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Annex 2 - Glossary

CURRENT ECONOMIC SITUATION

The household respondent is asked to select which of the following categories best describes the current situation of each member of the household:

• Self-employed
• Employed full-time
• Employed part-time
• Looking after the home or family
• Permanently retired from work
• Unemployed and seeking work
• At school
• In further/higher education
• Government work or training scheme
• Permanently sick or disabled
• Unable to work because of short-term illness or injury
• Pre-school/not yet at school
• Other

The SHS's information about the economic situation of members of the household reflects the view of the respondent to the 'household' part of the interview, and so may not conform to official definitions of employment and unemployment, for example. As a result, the SHS cannot provide estimates of unemployment that are comparable to official statistics of unemployment. ⁷¹ Therefore, the SHS cannot be used as a source of unemployment rates or average earnings. Please see the 'Correspondence and enquiries' section at the end of this report for details of Scottish Government contacts who deal with unemployment rates and average earnings statistics.

ECONOMIC ACTIVITY, QUALIFICATIONS AND TRAINING

The SHS is not directly comparable with the Labour Force Survey ( LFS) which is the official source of employment, qualifications and training data in the UK. Compared with the LFS, the SHS under-estimates the level of employment and over-estimates both unemployment and economic inactivity. This is due to the fact that current economic situation in the SHS is asked outright whereas in the LFS it is determined by a selection of other questions.

The SHS also underestimates the number of people with a qualification of some sort whereas the LFS covers all possible levels of qualifications. The LFS is the preferred source of estimates on employment, qualifications and training because it uses internationally agreed definitions and is used for international comparisons including OECD indicators. The qualifications data from the LFS are also used in UK and Scottish policy development such as the Leitch Review of Skills and the Scottish response to this and targets such as Smart Successful Scotland targets and Lifelong Learning indicators.

HIGHEST LEVEL OF QUALIFICATION

The highest level of qualification has been classified as follows:

O Grade, Standard Grade or equivalent - Includes: O Grade, Standard Grade, GCSE, CSE, Senior Certificate, GSVQ Foundation or Intermediate, SVQ Level 1 or 2, SCOTVEC Module, New National Qualification Access 3 Cluster, Intermediate 1 or 2 or equivalent.

Higher, A Level or equivalent - Includes SCE Higher Grade/New National Qualification Higher or Advanced Higher/ CSYS/ A level, Advanced Senior Certificate. GSVQ Advanced, SVQ Level 3, ONC, OND, SCOTVEC National Diploma, City and Guilds or equivalent.

HNC/ HND or equivalent - Includes: HNC, HND, SVQ Levels 4 or 5 or equivalent.

Degree, Professional qualification - Includes: First degree, Higher degree, Professional qualifications e.g. teaching, accountancy.

Other qualification

No qualifications

Qualifications not known

Please see the 'Correspondence and enquiries' section at the end of this report for details of Scottish Government contacts who deal with economic activity, qualifications and training statistics.

HOUSEHOLD INCOME

The term net annual household income refers to income (i.e. after taxation and other deductions) from employment, benefits and other sources that is brought into the household by the highest income householder and/or their spouse or partner. This includes any contribution to household finances made by other household members (e.g. dig money).

The definition is not the same as that used by other Government surveys such as the Family Resources Survey. These measure the income of all household members. Income data from the SHS should not, therefore, be compared with other sources without careful consideration of the methods used in compiling the data. ⁷² The SHS is not designed to provide reliable statistics on average earnings. The SHS has questions on these topics only for selecting the data of particular groups, such as unemployed or low paid people, for further analysis or for use as background variables when analysing other topics.

While in general the level of missing data throughout the SHS is minimal, there is an appreciable level of item non-response in relation to income information. Incomplete data results in around one third of households having no computed total net income. Imputation of income information was carried out. This is a process whereby complete information given by 'similar' households is used for respondents that have missing income information. Income is collected as a variety of different components, such as income from employment, benefits and other sources, which are summed to create total net household income. Income was imputed for each component using either Hot Deck imputation, where the sample is divided into subgroups based on relevant characteristics, or Predictive Mean where a statistical model is constructed and the value is predicted using this model. After imputation, income data are unavailable for between 3%-4% of households. Please contact the SHS project manager if you would like further information on the imputation process.

HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS

For the purposes of the survey, a household is defined as one person, or a group of people, living in accommodation as their only or main residence and either sharing at least one meal a day or sharing the living accommodation.

The highest income householder ( HIH) is taken as the household reference person for the interview. The respondent for the first part of the interview 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.

Adult is used to refer to those aged 16 and over (except where otherwise stated). Children are aged under 16 years.

Working age is 16-59 years old for women and 16-64 years old for men, based on the age at which the state pension is currently paid.

In each household one of the eligible adult members of the household is randomly selected to take part in the second half of the interview. Eligible adults are adult household members who have not been living apart from the household continuously for the previous six months. This might include adults working away from home, in the Forces or in prison. This person is referred to as the random adult. The household respondent is automatically the random adult in one-adult households and may be the same as the household respondent in households with more than one adult.

HOUSEHOLD TYPE

The SHS uses eight household types defined as follows:

A single adult household contains one adult of non-pensionable age and no children.

A single parent household contains one adult of any age and one or more children.

A single pensioner household contains one adult of pensionable age and no children. Pensionable age is 60 for women and 65 for men.

A small family household contains two adults of any age and one or two children.

An older smaller household contains one adult of non-pensionable age and one of pensionable age and no children, or two adults of pensionable age and no children.

