The Scottish Government

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A Notes and Definitions

A.1 Totals may appear to differ slightly from the apparent sums of their component parts, in cases where they have been calculated by adding up the "unrounded" values of the components and then rounding each figure independently. Similarly, percentages may appear not to sum to 100%.

A.2 In tables which analyse the results of questions for which multiple answers were allowed, the percentages may total more than 100%, because some interviewees gave more than one response.

A.3 The underlying sample numbers shown in different tables may not be the same. In some cases, this is because the tables relate to different populations (such as all households, all adults and all people). In addition, the SHS only collects certain kinds of information for particular sub-groups of the population (which are identified in the relevant tables' headings), and therefore some questions were not asked of all respondents because they only applied in certain circumstances (eg questions about children would not be asked in a household without any children). In some cases, the bases differ because some people were unable to, or did not want to, answer certain questions ( e.g. some households did not wish to provide details of their income).

A.4 Highest Income Householder: the household reference person for the first part of the interview. This must be a person in whose name the accommodation is owned or rented, or who is otherwise responsible for the accommodation. In households with joint householders, the person with the highest income is taken as the household reference person. If householders have exactly the same income, the older is taken as the household reference person.

A.5 Adult: for the purposes of the SHS, an adult is someone who was aged 16 or over at the time of the interview; a child is someone who was aged 15 or under.

A.6 Motor vehicles, cars and vans: with effect from April 2003, the interviewer asks only about the number of cars available to the household. However, prior to that, when the interviewer collected more detailed information about the motor vehicles that were normally available for the private use of one or more members of the household, the following types of vehicle were distinguished:

• car (including four wheel drive / landrover etc);
• van (including passenger / camper van);
• motor cycle;
• moped; and
• any other motor vehicle.

Therefore, vans are excluded from the figures for "cars available for private use" in Tables 1 and 2, and Section 3. However, when the interviewer asks about the usual means of travel to work and travel to school, the categories which can be recorded include:

• driver car / van
• passenger car / van

so vans are included with cars in the figures in Tables 18 to 22, and Sections 7 and 8.

A.7 Regional Transport Partnership areas Under the powers in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2005, Scottish Ministers have created seven regional transport partnerships ( RTPs). The Act places a statutory duty on RTPs to prepare regional transport strategies. The RTPs and the local authority areas that they cover are shown in the table below (please note that the RTP names have not been given in full, for ease of reading - e.g. the full name of the "West" RTP is "the West of Scotland Regional Transport Partnership"). In the case of an RTP which covers the area of only one local authority (or of only a few local authorities), the figures may be subject to quite large sampling errors if the SHS does not have a large sample for that area.

The statistics for RTP areas which appear in this bulletin have been prepared on the above basis except in the case of the "Highlands & Islands" and "West" RTPs, where the definition used has been slightly different because (at present) households in the Helensburgh and Lomond areas of Argyll & Bute cannot be separately identified in the SHS database. The figures for "Highlands & Islands" therefore include the whole of the Argyll & Bute Council area (including the Helensburgh and Lomond areas), and the figures for "West" do not include any of Argyll & Bute. Because Helensburgh and Lomond together contain much less than half of the total population of Argyll & Bute, their being counted in the wrong RTP area for the purpose of preparing the figures reported in this bulletin is unlikely to affect greatly the results.

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