Statistics

  • Making Better Use of Data for Land-Use and the Environment

    13th September 2021 by

    In this blog I will talk about work we are doing to make better use of data and evidence for land-use and the environment. I am also calling out to environmental and land-use analysts to get involved. Previously I wrote about improving the use of data that we hold with projects like data linkage. This…

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  • Research Data Scotland moving forward

    21st July 2021 by

    by Roger Halliday, Chief Statistician Developments are progressing at pace for the launch of the Research Data Scotland (RDS) service. Publishing the Outline Business Case for RDS is an important milestone in this work. The business case highlights the strong case for RDS and the reasoning behind why we’ve set it up. To improve the…

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  • Improving completeness of data on protected characteristics

    23rd June 2021 by

    by Roger Halliday, Chief Statistician Last year, our data on ethnicity was shown not to be adequate.  It was incomplete and so our understanding of the impact of Covid-19 on different parts of society wasn’t as good as it could be.  To overcome this, the independent Expert Reference Group on COVID-19 and Ethnicity recommended a…

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  • Working Group on Sex and Gender in Data – March update

    23rd March 2021 by

      By Roger Halliday, Chief Statistician Back in summer 2019 I was asked by the Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People to develop guidance to support public bodies collect and present data on sex and gender. The aim of the work isn’t simply guidance for its own sake, but to create the conditions…

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  • Calculation of Scotland level average private sector rents – improvements to methodology

    24th November 2020 by

    We’re making changes to the way that we calculate average rents at a Scotland level within our annual Private Sector Rent Statistics publication. Previous approach In previous publications, the Scotland level average rent figures have been calculated using an unweighted average. Average rent level figures in each area were combined into an overall Scotland figure…

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  • Bespoke Data Access Requests – an update

    28th October 2020 by

    by Roger Halliday, Chief Statistician Over the last few months, we have faced an extraordinary situation in relation to COVID-19 and all the challenges that has brought and we thought it was a good time to touch base regarding our data access arrangements. The current situation has progressed enough to allow a slight decreased in…

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  • Office for National Statistics COVID-19 Infection Survey

    23rd October 2020 by

    As part of Scotland’s Covid-19 testing strategy, Scotland is participating in the Office for National Statistics (ONS) COVID-19 Infection Survey. The first estimates of the percentage of people in Scotland who test positive for COVID-19 were published today, 23 October. The Scottish results are published on the gov.scot website, and on the ONS website alongside…

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  • New headline measure of COVID-19 test positivity rate

    19th October 2020 by

    We are changing the way we report the COVID-19 positivity rate as of 19 October 2020. The new approach addresses a limitation of the previous approach. This blog outlines why we are making this change and what its impact will be. Current approach The Scottish Government has been reporting data on the number of new…

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  • Seeking feedback on Research Data Scotland’s core principles

    25th August 2020 by

    by Roger Halliday, Chief Statistician I recently participated in the Administrative Data Research (ADR) Scotland public panel to discuss the development of Research Data Scotland (RDS) and focus specifically on the principles that underpin the new service.   The ADR Scotland public panel was created as a vital forum for understanding the views and perspectives…

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  • The Scottish COVID-19 Data and Intelligence Network

    18th August 2020 by

    by Roger Halliday, Chief Statistician For Scotland to continue to develop an approach to minimising the health, social and economic risks from COVID-19, we need robust and responsive evidence to make informed, real-time decisions in relation to the pandemic and to learn as we go.   For this reason, we have set-up the Scottish COVID-19…

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