Scottish Government

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Evaluations of public services

Standards in the last year

13. Public evaluations of various aspects of public services and life in Scotland were determined by asking people whether they thought standards had increased, stayed the same or fallen in the last year. Areas covered were:

• the standard of the health service in Scotland
• the quality of education in Scotland
• the general standard of living in Scotland
• public transport in Scotland, and
• Scotland's economy.

14. On balance, the proportion of people who say standards have fallen is no higher than the proportion who say they have increased for 4 of the 5 areas examined. Indeed, more people feel living standards and education have improved (28% and 25% respectively) than think they have fallen (21% and 16%). The health service, in contrast, receives a less favourable evaluation, with more than twice as many people saying standards have fallen (36%) as say they have increased (17%). However, the most common perception of each area is that things have stayed the same.

Figure 1 Evaluations of public services over past twelve months, 2005 (%)

Sample size: 1549

15. Across all 5 areas, many people were not able to offer an opinion on standards in the last year. For example, more than 1 in 5 (22%) are unable to evaluate the performance of Scotland's economy, with a similar proportion unsure whether standards of public transport and education have increased, fallen or stayed the same. ² In part, this reflects patterns in use of public services - for example, among those who use public transport less than once a month, 33% could not offer an opinion on standards, compared with just 5% of those who use it daily.

16. Although the findings presented here paint a somewhat gloomy picture of public attitudes towards standards in the Health Service, it is worth noting that assessments of individual NHS services tend to be much more favourable. Another module of the 2005 Scottish Social Attitudes survey explored attitudes towards the NHS in more detail and found much higher satisfaction levels for individual services than for the NHS as a whole. For example, 7 in 10 were satisfied or very satisfied with their local General Practitioners ( GPs) service, and around 5 in 10 said the same for outpatient, in-patient and accident and emergency services.

Public services evaluations over time

17. How do 2005 findings on evaluations of public services compare with results from previous years? We constructed 'net balance' scores for different public services since 2001. Positive figures indicate that more people say standards have increased than say they have fallen. A negative figure indicates the opposite. 'Net balance' scores are used on several occasions throughout this report to represent the overall balance of opinion on a particular issue.

18. The first point to note is that the reference period for these questions changed in 2004. The questions were initially asked with reference to election cycles. In 2001 people were asked to consider the period since the previous general election in 1997, while in 2003 they were asked to think back to 1999 (the time of the first Scottish Parliament elections). In 2004, the reference period was shortened to the 'last 12 months'. ³ However, this shortening did not appear to hugely affect people's evaluations. The net balance scores for health and living standards were very similar in 2003 and 2004. The education score was somewhat different across these two years. However, taking all 4 years of data into account, the overall picture does not look radically different before and after the change in reference period.

19. 'Net balance' scores for standards in the health service have been consistently negative since 2001. However, they are much less negative in 2005 (-19) than in 2004 (-28), suggesting recent improvements in public views of health service performance. The net balance score for education is also more positive in 2005 (+9) than in 2004 (+5). Finally, the balance of opinion on standards of living in Scotland remained steady at +7 in 2004 and 2005.

Figure 2 Net balance scores for health, education and living standards, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005

Sample size: 2001 = 1605, 2003 = 1508, 2004 = 1637, 2005 = 1549

20. Evaluations of the economy and standards in public transport were only introduced to the Scottish Social Attitudes survey in 2004. Views on public transport appear to be slightly more negative in 2005 than in 2004. However, only further years of data will indicate whether this decline is simply a fluctuation or an emerging trend.

Table 4 Net balance scores for strength of the economy and public transport, 2004 and 2005

Evaluation of public services among different groups

21. How do evaluations of public services in the last year vary across different social and demographic groups? Logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine which demographic and attitudinal factors are significantly and independently associated with believing standards had increased in the last year in each of the 5 areas discussed ⁴. Logistic regression is a statistical technique used to summarise the relationship between a 'dependent' variable (in this case, belief that standards have increased in the last year) and one or more 'independent' explanatory variables (for example, sex, age, party-political identity, etc). It is particularly useful when explanatory variables are likely to be related to each other (for example, area deprivation and class), since it takes the relationships between these into account in determining which are statistically significant. Only those factors found to be significantly and independently associated with believing standards have improved are included in the tables that follow.

