The Scottish Government

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CHAPTER TWO: KNOWLEDGE OF GOVERNMENT

Chapter aims

This chapter addresses three key questions:

• How much do people know about the Scottish Executive's activities and how does this compare with knowledge of the UK government?
• How much do people know about Scottish governance and politics more generally?
• What factors are related to knowledge levels?

Introduction

2.1 The study looked at people's knowledge of Scottish political institutions in two ways. The first set of questions simply asked:

How much would you say you've seen or heard about the work of the UK government over the last twelve months?

And how much would you say you've seen or heard about the work of the Scottish Executive over the last twelve months?

These questions had two main purposes. Firstly, they can be used to evaluate the success of the Scottish Executive's attempts to promote awareness of its existence and activities. Secondly, by asking about both the Executive and UK Government they can be used to assess whether either body is more successful at capturing the attention of the public.

2.2 The second set of questions were presented as a quiz and people were invited to say whether each statement was "definitely true", "probably true", "probably not true" or "definitely not true". The statements were:

The Scottish Executive makes most decisions about how money should be spent on health service in Scotland [True]

The Scottish Executive decides level of unemployment benefit paid to people in Scotland [False]

Scottish Parliament has around 70 elected members [False]

Scottish Executive is just another name for Scottish Parliament [False]

These questions were designed to measure people's understanding of the context within which Scottish governance and politics operates. It is also possible to use them to test the extent to which knowledge of the Executive's activities is related to other perceptions and evaluations of the Executive. Therefore, while this chapter focuses on knowledge itself, other chapters examine the relationship between knowledge and attitudes towards other issues.

Knowledge of the Scottish Executive's and UK Government's recent activities

2.3 As Figure 2.1 illustrates, awareness of the work carried out by the Scottish Executive over the past year was fairly low. In total around three in ten (29%) said they knew "a great deal" or "quite a lot" about what the Scottish Executive had been doing. At the opposite end of the scale four in ten (41%) said they had heard "not very much" or "nothing at all" ². Although this may seem like a low proportion, as a relatively new institution it could simply be the case that the Executive has yet to attract the kind of attention that more established bodies command.

2.4 When this is compared with knowledge of the UK Government's activities, however, it is clear that governments in general, and not just the Scottish Executive, face difficulties competing for public attention. A third (34%) said they had heard a "great deal" or "quite a lot" about the UK Government's activities, while a similar proportion (36%) said they had heard "not very much" or "nothing at all". So, although awareness levels were slightly higher for the UK government than for the Scottish Executive these differences are relatively small.

Figure 2.1 Knowledge of Scottish Executive and UK Government activities over past year

Who is most likely to have heard about the Scottish Executive's recent activities?

2.5 Investigating who is most likely to have heard "a great deal" or "quite a lot" over the past year about the Scottish Executive (from here on referred to as people with a "high level of awareness") reveals some interesting patterns. For example, half (48%) of regular broadsheet newspaper readers had a high level of awareness compared with around one in four people who do not read any paper (24%), Daily Record readers ³ (23%), and readers of other tabloids (27%). It is also clear that awareness increases with age: people aged over 65 were twice as likely to have a high level of awareness than people aged 18-24 (33% and 17% respectively).

2.6 Whether type of employment affected their awareness of the Scottish Executive was also considered. The survey revealed that people employed in the public sector had a higher level of awareness than people in the private sector. Over a third (35%) of people working for public sector employers, voluntary organisations or charities had high levels of awareness compared with a quarter (25%) of private sector employees ⁴. However, the group with the highest level of awareness was the self-employed (40%). So while being employed in the public sector is clearly an important driver of awareness it is not the most significant.

2.7 To establish which factors were significantly and independently associated with high levels of awareness of the Scottish Executive's activities some multi-variate analysis was conducted using logistic regression (see Annex 1 of this Report for the results of this analysis and Annex 2 for a more detailed description of the method). The analysis looked at the factors discussed above, as well as items such as education level, social class, sex, and party political identification ⁵. Table 2.1 contains all the factors that were found to be significantly related to having a high level of awareness of the Scottish Executive's activities, presented in order of how strongly they were related.

2.8 The first thing to note is that neither newspaper readership or employment sector are related to awareness once other factors are controlled for. This means that the differences discussed above, while significant when looked at in isolation, disappear once education level, age and social class are also taken into account.

2.9 Perhaps unsurprisingly, a high level awareness was most likely to be found amongst people with a high level of interest in politics generally (54%). While people with very little political interest had particularly low levels of awareness (13%). It is also clear that awareness increases with education level. Four in ten (41%) of people with degrees had a high level of awareness compared with just under a fifth (18%) of those with no qualifications.

2.10 Men had higher levels of awareness than women (37% and 23% respectively). People who say they were living very comfortably on their income (32%) were more likely to be highly aware than people whose economic circumstances were more difficult (18%) ⁶. The views of people in small remote towns also stand out - just 16% of people from these parts of Scotland had a high level of awareness. This figure was twice as high in most other types of area (typically around 30%), and was even greater still for those in remote rural areas (41%).

Table 2.1 Knowledge of Scottish Executive and UK Government activities by age, sex, education, party identification, and interest in politics

Are the patterns the same for the Scottish Executive and the UK Government?

