Scottish Social Attitudes

Scottish Social Attitudes is run by ScotCen and is made possible by the funding we receive from a variety of charitable and governmental sources each year.

Interested in understanding what the Scottish public think about the issues important to you? You can fund questions on the Scottish Social Attitudes survey.      

Scottish Social Attitudes is the sister survey to British Social Attitudes, the UK’s most important and longest running survey of public opinion. Based on the most robust survey methodology and highly respected in Westminster, Holyrood, academia and on Fleet Street, Scottish Social Attitudes' fifteen year trend is a unique resource in UK social science allowing us to track social change since 1999. 

What do funders get?

You can fund anywhere from 5 to 50 questions on the survey with a sample of between 1000 and 1500 people. You can also access more than 15 years’ worth of trend data from SSA and an array of demographics and have the opportunity to be part of the Scottish Social Attitudes report

• Trends over time: If you are funding questions that have been asked before then you get this older data as part of the package dating back to 1999.
• Demographic data: It is possible to analyse your questions across demographic data, from class, education, age and sex to region. As well as a wide set of other characteristics: our standard questions include political affiliation, employment, identity and income.  

Why Scottish Social Attitudes?

• Robust: A truly representative survey. We use random probability sampling and face to face interviewing to ensure that our findings give an accurate view of the Scottish public. 
• Influential: Politicians rely on the Scottish Social Attitudes survey to see what the public thinks about the big issues of the day, to track social change and predict where attitudes will be in the future. 
• Impactful: Every year the survey reaches millions of people through the media, reported in hundreds of articles and TV and radio news programmes; mentioned in thousands of tweets; and discussed in Parliament.

More information about funding the British Social Attitudes survey can be found here. 

Find out more

If you’re interested in funding some SSA questions please contact: info@scotcen.org.uk. 

The 'gold standard' of survey series

Every year, we ask 1,200 - 1,500 people to take part in Scottish Social Attitudes on the basis of random probability sampling. This technique ensures that everyone has an equal chance of being picked to take part, so the results are representative of the Scottish population.

And because we repeat many of the same questions over time, we're able to identify real changes in people's social attitudes.