Sex and age

22. Men were more likely than women to give positive evaluations of the performance of the economy, public transport and the general standard of living in the past 12 months (Table 5). While women are no more likely than men to say standards in these areas have fallen, they are more likely to say they do not know how to evaluate the performance of the economy (28% of women, compared with 15% of men) and public transport (24% compared with 17%).

Table 5 Evaluations of standards in the last 12 months, by sex, 2005

23. Young people held the most positive views of any group about standards in education (Table 6). Those aged 18-24 had a 'net score' of +29 (compared with +10 among those over 65). However, they were less likely than older people to feel the general standard of living had improved (29%, compared with 36%).

Table 6 Evaluations of standards in the last 12 months, by age, 2005

Service use

24. Service use was a key predictor of positive evaluations of the standard of public transport (Table 7). Thirty-five percent of those who use public transport every day thought standards had improved in the last year, compared with just 12% of those who use it rarely (less than once a month) or never. This is clearly positive in the sense that those using public transport are best placed to judge standards in practice. However, it also highlights the uphill struggle faced in shifting the opinion of sceptical non-users to persuade them to use public transport in the first place.

25. There is also some evidence that recent experience of the education system, whether direct (young people) or indirect (parents with school age children), inclines people to more favourable evaluations of standards. While the most common assessment among those with a child of school age is that standards in education have stayed the same, on balance they are a little more positive than those without school-aged children. As discussed above, young people, who are most likely to have recent direct experience of the education system, are more favourable than older people in their assessments of standards in education (Table 6).

26. However, recent personal experience of the NHS is not associated with a more positive assessment of health service performance (Table 7). Sixteen percent of recent users felt standards had increased, compared with 21% of non-users. That said, differences in the views of users and non-users are not very large. Further, given that a very large proportion of the population have contact with the NHS in any given year (in 2005, nearly 8 in 10 SSA respondents were NHS users), direct experience is not a hugely useful means of understanding attitudes to the health service in general. It is also worth noting that research which has asked about individual health services ( GPs, hospitals, etc.) tends to find the opposite pattern to our results - that is, users tend to rate individual services more highly than non-users (Bromley and Hewson, 2005).

Table 7 Evaluations of standards in the last 12 months, by service use, 2005

Self-rated hardship

27. The most pronounced differences in attitudes towards changing living standards relate to perceptions of hardship (Table 8). People who say they are living comfortably are nearly twice as likely as those having difficulty coping to say that living standards have increased over the past year (35% and 19% respectively). The difference in 'net balance' scores between these groups is even more pronounced (+13 compared with -16).

Table 8 Evaluations of standard of living in the last 12 months, by self-rated hardship, 2005

Party political identification

28. Finally, there were significant differences in the attitudes of people who identified with the political parties that form the current Scottish Executive (Labour and Liberal Democrat) and those who identified with opposition parties or expressed no party identification. For example, those who identify with parties currently in opposition (Conservatives and the Scottish National Party) are more likely than Labour and Liberal Democrat identifiers to think standards in the health service have fallen and much less likely to feel they have increased (reflected in their much lower 'net scores' - Table 9).

29. A similar relationship between satisfaction with the NHS and political identification was seen in 2004 and has long been identified in analyses of the British Social Attitudes survey (see, for example, Bromley and Hewson, 2005). Very similar patterns of attitudes by party identification can be seen for education, public transport and the economy. It is perhaps worth noting, however, that party identification is likely to be associated with other underlying attitudes (towards the scope and role of the welfare state in general, for example). Without further detailed investigation it is not possible to establish whether it is party identification in itself, or these underlying attitudes that are the key drivers of positive or negative evaluations of public services in Scotland.

Table 9 Evaluations of standards in the last 12 months, by party identification, 2005