How did we approach our public confidence survey?

In April 2020, the Authority commissioned Mark Diffley Consultancy Ltd to run a series of surveys via the ScotPulse panel survey. Questions focused on public confidence and policing during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Four waves were conducted between April 2020 and February 2021. Five areas were consistently explored across three or more waves. They related to:

• How good a job police in the local area were doing
• Views on levels of police presence in respondents’ local areas
• Confidence in police responding to and dealing with incidents.
• Views on how police are handling the Covid-19 lockdown
• Views on the issuing of Fixed Penalty Notices for Covid-19 breaches.

The first three areas replicated questions from the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2019/20 (SCJS), with the first area also replicated questions in the Scottish Victimisation Telephone Survey 2020.

While not directly comparable due to different survey methods, this provides a broad indication about the reliability of the findings.