National Survey of Local Government Candidates, 2003

NATIONAL SURVEY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT CANDIDATES, 2003

3. RESPONSE RATES AND REPRESENTATIVENESS

A total of 2013 responses were received from the 2976 unsuccessful candidates, representing an overall response rate of 67.6%. For a postal survey of this nature this is a highly satisfactory figure and compares favourably to the response rate achieved in the survey of councillors (60.5%). However, as table 1 shows, the overall response rate hides considerable variation across councils - ranging from a low of 53.6% in North Lanarkshire to a high of 88.9% in Eilean Siar (although the number of candidates in the latter council was small). Generally there was a slightly higher response from more rural authorities, but it is reassuring that the response rate did not fall below 50% in any of the 32 councils.

Table 1: Response rates by council

Council	Candidates	Responses	% Responses
Aberdeen City	149	100	67.1
Aberdeenshire	145	116	80.0
Angus	88	65	73.9
Argyll and Bute	73	55	75.3
Clackmannanshire	31	21	67.7
Dumfries and Galloway	94	66	70.2
Dundee City	101	56	55.4
East Ayrshire	76	51	67.1
East Dunbartonshire	74	57	77.0
East Lothian	77	62	80.5
East Renfrewshire	58	46	79.3
Edinburgh, City of	223	145	65.0
Eilean Siar	18	16	88.9
Falkirk	65	46	70.8
Fife	212	146	68.9
Glasgow City	263	150	57.0
Highland	91	56	61.5
Inverclyde	58	34	58.6
Midlothian	60	36	60.0
Moray	52	37	71.2
North Ayrshire	73	48	65.8
North Lanarkshire	125	67	53.6
Orkney Islands	16	11	68.8
Perth and Kinross	104	83	79.8
Renfrewshire	113	74	65.5
Scottish Borders	65	43	66.2
Shetland Islands	16	12	75.0
South Ayrshire	73	42	57.5
South Lanarkshire	171	109	63.7
Stirling	71	51	71.8
West Dunbartonshire	46	31	67.4
West Lothian	95	69	72.6
TOTAL	2976	2013*	67.6

* Note: This figure contains 12 candidates whose council is unknown.

In terms of representiveness by political affiliation, as table 2 shows the survey received a positive response from all parties (and from independents). The response rate from Liberal Democrat candidates, at 81.2%, was particularly high, but it is encouraging that over 60% of candidates from all four major political parties completed the questionnaire (the response rate from SSP candidates was only slightly below 60%).

Table 2: Response rates by party

Party	Responses	% Responses
Independent	184	71.0
Conservative	432	63.8
Labour	297	72.3
Liberal Democrat	406	81.2
SNP	498	63.4
SSP	182	58.3
Other ²	14	51.9
TOTAL	2013	67.6

Finally, how representative is the sample in terms of gender? As the gender profile of all candidates is known (collated from lists of persons nominated), a comparison between responding candidates and all candidates is possible. As table 3 shows, the gender profile of responding candidates almost exactly matches that of all candidates - 30.1% of the sample were female compared to 30.0% of all candidates. With this overall high response rate, it's perhaps not surprising that the gender profile of respondents so closely mirrors that of all candidates.

Table 3: Response rate by gender

Gender	All Respondents	%	All Unsuccessful Candidates	%
Male	1408	69.9	2083	70.0
Female	605	30.1	893	30.0

Given the high response rates across councils and parties, and the fact that the gender profile of respondents almost exactly matches that of all unsuccessful candidates, there is little to be gained from re-weighting the sample to take account of differential response rates. Moreover, many questions will be analysed by political affiliation and clearly there is no intrinsic bias due to the differential response rates across parties in such tables.

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