Statistics

  • Our plans to update the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation

    20th November 2024 by

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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...

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  • Tell us what you think: review of the Scottish Care Experience Survey Programme

    12th March 2024 by

    We are reviewing the Scottish Care Experience Survey Programme. The programme includes a suite of national surveys which provide local and national information on the quality of health and care services from the perspectives of the people using them. The programme currently consists of four surveys: The Health & Care Experience Survey (HACE) covers GP...

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  • Join the new ScotStat Board – help improve Official Statistics in Scotland

    2nd February 2024 by

    Update: the deadline for applications has now been extended to 4th March 2024. Building trust in our statistics is fundamental to the work of statisticians, as mentioned in my previous blog. Central to building trust is regularly engaging with our users. In this blog I am offering the opportunity for people who have a keen...

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