We are pleased to announce the release today of a major new feature on the What Scotland Thinks website.

Regular users will be aware that since its initial launch in June the site has provided access to a comprehensive collection of data from polls and surveys on people’s attitudes towards Scotland’s constitutional future.  Since then we have updated that collection as new polls have been released and gradually filled gaps in our coverage of earlier polls.

However, that facility simply provides you with the ability to see what Scotland as a whole think about its future (and in some instances what the rest of Britain thinks too). It does not provide any information on the kinds of people – men or women, older or younger people, those with or without a degree, etc. – who are more or less likely to adopt a particular point of view. It also does not enable you to examine how people’s answers hang together – such as, for example, whether people who think that England benefits most economically out of the Union are more likely to support independence.

Now you can do so. All of the data on attitudes towards Scotland’s constitutional future collected by the Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) survey since 1999 have now been uploaded to What Scotland Thinks so you can easily explore and interrogate them for yourself.

You can find out, for example, whether men are more likely to support independence than women, or how far people’s constitutional preferences depend on their sense of national identity. You can examine too whether those who support independence do take a different view of who benefits most out of the Union. What hitherto required access to sophisticated statistical software can now be achieved through just a few clicks of a mouse.

Start exploring Scottish Social Attitudes survey data

We have also written some guidance on how to analyse SSA findings using the explorer tool.

Step by step guide to exploring the Scottish Social Attitudes survey

We hope you both enjoy the new interactive facility and find it useful. We would welcome your feedback – please email info@whatscotlandthinks.org. It will help us as we endeavour to make further improvements to the site in the coming months.

About the author

John Curtice is Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University, Senior Research Fellow at ScotCen and at 'UK in a Changing Europe', and Chief Commentator on the What Scotland Thinks website.