3 Understanding this Report
The term "Scottish Executive" or " SE" is used to include all Core Departments and Scottish Executive Agencies and Associated Departments that took part in the 2006 Employee and Secondee Surveys.
The term "Core" is used to include all Core Departments respondents including those seconded into those Departments.
The term "Agencies and Associated Departments" or "Agencies" is used to include all those employees in an SE Agency or Associated Department, along with those seconded.
Results from both the Core, Agencies and Secondee surveys have been combined and those who took part are collectively referred to as "respondents" for reporting purposes.
3.1 Percentage Positive/Agree Responses
In the main, results are reported as "percentage positive" (or "percentage favourable"). For all of the positively phrased questions, this indicates the percentage of respondents who selected an "agree/strongly agree" response. For negatively worded questions, the score stated relates to respondents who selected a "disagree/strongly disagree" response.
It should be noted that in some cases when numbers are rounded off to the nearest whole number, the total percentages may not always add up to 100%.
3.2 Benchmark Comparisons
Throughout the report, the SE's results where possible are compared with external benchmark scores calculated from ORC International's ORCPerspectives database. ORCPerspectives currently holds the survey results from over 200 organisations, representing the views of over 1.4 million employees and so gives a robust indication of typical levels of satisfaction. To ensure that the most meaningful comparison was made, results are compared to the Central Government benchmark and overall UK benchmark (all public and private sector organisations across the UK contained in ORCPerspectives). A list of all questions that can be compared to the benchmarks is in Appendix 2.
The results have also been compared to the results of the previous employee survey where possible.
3.3 Demographic Differences
The results from the survey were analysed by each of the demographic questions asked in the questionnaire. The number of responses upon which data is based is important, particularly when looking at group comparisons. It should be noted that:
- Data based upon a small number of responses should be treated with caution as each individual response has a large impact on the group score.
- Data based on less than 10 respondents is not reported both for reasons of statistical reliability and anonymity of respondents.