The Scottish Government

Indicator title

Rating of neighbourhood as a good place to live.

National Indicator/Target

Increase the percentage of adults who rate their neighbourhood as a good place to live.

Brief description

This indicator shows the percentage of adults who rate their neighbourhood as a fairly or very good place to live.

Strategic Objective(s) to which indicator relates

This indicator informs progress in relation to:-

Safer and Stronger
Wealthier and Fairer

More Detailed Definitions

Definitions of keywords

Good rating of neighbourhood as a place to live includes "very good" or "fairly good" from a 5-point scale.

Neighbourhood is defined as "the street you live in and the streets nearby" (in urban areas) and as "the local area" (in rural areas).

Evidence Source

This data is from the Scottish Household Survey ( SHS), a large, continuous survey conducted throughout Scotland. This indicator is an indirect measure of neighbourhood satisfaction through the survey question 'Thinking about the neighbourhood you live in, how would you rate it as a place to live?'. The rating that residents give to their neighbourhoods is a good indication of how satisfied they are with them, overall, as places to live. Rating by residents will allow for the different attributes that different types of resident look for in their local neighbourhood.

The unit of measurement is the percentage of all random adults surveyed who respond 'fairly good' or 'very good' to this question.

As the indicator is based on data from a survey it is subject to sampling error.

Baseline and Past Trends

For both targets, the baseline is 2006 calendar year.

Chart: Rating of Neighbourhood as a place to live - percentage who said "very good" or "fairly good"

Source: Scottish government - Scottish Household Survey
Note: The 15% most deprived areas are defined using the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) 2004 for 1999 to 2004 data and the SIMD 2006 for 2005 and 2006 data.

Methodology

Number of people who respond 'fairly good' or 'very good' / Total adult population (based on SHS).

The estimated confidence interval for this indicator at Scotland level is 0.4 % and for the 15% most deprived areas the estimated confidence interval is 0.8%.

Data Ownership and Quality Assurance

Indicator is from the Scottish Household Survey ( SHS) which is a National Statistics product. Scottish Government are the owners of the data.

Publication of Data

Both indicators are taken from special analysis of SHS. Updates on indicators will be available when annual SHS report for 2007 is published (expected in June 2008). SHS Website is at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/16002