Description:
This indicator measures the percentage of households who report being either “very satisfied” or “fairly satisfied” with their house or flat.
Source of Data:
The Scottish Household Survey (SHS) is a continuous survey based on a random sample of the general population in private residences in Scotland. Questions are asked face-to-face by an interviewer in homes or remotely by telephone/video all over Scotland. Participation is voluntary, but is important in helping make representative estimates for Scotland.
The SHS is designed to provide reliable and up-to-date information on the composition, characteristics, attitudes and behaviour of private households and individuals, both nationally and at a sub-national level and to examine the physical condition of Scotland’s homes. It covers a wide range of topics to allow links to be made between different policy areas.
From January 2012, a new Scottish Household Survey (SHS) went in to the field with a substantially restructured sample design which integrated the previous Scottish House Condition Survey (SHCS). Data presented here up to but not including 2012 are therefore from when the SHCS was carried out as an independent survey. However, we consider the consistency of the time series to be relatively unaffected by the SHS/SHCS sample design changes in 2012.
Data for this indicator is published in the Scottish Household Survey Annual Report, which can be found here. An interactive data explorer for the SHS can be found here.
The SHS is a sample survey and therefore all figures are estimates which lie at the midpoint of a confidence interval which depends primarily on sample size. By convention, a 95% confidence interval is used to quantify the variability of a sample estimate, under which there is a 1 in 20 chance that the true value will fall outside the given confidence interval.
Definitions:
Approximately one quarter of households participating in the Scottish Household Survey are asked to respond to the question “On the whole, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with this house/flat?” by selecting one of the following answers:
- Very satisfied
- Fairly satisfied
- Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
- Fairly dissatisfied
- Very satisfied
- No opinion
Criteria for Change:
For consistency with the evaluation of all other NPF indicators which use data from the 2022 Scottish Household Survey, the current evaluation is based on the presence of a statistically significant difference between the estimate for 2019 and 2022.
Future issues or reviews:
From 2024 this question will only be asked in the SHS in even years and it will no longer be possible to provide annual updates.