Survey Content
The principal purpose of the survey is to collect information in the areas of Social Justice and Transport. A wide range of other topics is covered in the survey questionnaire in addition to these main policy areas.
Core questions, providing standard information about the composition and key characteristics of households, remain largely unchanged over time. However, the continuous nature of the survey and its modular design permits some flexibility, and the questionnaire has evolved over time. The survey also provides a base from which to commission more detailed follow-up surveys of sub-samples of the households in the survey.
The survey uses, where appropriate, the harmonised concepts and questions for government social surveys which have been developed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and takes account, where possible, of some of the definitions and questions used in the 2001 Census of Population. This will facilitate comparison with the results of other government surveys.
Current Questionnaire and Content Management
In the bid to keep up with policy intiatives and to assist in the collection of a robust evidence base, the questionnaire is revised every two years. The SHS team consults with internal and external users of SHS data. Questions can be amended, dropped or new ones added.
More information on the current review process can be found on the Questionnaire Review for 2009 page.
Minor amendments are made to the questionnaire throughout the year, although we aim to keep these to a minimum.
Some useful documents are:
Questionnaire Origins
Over the Summer 1998 period, a Consultation exercise was undertaken. Interested parties from within academia, the voluntary sector, local government and other bodies, as well as from a wide range of policy areas within the Scottish Executive, were asked to submit proposals for topics and questions to be included in the survey. The scale of response to the consultation exercise resulted in the number of proposals greatly exceeding the space available in the questionnaire, which is limited to an average of 45 minutes interviewing per household. An assessment of each proposal was made by the survey's Network Group and used by the Technical Group in its discussions of the topics for inclusion in the survey. An important criterion used by the Technical Group for selecting topics was the relevance of each proposal to the survey's main policy areas (see above).