Scottish Government

CHAPTER ONE BACKGROUND AND METHOD

1.1 Since 1998, government-led advertising campaigns have been conducted to strengthen the view that domestic abuse is totally unacceptable. Since this time, yearly advertising campaigns have been conducted to communicate the general message, 'Domestic Abuse: there's no excuse'.

1.2 The most recent advertising campaign was launched on 26 ^th December 2006 and consisted of one TV and two radio adverts. This campaign focused on the same issues as the previous campaign run over the same period in 2005/6; psychological abuse and the effects of domestic abuse on children. The target audience for this campaign was the adult population of Scotland as a whole.

1.3 The main objectives of the campaign were to raise awareness of the impact of domestic abuse, to communicate the harm that domestic abuse causes, and to publicise the helpline phone number and web address.

1.4 Following each of the previous nine waves of advertising activity, research has been conducted by TNS System Three. This research has tracked awareness of the advertising and attitudes towards, and perceptions of, domestic abuse.

1.5 The primary aim of this wave of research was to evaluate the impact of the latest phase of the campaign amongst the population as a whole in order to assess attitudes towards domestic abuse, ascertain perceptions of domestic abuse victims in terms of age and class, and to establish spontaneous and prompted awareness of the TV and radio ads.

1.6 In order to survey a representative sample of the Scottish adult population, this research utilised the Scottish Opinion Survey ( SOS), the same methodology used for all previous waves of the domestic abuse evaluation campaign. Fieldwork took place after the advertising campaign, between 25 ^th January and 1 ^st February 2007.

1.7 The SOS is a monthly omnibus survey conducted amongst a sample of around 1,000 adults in Scotland. For this wave, 1,008 interviews were achieved. This sample was representative of the adult population in terms of sex, age, employment status and socio-economic group ( SEG) ¹. The sample covered 42 constituencies throughout Scotland, with sampling points selected to be representative in terms of geographical location and party of current Member of the Scottish Parliament. The SOS uses a quota sampling methodology and interviewers use a 'random route' technique within each sampling point to select addresses. Only one interview per household is permitted. Furthermore, the achieved sample is weighted at each wave to ensure that it represents Scotland's population and is consistent between waves. Table 1.1 outlines the composition of the sample for the SOS in January 2007.

Table 1.1 - Sample profile
Base: All respondents (1008)

1.8 The SOS is conducted using Computer Aided Personal Interviewing ( CAPI), allowing respondents to complete sensitive sections of the questionnaire (i.e. attitudes to and experience of domestic abuse) confidentially on a self-administered basis. The respondents type their answers straight onto the laptop computer, meaning no verbal or visual evidence of their views is available to the interviewer. This level of perceived confidentiality results in a more complete and accurate measure of true public opinion.

1.9 The CAPI methodology also allows the interviewer to play TV and radio adverts in full, thus ensuring that a reliable measure of advertising awareness is obtained.

1.10 A copy of the questionnaire used in the survey is appended.

1.11 Significant results ³ are referred to in the text where appropriate.