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FOOTNOTES
1. Research findings from Well? What do you think? (2006): The third national Scottish survey of public attitudes to mental health, mental wellbeing and mental health problems can be viewed online at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/socialresearch.
2. For example, The Scottish Health Survey provides data on a range of physical and mental health measures across Scotland. The results of the 2008 Scottish Health Survey will be published in 2009.
3. For the question on happiness answer options on the 11 point scale ranged from 'extremely unhappy' (0) to 'extremely happy' (10).
4. The precise figure given for response rates depends on whether dwelling units whose eligibility to participate was unknown are included or excluded from the calculation. Dwelling units are coded as 'unknown eligibility' where the interviewer is unable to establish whether the property is occupied and residential. The higher response rate excludes dwelling units of unknown eligibility from the calculation, while the lower rate includes them. As some of the dwelling units whose eligibility was unknown are likely to be eligible and some ineligible, the true response rate probably lies somewhere between the two figures. For further details on response rate calculations, see the technical report.
5. The question wording used in the Eurobarometer was as follows: "On the whole, are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied, or not at all satisfied with the life you lead?"
6. The Eurobarometer survey consists of two UK sweeps (Spring and Summer) each of which interview c1300 adults in the UK (including 300 in Northern Ireland). In each sweep there are approximately 100 interviews in Scotland (c200 per year).
7. See Chapter 4 for an in depth discussion of the factors related to subjective well-being.
8. The sample size for 'job satisfaction' is smaller as only those in paid employment at the time of interview were asked this question.
9. Those figures are after rounding to one decimal point.
10. Data on the 2007 ESS survey had not been released at the time of writing.
11. Helliwell used data from a single country (Finland) to estimate a distribution of suicide based on the distribution of life satisfaction and to calculate hypothetical national suicide rates based on the same principle. He found that this predicted the mean and standard deviation of the actual distribution very well.
12. Cases in Scotland have been excluded from the UK analysis.
13. As the findings in relation to the question on 'happiness' were very similar to those for life satisfaction, the equivalent data for this measure have been presented in Annex A.
14. The wording of the question was subtly different across the two surveys with ESS asking how satisfied people were with their ' present standard of living?' while SSA asked about ' general' standard of living. However this is unlikely to have had any great impact on responses.
15. SSA 2007 asked people how satisfied they were with their ' main' job, whereas ESS asked about 'present' job.
16. See Chapter 2 for a discussion of the top-level findings on subjective well-being in Scotland.
17. The data presented in this section are driven by logistic regression analysis, used to identify which of the factors listed above were associated with having a lower than average score on the subjective well-being measures included in the survey. More details including full regression models are included in Annex B of this report.
18. See Clark (2007), Blanchflower and Oswald (2008), Bell and Blanchflower (2007), Helliwell (2006), for further discussion on the relationship between age and subjective well-being.
19. The mean score for both 'life satisfaction' and 'happiness' was 8.
20. See for example Clark and Oswald (1994), Winklemann and Winklemann (1998),
21. See Table A.2 in Annex A.
22. There was no significant relationship between a person's assessment of how healthy they are and how satisfied or dissatisfied they were with their job.
23. See Heliwell and Putnam (2005), Heliwell (2003) and Layard (2005).
24. Respondents were asked whether they think that 'most people can be trusted' or 'you can't be too careful dealing with people.'
25. 'Well? What do you think? (2006) - The third national Scottish survey of public attitudes to mental health, mental well-being and mental health problems.'
26. For further details, see http://www.scottishexecutive.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/SIMD/Overview. The areas SSA respondents lived in were matched to SIMD quintiles, with 1 being the most deprived and 5 being the least deprived
27. The question on 'job satisfaction' was only asked of people who said they were in paid employment.
28. This refers to anyone living in the old Strathclyde Region.
29. Excluding 'job satisfaction'.
30. See Platt et al (2007) 'The epidemiology of suicide in Scotland 1989-2004: an examination of temporal trends and risk factors at national and local levels', Scottish Government
31. The Scottish Centre for Social Research was formed in February 2004 as the result of a merger between The National Centre's existing organisation within Scotland and Scottish Health Feedback, an independent research consultancy.
32. Like many national surveys of households or individuals, in order to attain the optimum balance between sample efficiency and fieldwork efficiency the sample was clustered. The first stage of sampling involved randomly selecting postcode sectors. The sample frame of postcode sectors was also stratified (by region, population density and the percentage of people in non-manual occupations) to improve the match between the sample profile and that of the Scottish population, while a further layer of stratification based on the Scottish Executive urban-rural classification enabled us to boost the number of addresses in remote and rural areas. For further details of the sample design, see para 6 below.
33. Lynn, Peter, et al (2001) Recommended standard final outcome categories and standard definitions of response rates for social surveys, Institute for Social and Economic Research
34. The stratification was based on 7 categories, with categories 4 and 5 of the Scottish Governmenr 8-fold classification collapsed together (i.e. Large urban areas (1), Other Urban Area (2), Accessible Small Town (3), Remote or Very Remote Small Town (4 and 5), Accessible Rural Area (6), Remote Rural Area (7), Very Remote Rural Area (8)). Categories 4 and 5 were collapsed in part because there was little difference between these areas in terms of known non-response - see point III above.
35. See http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/SIMD/Overview for further details on the SIMD.
36. These variables were created by the ScotCen/NatCen Survey Methods Unit. They are based on SIMD scores for all datazones, not just those included in the sample - so an individual who lives in the most deprived quintile of Scotland will also be included in the most deprived quintile in the SSA dataset.
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