SPSCC 11/01
SPSCC Survey Update Paper
Updates received from:
Catherine Millington (Scottish Crime and Justice Survey)
Nic Krzyzanowski (Scottish Household Survey)
Wendy van Rijswijk (Growing Up in Scotland)
Julie Ramsay (Scottish Health Survey)
Linzie Liddell (Scottish Social Attitudes)
Tom Spencer (Wealth and Assets Survey and Family Resources Survey)
Alan Winetrobe (Labour Force Survey – Scottish Boost)
1. Contract management
The only update on contract management came from the Wealth and Assets
Survey, where service level agreements are being constructed by ONS and
consortium members for the current financial year.
2. Field work
Fieldwork for the 2010 sweeps of the SHS and SHeS are now complete and
the 2011 sweeps are in the field. The 2010/11 sweep of the SCJS is
complete, representing the end of field work for the current contract period.
GUS and WAS are expected to have their 2010 field work completed soon.
The fieldwork for the 2011 SSA survey commences on the 1st of June. A slight
drop in household response has been noted for two surveys (SHS and
SHeS).
3. Data management
3.1
The SHS will shortly be undertaking a scoping study in how to facilitate
access to SHS datasets in formats suitable for different software platforms.
3.2
The Wave 2 datasets of the Wealth and Assets survey are currently
being constructed.
3.3
In the Labour Force Survey, planning is underway to transfer the
monthly economic profiles onto SNS, along with many of the tables from the
Local Area Labour Markets publication.
4. Reporting and Analysis
4.1
Two annual reports (SHS and GUS) are set to be released in the
Summer, while another three (SHeS, SSA and WAS) are expected to be
released towards the end of the year.
4.2
The 2009/10 Family Resources Survey publication was released by
DWP in May.
4.3
The LFS team are involved in a consultation aimed at defining the long
term strategy for the Local Area Labour Markets publication.
SPSCC 11/01
5. Procurement and funding
Three of the surveys (SHS, SHeS and the SCJS) are currently going through
the procurement process. Samples have been reduced for the latest sweeps
of the SSA and FRS.
6. Other issues and innovations
6.1
Successful user events have been carried out by the SCJS, GUS and
LFS teams. The SCJS team is planning to follow up their successful internal
stakeholder event with one aimed at external stakeholders.
6.2
Communities Analytical Services Division was restructured in April.
This led to the existing Housing and Household Surveys Branch being split
into a data collections branch (focused on survey contract management, data
management and dissemination) and a policy branch (focused on policy
engagement, analysis and reporting) on the SHS and SHCS.
6.3
The SHeS website has been re-developed to include an 'Analyst Help'
section to aid researchers who wish to carry out their own analysis of the
data.
6.4
In compensation for the reduction in fieldwork elements, Scotcen will
increase the researcher days allotted to analysis, offering additional briefing
papers for the SG on topics of policy salience. In addition, in order to ensure
the core module is as policy relevant as possible new public services
questions have been included.
6.5
The WAS Technical Group is currently looking at reducing the length of
the questionnaire. For waves beyond Wave 4 the Technical Group will be
looking at other innovations such as changing the mode of certain parts of the
questionnaire.
6.6
As for the LFS, New Standard Occupational Classification SOC 2010
being rolled out by ONS on their social surveys and administrative datasets.