%) in the previous 5 years, while 30% felt they had deteriorated. This was a slightly more positive appraisal than the national response from the panel.

Panel members in Scotland expressed much higher satisfaction levels with individual services than did most other regions and the UK Panel in general. They added home helps, refuse collection, British Gas and the National Savings Bank to the UK highest ranking services of British Telecom, local electricity companies and GPs (all scoring above 90% satisfaction levels) 3. They also had the highest national satisfaction levels for train companies and street lighting. However, in contrast with the rest of the UK, only 7 in 10 Scottish residents surveyed were satisfied with their secondary schools - the lowest UK ranking.

In common with the UK Panel, the least satisfactory public services were road and pavement maintenance (44% satisfied), the Courts (46%) and the Immigration Service (35%).

Communicating with Public Services

In general, the results of the UK Panel suggest that the public sector still needs to improve communications with the public. Currently, the most common means of receiving information on public services is through local newspapers and, in pamphlets delivered to the home and by word of mouth from friends and family.

A majority of Panel members in Scotland (57%) believed there was no real difference in how the public and private sectors performed in providing useful information to users: across the UK as a whole, the comparable figure was 50%. Further, while 3 in 10 people across the UK believed the public sector to be worse than the private sector in providing useful information, in Scotland, fewer thought so (22%).

N.B. The sample groups for these findings were the users of the service, and ranged from the 401 using local water services to only 6 using the Immigration Service.

Joined-up Government

There was strong support in Scotland for 'one-stop shops' delivering both central and local government services (79%), and 7 out of 10 people said they were certain to use, or likely to use, such facilities. There was a very similar level of support across the UK. There was also strong support for being able to contact 'one-stop call centres' by telephone, 24 hours a day (in Scotland 79% were in favour, the same as the UK as a whole).

Support for such call centres was qualified across the UK in general by the stress that Panel members placed on ensuring a helpful and personalised approach. In Scotland, 92% considered it important that a person should respond to the caller rather than the caller getting a recorded menu of options, and 99% thought it important that 'someone helpful' should answer.

Electronic Government

Panel members in Scotland, in a pattern very similar to the national Panel response, supported the idea of electronic government and could see its potential benefits. They anticipated a range of different benefits: 41% believed it would be an easier way of getting information; 43% believed their inquiry would be dealt with more quickly; and 38% felt that they could deal with government at more convenient times.

The perceived drawbacks related to the reliability of the equipment and the related risks of handling personal details. More than a third of respondents in Scotland expressed concern about equipment errors, while 39% worried that this would cause the system to lose their details, and one third were also worried about the confidentiality implications of an electronic system.

In a pattern consistent with the national Panel, just over half (54%) of Scots agreed that new technology would make it easier for them to deal with government, with only 12% disagreeing 4.

Base: People's Panel baseline

Question: If you were able to use these devices to deal with government which, if any, do you think you would use?

Across the UK, support for new technology in dealing with government came from the younger age groups -65% in the 16-34 age group agreed that new technology would make dealing with government easier, compared to only 25% of people over the age of 65.

In general, Scottish respondents made less use of computer technology at home, at work and to study than did most other regions in the UK. While 9% of the UK Panel were connected to the internet at home, the same was true for only 6% of Panel members in Scotland.

Only 15% of Panel members in Scotland had used a personal computer in the past year to get information or advice or to buy products. Thus they had been less keen to use new technology in this way than were their national counterparts across the UK where the corresponding figure was 22%. Further, a third of Scots had used none of the technologies surveyed. With Northern Ireland, Scotland generally displayed most reluctance to try new technologies, with fewer than one fifth of Scots surveyed prepared to use touchscreen technology to get information and 12% to use such technology to deal with Government (fig 3). Comparable figures for the UK were 28% and 20% respectively.

The strong national preference for using the telephone to deal with Government, rather than other electronic devices was accentuated in Scotland, where there is only half the support (8%) to use interactive television for these purposes than than was identified nationally (16%).