A large adult household contains three or more adults and no children.

A small adult household contains two adults of non-pensionable age and no children.

A large family household contains two adults of any age and three or more children, or three or more adults of any age and one or more children.

HOUSING TENURE

The SHS collects information on the ways in which households occupy their accommodation and from which organisation or individual their accommodation is rented, where this is the case. These are combined into a housing tenure variable, which is shown in the annual report broken down into four categories, namely:

• owner occupied, which includes households who own outright and those buying with a mortgage or loan.
• the social rented sector, which includes households renting from a local authority and all households renting from a Housing Association or Co-operative.
• the private rented sector, which includes households renting from an individual private landlord.
• other tenure, which includes any other category of tenure such as living rent free.

LONG-STANDING LIMITING ILLNESS, HEALTH PROBLEM OR DISABILITY

The question "Could I just check, do you have any long-standing illness, health problem or disability that limits your daily activities or the kind of work you can do? By disability as opposed to ill-health, I mean a physical or mental impairment, which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities." was asked of the random adult respondent to establish the prevalence of long-term illness among the adult population. ⁷³ The respondent's own assessment of what constitutes a long-standing illness, health problem or disability was used rather than a medical assessment of illness.

It should be noted that that this data are not directly comparable to reports relating to the period 1999-2002. During this period, the SHS Annual Reports used data from the household respondent about each household member. From 2003, the survey results were from the question asked to the random adult directly.

MARITAL STATUS

The random adult is asked to confirm their marital status using the following categories:

• Single/never been married
• Cohabiting/living together
• Married and living with spouse
• In a same-sex civil partnership
• Separated
• Divorced
• Dissolved civil partnership
• Widowed
• Bereaved civil partner

Where these have been used in the report to analyse results, these categories have been combined as:

• Single/never been married
• Cohabiting/living together
• Married/civil partnership
• Separated/divorced/dissolved civil partnership
• Widowed/bereaved civil partner

SCOTTISH INDEX OF MULTIPLE DEPRIVATION

The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation ( SIMD) 2006 identifies the most deprived areas across Scotland. It is based on 37 indicators in the seven individual domains of Current Income; Employment; Health; Education, Skills and Training; Geographic Access to Services; Housing; Crime.

SIMD is derived at data zone level, enabling small pockets of deprivation to be identified. The data zones are ranked from most deprived (1) to least deprived (6505) on the overall SIMD and on each of the individual domains. The result is a comprehensive picture of relative area deprivation across Scotland. The classificatory variable used in the analysis contained in the report is based the 2006 version of SIMD. In the tables, the data zones are grouped as the 15% most deprived data zones and the rest of Scotland. Occasionally deciles (from the 10% most deprived data zones to 10% least deprived ⁷⁴) or quintiles (from the 20% most to the 20% least deprived data zones ⁷⁵) are used.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC CLASSIFICATION ( NS- SEC)

National Statistics Socio-economic Classification ( NS- SEC) is an occupationally based classification which, in line with all official statistics and surveys, is used in the SHS. The eight-fold analytic version of NS- SEC has been used.

Respondent's occupation and details of their employment status (whether an employer, self-employed or employee; whether a supervisor; number of employees at the workplace) have been used to create the following classifications:

• Higher managerial and professional occupations
• Lower managerial and professional occupations
• Intermediate occupations
• Small employers and own account workers
• Lower supervisory and technical occupations
• Semi-routine occupations
• Routine occupations

More information on the definition of NS- SEC can be found at www.statistics.gov.uk/methods_quality/ns_sec .

URBAN/RURAL CLASSIFICATION

The Scottish Government six-fold urban/rural classification of Scotland has been adopted. This classification is based on settlement size and remoteness (measured by drive times) allowing more detailed geographical analysis to be conducted on a larger sample size. The classification being used in this report is the version released in 2008.

The areas in which respondents live have been classified as follows:

Large urban areas - settlements of over 125,000 people.

Other urban areas - settlements of 10,000 to 125,000 people.

Accessible small towns - settlements of between 3,000 and 10,000 people and within 30 minutes drive of a settlement of 10,000 or more.

Remote small towns - settlements of between 3,000 and 10,000 people and with a drive time of over 30 minutes to a settlement of 10,000 or more.

Accessible rural - settlements of less than 3,000 people and within 30 minutes drive of a settlement of 10,000 or more.

Remote rural - settlements of less than 3,000 people with a drive time of more than 30 minutes to a settlement of 10,000 or more.

Table A2.1 shows the percentage of households in each area type. A map detailing the area types across Scotland is included at the end of the report.

TABLE A2.1 - NUMBER OF HOUSEHOLDS BY SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT 2008 URBAN/RURAL CLASSIFICATION
2007 data

VOLUNTEERING

This section of the questionnaire was revised for the 2006 survey in order to gather greater information on individuals' experience of volunteering and barriers that may prevent them from participation. Respondents were asked to give a 'yes' or 'no' response to a question on whether they had given up any time to help clubs, charities, campaigns or organisations in the last 12 months. This question was followed up by a question asked of those who said no to the first, which gave a list of types of groups and organisations and asked for which, if any, the respondent had undertaken any work or activities on a voluntary basis. The list of options was revised substantially in 2007. The third question asked if there were any other types of organisations not on the list for which respondents had given up their time. Respondents who did not answer 'none' to the first question, or who answered 'none' to the first question but 'yes' to the second or third question were classed as having taken part in voluntary activities.

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