2.11 As already discussed, awareness of the UK government was slightly higher than for the Scottish Executive, although the difference was no more than five percentage points. Another interesting point to note from Table 2.1 is that the gap between the groups most and least likely to have a high level of awareness is much greater for the UK Government than it is for the Scottish Executive for some factors. For example, for the Scottish Executive the gap between the most and least politically interested is 41 points whereas for the UK Government it is 56 points. This is because people who have high levels of political interest are more likely to have a high level of awareness of the UK Government than of the Scottish Executive while people with very little political interest had very similar levels of awareness of both governments. This pattern is evident elsewhere in the table, for example people with degrees have higher levels of awareness for the UK Government than for the Scottish Executive while those with no qualifications have similarly low awareness levels for both. This could suggest that while the overall difference in awareness levels between both bodies is not particularly large, the Scottish Executive finds it somewhat harder to engage the interest of certain groups than does the UK Government.

Knowledge of Scottish governance and devolution

2.12 As already mentioned people's broader knowledge of the workings of devolution and Scottish governance was also explored. The questions were designed to test awareness of the Scottish Executive and UK Government's responsibilities as well as the mechanics of how devolution operates (for example, how many Members of the Scottish Parliament ( MSPs) sit in Holyrood). Table 2.2 presents the responses people gave with the proportions giving the correct answer for each item highlighted in bold text. It is clear that people have greater understanding of the actual work that both bodies carry out, than of the way in which it is done. Just over half correctly identified that decisions about health spending are largely taken in Scotland while unemployment benefit levels are set elsewhere. In contrast, almost half incorrectly said that the Scottish Parliament has 70 MSPs (the figure is in fact 129). Quite tellingly, a very large proportion (39%) simply could not answer this at all. There was also considerable confusion over the labels attached to the devolved institutions with four in ten (41%) thinking that the Scottish Executive and Scottish Parliament are a single entity.

Table 2.2 Responses to the knowledge of devolution quiz

How is knowledge of devolution related to awareness of the Scottish Executive's activities?

2.13 Having established how much people said they had heard about the activities of the Scottish Executive it is important to set this in the context of people's wider knowledge of devolution. For example, 44% of those who said they had heard a "great deal" or "quite a lot" about the Scottish Executive's activities also said that the Scottish Executive is just another name for the Parliament, while a similar proportion (42%) said that it was not. This suggests that - for some people - a question about awareness of the Scottish Executive actually elicits responses about a somewhat broader set of institutions than was originally intended. This is not to say that the original measure is invalid, but it does mean that the extra illumination provided by the knowledge questions needs to be borne in mind when considering people's responses.

Who is most likely to have high levels of knowledge about devolution?

2.14 Instead of looking at each individual question, the quiz items can be used to create a scale of knowledge with those people who failed to answer any questions correctly at one end and those with higher levels at the other. As Figure 2.2 shows, one in five people got none of the items correct, around three in ten answered one or two correctly, and one in five got three or four correct.

Figure 2.2 Number of items correct in the knowledge quiz

2.15 The groups most likely to score highly on the quiz follow a very similar pattern to that found in Table 2.1 which looked at awareness levels in general. Understandably, self-reported interest in politics is strongly associated with knowledge levels. Over one in three (36%) of the most politically interested scored highest on the scale compared with just one in ten (9%) of those with low levels of interest. Similar patterns are evident for education, social class, and age.

2.16 Younger people are half as likely to have a high level of knowledge compared to those over 65, and twice as likely to have a low level. It will be interesting to see whether this changes over time as more young people learn about the mechanics of devolution as they go through school.

2.17 It has long been the case that women have lower levels of interest in politics than men (Verba et al, 1997; Hinds and Jarvis, 2000) and as this is such an important determinant of knowledge it is likely that this explains the difference seen here between men and women in terms of their knowledge of devolution. It should be noted, though, that the difference between the sexes is not as great as the differences between different age groups or education levels.

Table 2.3 Knowledge of devolution, by interest in politics, age, education, social class, and sex

Key points from this chapter

• Awareness of the government's activities over the past year was fairly low: 29% had heard a "great deal" or "quite a lot" about the Scottish Executive and 34% said the same about the UK Government.
• People with a high level of interest in politics generally, those with higher education, managers and professionals and men were the groups most likely to have high levels of awareness of the Scottish Executive.
• The groups with the lowest levels of awareness were: young people, women, people with no qualifications, people in routine or semi-routine occupations, people living in small remote towns and those who say they are having difficulty coping on their income.
• The kinds of people who had high levels of awareness of the Scottish Executive's activities tended to have even greater levels of awareness of the UK Government. Whereas, people with low awareness of the Executive generally tended to have low awareness of the UK Government too.
• People's knowledge of devolution was generally higher in relation to questions about the responsibilities of the Scottish Executive than it was for questions about the process of how devolution operates.
• 56% correctly identified that decisions about the health budget are taken in Scotland, whereas just 13% correctly assessed that there are more than 70 MSPs in the Scottish Parliament.
• Confusion exists around the devolved institutions in Scotland: 41% thought that the Scottish Executive is just another name for the Scottish Parliament.
• Knowledge of devolution was higher amongst people with high levels of political interest, those with higher education, managers and professionals, older people, and men.

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