Since it was established in the run-up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the function of WhatScotlandThinks has been to provide all those who visit it with impartial, up-to-date information on public attitudes towards how Scotland and the constituent parts of the UK are, and should be, governed.
In order to maintain our commitment to presenting this information as clearly as we can on a modern, user-friendly website, we are pleased to let you know that we will be upgrading WhatScotlandThinks in the coming weeks.
While the layout and functionality will be brought up-to-date, the site’s web address (URL) will not change. All the content currently available on WhatScotlandThinks, including questions, polls, blog posts and user comments, will be available on the updated version of the site.
Comments that have been made on blog posts will be transferred to the updated site along with the blogs to which they relate. While the update takes place, the ability to comment on blogs on the site may be restricted for a very short period (around 1-2 days). We will however aim to get the comment functionality on the new site up and running as soon as we can. There may also be a slight delay in making the Scottish Social Attitudes time series data accessible on the upgraded site; however, we will ensure that this becomes available as soon as possible.
As well as refreshing the look of WhatScotlandThinks, upgrading the site will also enable us to add increased functionality – some of which may be familiar if you visit our ‘WhatUKThinks:EU’ website.
When looking at questions you will now be able to filter by mode, which will allow you to see changes over time for polls that use the same methodology (e.g. asking people online, by telephone etc.). You will also be able to identify which other questions have been asked on the same poll, and to navigate easily between them. In addition, the new format will allow you to specify the date range of a graph when looking at long-running questions, enabling you to examine how attitudes towards particular issues may have shifted during a specific period of time.
As valued users, we hope that you will see the benefit from this upgrade. Following the result of the general election on 12th December, questions on the constitutional status of Scotland and the other constituent parts of the UK are unlikely to go away in the near future. We hope this new and improved website will continue to help you access clear, up-to-date and accurate information on what the public are thinking about these questions.
About the author
Alex Scholes is a Senior Researcher in the Social Attitudes team at ScotCen Social Research, with a particular interest in political attitudes. He works on a range of projects including the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, which tracks changing public attitudes in Scotland to a range of different political and social issues.
