2 Introduction to the data sources
Department for Transport: operator data
2.1 This bulletin provides sub-Scotland level analyses of the annual returns from the Public Services Vehicle Operators study, run by the Department for Transport ( DfT).
2.2 Data is collected on local bus services, other non-local services, passenger journeys and distance travelled, concessionary fare reimbursement, staff employed and vehicle stock.
2.3 The survey is not designed to be representative at all sub-Scotland levels so care should be taken when analysing sub-Scotland data.
2.4 Some large year-on-year changes to the estimations for some areas is thought to be largely due to operators having difficulty assigning bus passenger boardings and vehicle kilometres to particular local authority areas.
2.5 Some figures presented in this bulletin may differ slightly from figures previously published in Bus and Coach due to ongoing data quality revisions by DfT. DfT data is presented in Table 1 - Table 22.
Scottish Household Survey data
2.6 This bulletin provides further analyses of transport related questions, asked by the Scottish Household Survey ( SHS) from 1999 to 2007. It also includes SHS Travel Diary information from 1999 to 2006.
2.7 The SHS is a survey of private households and does not cover some sections of the population - e.g. does not collect information about many students living in halls of residence.
2.8 The SHS collects a wide range of information with questions asked of either:
- the household as a whole,
- one randomly-chosen adult (aged 16 or over) member of the household;
- one schoolchild (if there is one in the household).
- Highest Income Householder
The results are then weighted to take account of differences in selection probabilities.
2.9 Where questions were asked of small numbers of individuals (due to sub sampling or the particular relevance of a question) results are produced by combining years to increase the sample size and therefore the reliability.
2.10 SHS results and Transport Scotland data are presented in Table 23 - Table 57.
2.11 SHS results are subject to sampling variability and care should be taken when interpreting year-on-year changes. Table 58 shows the confidence limits for the results and section A.17 describes how these should be used.
2.12 The data was extracted from both databases in January/February 2009 and does not take into account any subsequent revisions to the data.
Changes to this edition
2.13 The main changes to this edition include:
- the addition of new tables on travel to school, congestion and non-users views
- the addition of detailed Local Authority tables for all Local Authorities instead of just the five largest
- the removal of some views on public transport
- tables have been reordered to reflect the change in the bulletin structure
- added contents pages, colour figures and bulletin is now web-only.