PUBLIC ATTITUDES TO THE ENVIRONMENT - SURVEY
METHOD
The survey was designed to be representative of
the Scottish adult population living within private
households. Those in rural areas were over-sampled to
enable rural/urban comparisons to be made, but figures for
Scotland as a whole are weighted back to show the
distribution of the population in its true
proportions.
George Street Research was contracted to undertake the
survey fieldwork. Face-to-face paper-based interviews,
lasting about 40 minutes, were held in the home with a
selected adult member of the household. A total of 4,119
interviews were successfully conducted - a response rate of
65%.
Sampling details
Households were selected using a
multi-stage stratified approach. Samples
were
clustered to reduce fieldwork costs. To
minimise the effect of clustering on the results, a large
number of sample points (800) were specified, with a
maximum of eight interviews conducted at each point. The
sample points were spread across the whole of Scotland.
The sample was drawn from a 'cleaned' version of the
Postcode Address File (PAF) of residential
addresses. Within the PAF, each Scottish postcode was
classified according to the
rural/urban definition used in the
Scottish Household Survey.
The first level of
stratification was based on the six-fold
rural/urban definitions. Rural categories were deliberately
over-represented to ensure adequate coverage of the more
rural areas. A second level of stratification
was undertaken, based on the
Scottish Mosiac code. This classifies
households into distinct 'lifestyle types' which describe
their socio-economic and socio-cultural behaviour. This
stratification ensured that the sample was, as far as
possible, representative of Mosaic codes across
Scotland.
After stratification, 800 sample points were randomly
selected and 400 were assigned to each of sample A and
sample B - denoting which questionnaire would be
administered at each sample point (see
Survey
content). A random sample of eight addresses (and two
substitute addresses, in the event of any of the original
addresses being unsuitable e.g. empty premises) were then
drawn for each sample point and issued to the
interviewer.
Data were reweighted to correct for both the
over-representation of rural areas and non-response.
Further details are available in the
Technical
Report.