Scottish Government

Title

Public perceptions of public services delivered

Associated Targets

None

Brief Description

The indicator is intended to demonstrate one dimension of the quality of public services, namely satisfaction (not necessarily same as quality) and provide an overview rather than detail on specific sectors. Satisfaction will be measured in relation to three specific types of public services where Scottish Government have a policy interest and where they have a high public importance. They are health services; public transport; schools.

Strategic Objective(s) to Which Indicator Relates

This indicator is intended to demonstrate improvement in public services in Scotland (as defined by users). It fits with the wealthier and fairer objective in terms of ensuring public services are available/accessible to all and of an acceptable standard to the citizen.

More Detailed Definitions

Definitions of Keywords

Users of services are defined as those who had an opinion on the quality of a particular service.

Evidence Source

Scottish Household Survey

In the absence of a single readily available indicator to measure satisfaction with public services, a composite measure of the perceptions of the above three groups of service was developed.

Results at local authority level are available annually for the larger local authorities and every two years for the smaller local authorities.

For more information on the Scottish Household Survey, see www.scotland.gov.uk/shs

The Scottish Household Survey (SHS) previously used a fairly simplistic weighting strategy, where no additional corrective weighting was applied to the data beyond that required to account for sample design and differential response rates between local authorities.

Following a review completed in 2009, a new weighting strategy has been implemented which accounts for both the basic design weights (the old strategy) and any residual mismatch between the profile of responding households/adults and the profile of the population. All SHS estimates are now calibrated against household and population estimates produced by the General Register Office for Scotland.

Further information can be obtained from: www.scotland.gov.uk/SHSMethodology

Baseline and Past Trends

Baseline year 2007 = 57.1%.

This was the first year these questions were included in the survey.

Please note that the time series has been revised following the implementation of a new weighting strategy to the Scottish Household Survey (please see Evidence Source section for further information). This baseline figure was previously set as 57.8%.

Methodology for Data Source

The indicator on satisfaction with public services is derived using the question RF10F from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS). This question was introduced into the survey in 2007, and is asked of three-quarters of the sample (approx 10,000 households a year). It asks:

"Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with each of these council services?" and then lists eight public services to give opinions on. The three that were used for this indicator were Local health services, Local schools and Public transport. The respondent could say:

Very satisfied
Fairly satisfied
Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied
Fairly Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
No Opinion

The indicator is on the basis of the percentage of adults who said that they were very or fairly satisfied with all three services, excluding "no opinion". So, if a respondent said they were satisfied with local health services and public transport, but had no opinion about local schools (perhaps because they were not users of that service) they are counted as being satisfied with the services in their area. The same applies for other combinations of satisfaction and no opinion, except for the small percentage of respondents who answered "no opinion" to all three and therefore were excluded from the denominator.

On the basis of the SHS's standard estimates of sampling variability, the 95% confidence limits around the baseline estimate is +/- 1.2 percentage points.

Data Ownership and Quality Assurance

National Indicator 5 is from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS) which is a National Statistics product. Scottish Government are the owners of the data.

Publication of Data

The data are published in the Scottish Household Survey Annual Report, which is published annually in August via www.scotland.gov.uk/SHSAnnualReport.

Methodology for Recent Change Arrow on Scotland

This evaluation is based on: any difference within +/- 1 percentage points of last year's figure suggests that the position is more likely to be maintaining than showing any change. An increase of 1 percentage points or more suggests the position is improving; whereas a decrease of 1 percentage points or more suggests the position is worsening.