Attitudes to violence and escape facilities

Authors: John Curtice, Catharine Bromley, Rachel Ormston, Susan Reid

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Summary

This report presents findings from a study, conducted on behalf of NHS Health Scotland by the Scottish Centre for Social Research (ScotCen), to develop robust survey questions to assess:

• The perceived availability of ‘escape facilities’
• Attitudes to violence

The study had a two-phase design, anchored around the 2009 Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) survey. The first phase, which took place between October 2008 and the end of March 2009, involved the design and initial testing (using SSA survey processes) of draft questions. The second phase, which took place between May and September 2009, involved more extensive piloting of the questions through their inclusion in the nationally-representative 2009 SSA survey.

This report is an updated version of the interim report, published by NHS Health Scotland in June 2009. It incorporates findings from further analysis of the questions included in the 2009 SSA survey. These questions have been developed for use in future Scotland-wide surveys, to collect meaningful data for monitoring progress on two of the national Scottish mental health indicators for adults established by NHS Health Scotland, namely:

•  ‘Escape facility’ - assessment of the perceived availability of a valued safe places where an individual can and wants to go to to ‘escape’ from things

• Attitudes to violence – the percentage of adults who think that violence is acceptable in some circumstances.

Introduction

This report presents findings from a study, commissioned by NHS Health Scotland and carried out by the Scottish Centre for Social Research (ScotCen), to develop a robust set of survey questions to measure perceived availability of ‘escape facilities’ and attitudes to violence which can be used in national surveys in the future to measure progress in these areas.

The study had a two-phase design, anchored around the 2009 Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) survey. The first phase, which took place between October 2008 and the end of March 2009, involved the design and initial testing of questions to address the two sets of issues (perceived availability of ‘escape facilities’ and attitudes to violence).

The second phase, which took place between May and September 2009, involved a large-scale field test with a nationally-representative sample, carried out as part of the 2009 SSA survey. This final report incorporates findings from Phase 2, and updates the interim report on Phase 1 published by NHS Health Scotland in June 2009