Health and Care Provision

Base: People's Panel Baseline

Question: Which two or three health-related issues for possible government campaigns, if any, do you think are the most important?

Panel members in Scotland considered drug misuse, smoking, healthy eating poor diet, cancer, heart disease and stroke to be the most important health-related issues for possible future government campaigns. Compared to the UK as a whole, they put greater emphasis on the dangers of smoking (36%) and the benefits of healthy eating (31%) as key health care priorities, considering them to be as important as cancer (30%), heart disease and stroke (31%).

Panel members in Scotland placed reducing poverty and unemployment above access to health services as important priorities for improving health, in contrast to the general UK response which ranked access to health services, poverty and air pollution as the top priorities. In Scotland, housing and workplaces were generally considered more important, and education and air pollution as less important, than the national Panel response. Amongst the other UK regions, the Scottish ranking pattern was most similar to Wales and the north-east.

Eighty four percent of respondents in Scotland with direct experience of receiving long term care from at least two providers were satisfied with the ways in which these services worked together to meet their needs. This compares with 72% of the UK Panel, while only 9% of respondents were dissatisfied, compared to 19% in this category across the UK.

Base: People's Panel baseline - Panel members in Scotland

Question: Do you agree that the government should encourage parents to take more responsibility for the actions of their children?

Ninety five per cent of people in Scotland agreed that the government should encourage parents to take more responsibility for the actions of their children, in a pattern finding consistent throughout the UK regions.

Panel members in Scotland believed that the example of their own parents (48%), speaking to and sharing problems with other parents (45%) and lessons at school about parenthood (35%) were the best ways of helping people become good parents.

Education

Twenty eight percent of Scottish households respondents had dependent children at nursery, primary or secondary schools, compared to 35% nationally. Together, 83% of these were satisfied with the quality of service provided at these schools and 88% felt well- informed by schools 5.

The great majority of Scots were satisfied with the quality of service provided by their local nurseries (86%) satisfied) and primary schools (89%), and the majority (70%) were also satisfied with their local secondary school. As such, Scots they were more satisfied than the UK as a whole with nursery and primary schools, but less satisfied with secondary schools; here Scots Scotland was, in fact, least satisfied of all the regions.

Most Scottish users in Scotland also said that they were kept well informed by educational institutions, with Scots generally feeling more informed by their local nursery and primary schools than national respondents (88% and 97% felt 'well informed' respectively). Sixteen percent of Scots felt they were 'not well informed' by their local secondary schools, compared to 12% of UK respondents.

Transport

Seventy eight percent of Panel members in Scotland had used public transport in the previous year 6. Scotland was consistently near the national average in their use of trains and local buses (54% and 62% being used at least once a year, respectively), while 29% had not used public transport for at least six months 7.

Sixty two percent of panel members in Scotland who used public transport regularly were satisfied with the quality of service, compared to 49% nationally. They were generally satisfied with their local bus services, and were the most satisfied train users in the UK (72% satisfied in Scotland, compared to 53% nationally and only 41% in the northwest). Only 6% of Scots surveyed expressed dissatisfaction with train services.

Nonetheless, more panel members in Scotland had made complaints to their local bus services in the past year than the national average, although only half as many complained to train companies as nationally.

Although nationally train companies and London Underground were considered to be among the worst services for keeping people informed, Scottish train and local bus users in Scotland felt better informed about these local services than the national UK Panel did.

Base: People's Panel baseline - service users in Scotland

Question: How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the quality of service (for local bus and train services)?

Council Housing

Eight percent of Panel members in Scotland considered council housing to be among the services most important to their household. Four in every five Scottish Council tenants in the Panel were satisfied with the quality of the service and, with only 4% making a complaint to the landlord in the past year, demonstrated one of the highest satisfaction levels in the country.

