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1 Survey overview
1.1 Background to the SHS
The Scottish Household Survey ( SHS) is a continuous, large-scale social survey of the composition and characteristics of Scottish households, the attitudes and behaviour of adults, and to a lesser extent, of children within these households. It was first commissioned by the Scottish Executive in 1998 and has been collecting data and reporting since February 1999.
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 Government'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, supporting cross-cutting analysis on a range of issues
- to allow early detection of national trends
- to allow detailed follow-up surveys of sub-samples from the main survey sample, if required.
The survey is funded by the Scottish Government and carried by a consortium of research organisations involving Ipsos MORI, TNS System Three and the Scottish Centre for Social Research.
Technical Reports have been published for each year of the survey covering the survey methodology, fieldwork outcomes and the questionnaire used. This report covers the methodology and fieldwork outcomes for the survey in 2007. On the whole, the methodology for the survey remains fixed for each two-year sweep and over the life of the survey, since 1999, there have only been minor changes to the methodology following refinements to the sampling assumptions. More substantial changes were introduced in 2007 and these are discussed below.
A second publication provides details of the survey questionnaire used in 2007, including details of changes between 2006 and 2007 and changes made in January 2008.
1.1.1 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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