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Measuring Deprivation in Scotland: Developing a Long-Term Strategy: Final Report
1. Introduction
1.1 Aims and research process
This is the final report from a project to produce a long-term strategy for measuring deprivation in Scotland. The project was commissioned by the Central Statistics Unit of the Scottish Executive with three main objectives:
- The project will provide a clear definition and conceptual basis for measuring deprivation. It will also clarify how the term relates to others used to refer to social needs such as poverty, social exclusion or social injustice.
- The project will set out a long-term strategy for measuring area deprivation. Building on the recently published Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2003 or SIMD2003 (Noble et al, 2003), it will ensure that the measure gives full coverage to deprivation in the Scottish context, and to different contexts within Scotland, particularly rural and urban.
- The project will explore approaches to measuring deprivation for individuals. In particular, it will recommend whether individual measures should be developed as replacements to area-based measures or as additional to them. It will also explore the desirability and feasibility of developing a range of measures related to the specific needs of different social groups.
The aim of the project is to work from the definition and conceptual framework to identify the indicators and data sources necessary to provide proper measures of deprivation across Scotland at area or individual level. In particular, we have been asked to make recommendations where additional data sources should be developed. The work is not limited by considerations of what data are currently available.
This Final Report has been produced following extensive consultations with a wide range of groups and individuals; full details are provided in Appendix 1. To inform these consultations, we published an Interim Report setting out our initial thinking and recommendations (Bailey et al, 2003). Feedback was generally very positive but we have also made some changes in response to comments received. In particular, this report highlights more clearly the extent to which existing individual and area-based measures capture rather different aspects of deprivation even though they share broadly the same conceptual base in theory. This reflects their different origins and uses. These differences are likely to continue and need to be borne in mind when comparisons are made between the two measures.
Discussion of every comment expressed during the consultation process would have made this document unduly long and difficult to read. We have tried to be clear, however, where we believe our recommendations received broad support and where there was opposition or disagreement. Copies of the written responses are available from the Central Statistics Unit of the Scottish Executive.
1.2 Uses of deprivation measures
Deprivation measures may be used in a wide range of situations or contexts and it is clear that no one measure will meet the needs of every potential user. An important part of our remit was to provide measures of deprivation which were applicable across Scotland. These might have a range of specific uses but, in general terms, these include assessing levels of need, guiding decisions over resource allocation or informing the evaluation of policies by tracking changes over time. The emphasis here is on developing a single common standard which can be applied across the whole country. There is therefore a need to be clear about the basis for such measures and to be open about their construction so that they can be seen to be fair.
At the same time, the work is intended to provide measures which will be of use to individuals working in a range of different contexts. There may well be a desire to construct different measures to capture the nature of problems in a particular context. This work is intended to facilitate that approach by ensuring that a wide variety of information is made available in as flexible a way as possible. This will also enable more detailed work to be carried out to explore the nature, causes and consequences of deprivation and how these vary between social groups or areas. The emphasis here might be on informing the design of policy as well as influencing local decisions about priorities, resource allocations or evaluations.
1.3 Structure of the report
The structure of the report is as follows:
- Section 2 covers the first element of our work - providing a definition and conceptual framework for deprivation, and setting out how deprivation relates to other terms used to refer to social needs such as poverty, social exclusion or social justice.
- Section 3 examines the need for individual and area measures and how they differ, both in terms of the methods used to construct them but also in terms of their conceptual bases.
- Section 4 looks at the Scottish context and this might need to be taken into account when designing deprivation measures.
- Section 5 turns to the second main element of this work - developing a long-term strategy for measuring area deprivation. It provides details for the construction of each domain, building on the conceptual framework developed in Section 3. This section also examines: the most appropriate spatial units; a domains versus life-stages approach; measuring absolute change; and updating the area-based measure in future.
- Section 6 covers the third main element - developing individual measures of deprivation. The first part looks at how multiply deprived individuals might be identified using a single standard. The second part discusses the case for developing additional standards to measure deprivation for different social groups. Finally, the section considers how the individual measures might be updated in future.
- Section 7 considers possible overlap between the proposed measures and existing or proposed data collection exercises.
- Section 8 provides a short conclusion.
In each section, we summarise the main recommendations at the start and follow this with the discussion or justifications for these. To limit duplication, reference is made to the Interim Report (Bailey et al, 2003) at times but it is intended that this report can be read as a self-contained document.
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