Statistics
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Updates to Data Zones and Intermediate Zones now published
16th December 2024 by Office of the Chief Statistician
The Scottish Government has today published updated versions of Data Zones and Intermediate Zones. Data Zones and Intermediate Zones have been updated to reflect changes to population and other geographical boundaries since they were last revised in 2014 following the 2011 Census. In particular, the proposed changes have been produced to align with new population...
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Changing the International Territorial Levels (ITLs) for Scotland – Consultation Analysis now published
11th December 2024 by Office of the Chief Statistician
The Scottish Government has published its analysis of responses to the recent consultation on Changing the International Territorial Level geography for Scotland. The Office for National Statistics are currently reviewing existing ITL boundaries for the UK. The report contains the Scottish Government’s recommendation to the Office for National Statistics for how the ITL boundaries for...
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Our plans to update the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation
20th November 2024 by lisaclark
By The SIMD team The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) is a tool for identifying the places in Scotland where people are experiencing disadvantage across different aspects of their lives. It is the Scottish Government’s standard approach to identifying areas of multiple deprivation in Scotland, and is widely used to identify opportunities to improve...
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Statement from the Chief Statistician on the Annual Population Survey
14th November 2024 by lisaclark
Challenges in Gathering Scotland’s Data: How Response Rates Are Impacting the Annual Population Survey In recent years we have seen difficulties in getting people to respond to surveys and other data collections. These problems are affecting most surveys across the UK. In this blog I will describe the problems with the Annual Population Survey and...
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Working with producers of statistics
19th September 2024 by lisaclark
This is the second of two blogs published by the Office of the Chief Statistician in Scottish Government in response to recommendations of the Independent Review of the UK Statistics Authority by Professor Denise Lievesley. Through the blogs we touch on the purpose of Government statistics which are fundamental to open and transparent government and...
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Serving the needs of users of statistics
12th September 2024 by lisaclark
This is the first of two blogs published by the Office of the Chief Statistician in Scottish Government in response to recommendations of the Independent Review of the UK Statistics Authority by Professor Denise Lievesley. Through the blogs we touch on the purpose of Government statistics which are fundamental to open and transparent government and...
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The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey, impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the latest survey sweep
12th August 2024 by lisaclark
The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to stop face-to-face interviews for the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) along with the other household surveys. When fieldwork restarted in November 2021, remaining restrictions meant we had to conduct the survey differently. But we didn’t know if this would affect the quality of the data collected, who would...
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Council Tax Comparisons between Scotland and England – Coherence Blog
11th July 2024 by lisaclark
This blog represents part of our themed month to support coherence in statistics. Often, we hear statisticians refer to coherence in the context of the ability to compare statistics across different parts of the UK, or other geographies. Jon Hunter in Scottish Government’s Local Government Analytical Unit describes his recent work to improve contextual information...
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Updating our statistical geographies – Data Zones, Intermediate Zones and ITLs
10th July 2024 by Lee Bunce
Geography plays an important role in the production of official statistics. Everything happens somewhere, and presenting our statistics geographically is crucial to ensuring that statistics can properly support citizens and policy makers to make informed decisions about communities. It is important then that we ensure the geographical boundaries we use in our statistics remain fit...
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Resetting the focus: how we’re making statistics in Scotland better
20th May 2024 by paulmatthews
by Paul Matthews, Senior Statistician in the Office of the Chief Statistician. I used to play tennis a bit when I was younger. Definitely not at a Murray level (!), but I found it fun. I wasn’t the sporty type, so it was rare for me to find something I enjoyed. Back then it was...