Scottish Social Attitudes 2025

About the study

Since 1999, Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) has been tracking the views and opinions of people’s social, political and moral attitudes in Scotland. Every year, members of the Scottish public are invited to take part and share their views on a range of topics such as work, equalities, welfare, health and how the country is run. Households are randomly selected from across Scotland to take part in the study to get a truly unbiased picture of attitudes in Scotland.  

Since 2023 the Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) survey has been run as a push-to-web survey alongside the British Social Attitudes survey, retaining comparability with the face-to-face survey mode from 1999 to 2019.

Findings

The key findings were as follows:

Attitudes to government and the Scottish Parliament  

• In 2025, 46% of people trusted the Scottish Government to work in Scotland’s best interests, in line with the 47% reported in 2023. Over the last ten years this has declined from 72% in 2015. Trust in the UK Government to act in Scotland’s best long-term interest remains lower than this at 18%, in line with 21% in 2023.
• Fewer than a quarter of people trusted the Scottish Government (23%), UK Government (11%) or their Local Council (13%) to make decisions that are fair to different groups of people. For the Scottish Government and Local Councils this has declined over time, while remaining above the level of the UK Government.

Views on government priorities, the health service, the general standard of living, and the economy  

• ‘Improve the economy’ remains the most frequently selected top priority for the Scottish Government at 33% in 2025, although this is a decrease from 42% in 2023. Other frequently selected top priorities in 2025 include ‘improve people’s health’ (19%), ‘improve housing’ (15%) and ‘improve standards of education’ (10%).  
• The public in 2025 remained:
  • More likely to be dissatisfied than satisfied (50% compared with 23%) with the way the National Health Service runs, as was the case in 2023.  
  • More likely to think the standard of the health service had fallen (60%) in the past year than increased (7%).  
  • More likely to think that the general standard of living had fallen (77%) than increased (5%), although the percentage who thought it had fallen decreased from 83% to 77% since 2023.

Tax, spending and redistribution  

• As was the case in 2023, respondents in 2025 continued to prefer increasing taxes and spending (45%) or keeping tax and spending at the same level (39%), with a smaller proportion preferring a reduction in taxes and spending (12%).  
• Similarly on redistribution, 45% agreed that the government should redistribute income from the better-off to those less well-off (27% disagree and 25% neither agree nor disagree).  

Importance of voting  

• As has been the case in previous years of the survey, a substantial majority of people still thought it was important to vote in elections to the Scottish Parliament (90%), UK Parliament (84%), and Local Councils (85%).  

Methodology

Fieldwork for the Scottish Social Attitudes survey took place between 16 September and 11 November 2025. SSA was conducted using a push-to-web design, with a telephone option for those either unwilling or unable to take part online. Addresses from across Scotland were randomly sampled from the Postcode Address File (PAF). At each selected address up to two adults aged 16 and over were invited to take part in the survey. There were two versions of the survey in 2025; one funded by ESRC (including for the International Social Sciences Programme) and one funded by Scottish Government.

In total, on the Scottish Government funded survey 1,549 fully completed interviews were obtained, with an individual response rate of 15%.

SSA was conducted using face-to-face interviewing between 1999 and 2019, and shifted to the current push-to-web design from 2023 onwards.

Further detail can be found in the technical report: Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2025: Technical Report - gov.scot