Local councils are not seen to be providing the level of information their tenants desired. One third (31%) of Scottish Council tenants in the Panel felt that their landlord did not keep them well informed, a figure similar to the national average of 34%.

Conclusion

This paper has presented some of the Scottish findings from the first wave of the People's Panel. The main trend to emerge is that Panel members in Scotland value their public services highly, and are generally more satisfied with the public services they receive than are their UK counterparts. There is strong Scottish support in Scotland for 'one stop shops', and for certain measures of electronic government, but people in Scotland were are generally more reluctant to embrace new technologies and are more concerned about confidentiality issues in the electronic management of personal details by government.

The People's Panel offers a valuable base from which to draw regional comparisons and make longitudinal assessments about public service use and views in the UK. When used to elicit one regional profile, as for Scotland in this case, it enables comparisons with the UK as a whole, although comparisons with other regions are more difficult.

For certain services such as council housing, the Scottish profile is significantly different to the UK pattern, while in common with other UK regions located furthest from London, the Scottish use of the London Underground was is very low. Such regional service characteristics, which were not explicit in the Panel findings, would need to be taken into consideration when interpreting some of the initial results.

In other cases, the data highlights potential for further qualitative research, which might elaborate on the meanings of 'expectation' and 'satisfaction', and other nuances in the questionnaire design which may mask cultural or regional understandings. Could it be that Scottish users in Scotland are just easier pleased by their public services, or maybe too polite to complain? The People's Panel offers a useful starting point for such questions.

1 The figures refer to the percentage of respondents who ranked the service highly, and therefore together do not total 100%.

2 The remaining 4% either had no expectations, or had no opinion or expectations, of public services.

3 Where more than 90% of service users were either 'fairly satisfied' or 'very satisfied' with the service.

4 The remaining 34% neither agreed nor disagreed, or didn't know.

5 These statistics were sourced from the same People's Panel data as the other statistics in this paper, but were composite figures not found in the two computer tables volumes published by MORI and the Cabinet Office.

6 See footnote 5

7 See footnote 5

About the People's Panel

In April 1998, the Service First Unit in the Cabinet Office commissioned MORI, the market research company, and the School of Public Policy at Birmingham University to set up the 'People's Panel'. The Panel is a world first at national level and has been established as part of the wider programme to modernise Government and make services more responsive to users. It will not be used for party political research but will focus on public services and how they are delivered. The aim is to provide a database of individuals that can be used for a wide range of research and consultation - enabling the tracking of opinions over time, looking at reasons for change and gathering the views of both users and non-users of particular public services.

The Panel was recruited by MORI during the summer of 1998 and consists of 5,064 members of the public (aged 16+) randomly selected from across the UK, and is designed to be a representative cross-section of the population. Data is weighted to the known profile of the population (sex, age, class etc). Each Panel member agrees to be re-contacted on a regular basis to take part in qualitative and quantitative research in the future.

Of the total UK Panel members, 401 are in Scotland,giving a weighted sample of 444, the base for the Scottish response outlined here. This sample size provides for a level of accuracy of ±5%. However, this level of accuracy applies to the whole sample; care should be taken when interpreting results based on sub sets of respondents. For example only 6 people in Scotland used the immigration service and just 14 used residential care homes.

UK findings from the People's Panel have been published by the Cabinet Office. Copies of the Summary of Results for each wave of the Panel are available from the Service First Publication Line: 0345 22 32 42.

In addition, results are available on the internet www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/servicefirst

The results can also be found on MORI's web site: www.mori.com

For further information, please call

Simon Braunholz at MORI Scotland (tel 0131 558 1515)

or Ben Page/Jessica Elgood at MORI tel 0171 928 5955, email peoples.panel@mori.com

Further information about analysis of Scottish results can be obtained from

Alison Platts,
Scottish Executive Central Research Unit,
U1-13,
Saughton House,
Broomhouse Drive,
Edinburgh EH11 3XA
Tel: 0131 244 4389
email: alison.platts@scotland.gov.uk