The Scottish Government

DATA RELEASE PROCEDURES

This page explains how we manage the release of information from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS), including arrangements for publication of summary results and access by users to the SHS database.

SHS and National Statistics
Internal data access and management prior to publication
Release timing and arrangements
Access to SHS database
Other publications from SHS data

Outputs from the Scottish Household Survey are part of National Statisticsand the management of the survey and release of information is governed by the National Statistics Code of Practice and Protocols.

The National Statistics Code of Practice and the Protocol on Release Practices were adopted across the UK (including in the Scottish Executive) on 11 ^th October 2002. The Code of Practice aims to improve the quality, reliability, accessibility and relevance of official statistics and build public trust in official statistics. The Release Practices Protocoloutlines the key principles for release of National Statistics, in particular that release should be orderly and as early as possible after compilation and that there should be equality of access to data.

The SHS contractors provide the Executive with a cumulative dataset. This contains the results for the main part of the survey for the calendar year up to a particular quarter (provided three months after the end of that quarter). Once this has been received and some basic validation carried out, that quarter's data (and any revisions to the data for any previous quarters) are made available on the SHS database to Scottish Executive analysts to allow them to carry out analysis and explore data for quality assurances purposes.

Because the processing of the more specialised Travel Diary data is more complex, and has lower priority, the contractors supply them to a later timetable. In consequence, the Travel Diary results become available at a later stage in the year.

As with all National Statistics data, any other access to and use of the data within the Executive is restricted as set out in the Scottish Executive Compliance Statement on the published NS protocol.

Following initial validation checks on the data, a short Statistics Publication Notice is published on the SE website. This gives a brief summary of some of the key trends from the survey, and may also include a brief note on some questions added recently to the survey. This ensures that we meet the National Statistics requirement for orderly release as soon as possible after compilation.

Once we have published this key summary information, SHS data for the quarter are publicly available and can be used to answer requests for information, for example from policy colleagues, members of the public and in response to Scottish Parliamentary Questions.

The timetable for the provision and publication of the main survey data for the first three quarters of the calendar year is therefore:

As indicated earlier, the timetable for the Travel Diary data is later.

The arrangements for the publication of the data for the final quarter of the calendar year (and hence for the calendar year as a whole) are different: there is no Statistics Publication Notice for the fourth quarter. Following delivery of the final quarter's data for a year, the first release of SHS results for the year as a whole is the Annual Report, which is published in August. This gives a more detailed description of key trends from the survey, and is accompanied by a detailed Technical Report that describes the survey methodology and issues affecting interpretation of the survey data.

Annual SHS datasets are made available for users, mainly through the deposit of anonymised datasets to the UK Data Archive and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA). Our aim is to deposit the annual SHS datasets with the Data Archive and CoSLA within a month of publication of the Annual Report.

Again, because of the specialised nature of the data, and the complexity of the processing required, the Travel Diary data are deposited later.

For further information or requests for specific analyses or extracts from the database, please contact the SHS Project Manager.

SHS supports a wide range of statistical and other analytical publications by the Scottish Executive. National Statistics outputs which draw on SHS data also comply with the National Statistics Code of Practice and Protocols.