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1. Survey overview
Background to the SHS
The Scottish Household Survey ( SHS) is a major cross-sectional survey that was first commissioned by the Scottish Executive in 1998 to provide reliable and up-to-date information on the composition, characteristics and behaviour of Scottish households, both nationally and at a sub-national level.
The specific aims of the survey are as follows:
- to provide household and individual information previously unavailable in Scotland, particularly to support the work of the Scottish Executive's transport, communities and local government policy areas and the work of the Scottish Parliament
- to permit disaggregation of such information both geographically and in terms of population sub-groups (such as families with children or the elderly)
- to allow the relationships between social variables within households to be examined. This will support cross-departmental and inter-departmental policies such as those on social justice
- to allow early detection of national trends
- to allow detailed follow-up surveys of sub-samples from the main survey sample, if required.
Since 1999, the SHS has been carried out by a team from Ipsos MORI Scotland and TNS Social. The same team was reappointed when the survey was subject to tender in 2002.
Detailed Technical Reports have been published annually covering the survey methodology, fieldwork outcomes and the questionnaire used. To provide users with the information they require and to limit unnecessary duplication, these three aspects of the survey have been split into three separate documents.
Scottish Household Survey: Methodology 2005 - includes information about the sample size and design ( e.g. stratification and clustering within local authorities), data collection methods and instruments, the limitations of the data, and the Scottish MOSAIC classification.
Scottish Household Survey: Fieldwork outcomes 2005 - includes information about response rates, weighting factors, establishing the quality of the SHS results (by comparing them with those of the Census and other surveys), the survey's design factors and complex standard errors.
Scottish Household Survey: Questionnaire January to December 2005 - shows all the questions (apart from repetitive details within the Travel Diary, and sections which identify and correct errors), to whom they relate, and the circumstances in which certain questions are not asked.
This document deals with fieldwork outcomes and data quality for 2005.
Reporting conventions
In tables showing percentages as whole numbers, zero values are displayed as a dash (-), values between 0% and 0.5% are displayed as 0% and values between 0.5% and 1% are rounded to 1%. Where percentages are shown to one or more decimal place, the final digit will have been rounded up or down. As a result of rounding within tables, the sum of individual items may not equal the totals for rows or columns.
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