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6. Perceptions of public services in the last year
6.1 As discussed in the introduction, two sets of questions about standards in public services were included in the 2006 SSA. The previous section focussed on beliefs about the overall impact of devolution on public services by examining attitudes towards the impact of the Scottish Parliament on key areas. This section examines views on how standards in public services have changed over the last year, shifting the focus to views about the recent performance of key services in general. People were asked to say whether they thought standards in the following public services had increased, stayed the same or fallen in the previous 12 months:
- the standard of the health service in Scotland
- the quality of education in Scotland, and
- public transport in Scotland.
6.2 In addition, people were asked whether they thought:
- the general standard of living had increased, fallen or stayed the same since 2005, and
- whether the economy had got stronger, weaker or stayed the same over that period.
Standards in public services, the economy and general standard of living in the last year
6.3 In four of the five areas asked about, a higher proportion said that standards had increased as opposed to decreased in the previous year. For example, 30% said the quality of education had increased, compared with just 18% who thought it had fallen. Similarly, more people thought the general standard of living, the economy and public transport had increased or strengthened in the previous 12 months than thought they had fallen or got weaker (Figure 2).
6.4 However, as in previous years, the health service compared poorly against the other areas in terms of public assessments, with a much higher percentage of respondents (42%) saying that standards in this area had fallen in the last year than said they had increased (20%). With regard to this relatively poor view of the health service, it should be noted that rather more positive views have been found in other research when people were asked to consider individual health services, such as GPs or hospital inpatients. It has been suggested elsewhere that factors other than direct experience of the health service are influencing attitudes, including press coverage and word of mouth (Rose & Glendinning, 2004).
6.5 Around 2 in 10 people said 'don't know' when asked to rate recent standards in education, transport and the economy. It may be that people who were not 'users' of certain services were simply not able to provide an opinion. This is evident for transport, where 'Don't knows' were particularly high (40%) among those who 'never' used public transport.
Figure 2 Perceptions of public services over past twelve months, 2006 (%)
Base: all respondents (1,594)
Public service perceptions over time
6.6 SSA has now collected three years' worth of data on people's perceptions of standards in these five areas in the previous 12 months, allowing us to examine trends. The results are presented in the form of 'net balance scores' in Figure 3. Net balance scores are calculated by subtracting the percentage who said standards had fallen from the percentage who said they had increased. Positive scores indicate that more people said standards had increased than said they had fallen. A negative figure indicates the opposite. They are thus a useful way of summarising the overall balance of opinion on an issue.
6.7 The net balance scores for education and for living standards show a gradual improvement over the last 3 years. Overall scores for public transport and the economy increased considerably from 2005 to 2006 (from -1 to +10 for public transport and from +1 to +10 for the economy). However, in contrast with the other 5 areas, scores for the health service have remained consistently negative, with no improvement in scores from 2005 to 2006.
Figure 3 Net balance scores for perceptions of public services (2001 to 2006)
Base = all respondents. Sample size: 2004 = 1637, 2005 = 1549, 2006 = 1594
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