Hansard

I offer apologies from my co-author, Catherine Bromley. We discovered that she had another engagement this morning, from which she could not free herself, in connection with a survey that she is conducting.The project was very much a collaborative effort. It started with discussions between the National Centre for Social Research, the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality, the Disability Rights Commission and Stonewall Scotland. We gradually developed a project idea and then presented it to the Scottish Executive, which graciously funded most, although not all, of the work—a couple of the commissions put up some of the money. We included 40 questions on the 2002 Scottish social attitudes survey, which means that our research is based on interviews with just over 1,600 people who were interviewed in the summer of 2002.The Scottish social attitudes survey is an annual survey that was started and is in a sense owned by the National Centre for Social Research and particularly the National Centre for Social Research Scotland, which has its own offices in Edinburgh. Its inspiration is the British social attitudes survey, with which members might be familiar. The British social attitudes survey, which started in 1983, has two principal objectives. One is to facilitate the academic study of public opinion and how it changes. The second is to provide policy-relevant information about attitudes. Our assumption is that, although public policy should not necessarily simply follow public opinion, it needs to be informed by an understanding of public opinion. We therefore cover a range of topics of social and political interest. When devolution was on the horizon in 1999, we thought that, given that the number of people in Scotland interviewed by the British social attitudes survey was in line with Scotland's proportion of the British population, the sample sizes would be too small for us to talk about Scotland in particular. Moreover, of course, the British survey would not focus on topics of particular interest in Scotland. For those reasons, we started the Scottish social attitudes survey as a similar annual survey with similar objectives.The project was designed to examine the extent of discriminatory attitudes with respect to women, disabled people, ethnic minorities and gay men and lesbians—the four groups on which the partner organisations are focused. It was also designed to investigate three areas. The first was how much Scots believe that there are discriminatory attitudes in Scotland. The second was the extent and character of discriminatory attitudes, in so far as they exist in Scotland. The third was in a sense the most academic part of the project—trying to understand why people hold discriminatory attitudes, including the extent to which the reasons why people hold discriminatory attitudes towards each of the four groups are similar.Obviously, to study so-called discriminatory attitudes, it is necessary to have a definition of what a discriminatory attitude is. The next slide shows the definition that we applied in the research. Essentially, it is the belief that certain social groups should not be involved in something that we would regard as something that most people in society—if not all of society—would be expected to do. That is what, colloquially, we were trying to get at. Another way of putting it is to say that a discriminatory attitude is the belief that certain forms of social exclusion should occur.It is crucial to understand that the study is of attitudes, not of experience. Some members will have read the press reports about the extent to which people from English backgrounds feel that they have been discriminated against in Scotland. We are not into that game. We are not into the game of measuring the extent to which people from ethnic minorities or women feel that they are discriminated against. We are trying to tap and understand attitudes that may be regarded as discriminatory according to the definition that we have applied. I will briefly go through the broad answers to the three questions that we tried to address in the research.The first question concerned how much discrimination people thought existed in Scotland. Most people thought that there was some discrimination, but not everybody thought that there was a great deal of it. The second headline was that some groups were thought to be more likely to be the subject of discrimination than others. As the chart shows, the degree of perceived discrimination is less as we move from left to right. The biggest bar, on the left-hand side, is for ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities comprised the group that was thought to be most likely to be subjected to prejudice. In contrast, women comprised the group that was thought to be least likely to be subjected to prejudice.However, if we put the furthest-left bar and the one next to it together—which gives us the figure for the number of people who thought that there was a great deal, quite a lot or some discrimination—we see that most people thought that some discrimination existed in respect of all the groups. Another way of saying that is indicated in the next slide, which shows that around 50 per cent of people thought that all four groups experience a little, quite a lot or a great deal of prejudice. Perhaps more striking is the fact that only 5 per cent of people thought that none of the four groups experienced prejudice in Scottish society. Nevertheless, people did not think that there was a great deal of prejudice. Only one in 10 people thought that all four groups suffered a great deal or quite a lot of prejudice.Certainly, prejudice is thought to exist and the extent of it varies according to the group in question. However, it is not necessarily thought to be great. People seemed to think that it existed to some degree, but they did not all think that it was extensive. The next slide shows some of the groups that were thought to be most likely to think that discriminatory attitudes exist: younger people, people living in urban areas, women and people with high levels of education.Let us turn to the second question. The next slide shows us the simple, summary headline measure of what we found. The question was a general one that was not tied to any specific group, unlike the other questions in the survey. We asked people which of two views came closest to their own. The first was: "Scotland should do all it can to get rid of prejudice". The second was: "Sometimes good reason to be prejudiced" against a particular group. As you can see, just over a quarter of people gave the answer that we would regard as being an indication of a discriminatory viewpoint. Two thirds of people felt that all kinds of prejudice should be got rid of. In a sense, that is typical of a lot of the figures that I will show. Prejudicial or discriminatory attitudes exist. They are minority viewpoints, but they are held by a not insubstantial number of people.Just as we were interested in differences in the degree to which the various different groups were thought to be subjected to prejudice, we were equally interested in finding out towards which of those groups discriminatory attitudes were most common. In order to do that, we tried, where possible, to ask exactly the same question in relation to all four groups. The next slide, which illustrates that kind of question, is headed "People's preferred kind of MSP". We asked people whether they would prefer to have a gay or lesbian as an MSP, or somebody who is not gay or lesbian, or whether that would not make any difference. Most people said that it would not make any difference but, as the slide shows, nearly one in five respondents said that they would prefer not to have somebody who was openly gay or lesbian as their MSP. In contrast, the proportion of people who did not want a female MSP or somebody who was disabled as their MSP was much lower, at 4 per cent. As we saw with an earlier question, gays and lesbians and black people and Asians appear to be more likely to be the subject of discriminatory viewpoints than either women or disabled people.The survey dealt with the degree of discriminatory attitudes with respect to relationships and family life. Some of those matters are currently the subject of public policy proposals and other developments. The next slide shows the proportion of people who agree and disagree with various statements. The first is that it is the man's job to earn the money and the woman's job to stay at home and look after the kids. The second question is about the degree to which people would feel unhappy if a relative of theirs were to marry somebody of a different ethnic or racial background. The third question is whether marriage between gays should be allowed. The big black bar on each of the graphs represents the element that disagrees with the discriminatory viewpoint. Disagreement with the discriminatory viewpoint is the more common but, in each case, some people share that viewpoint. Again, it is on the issue concerning gay men and lesbians that attitudes are most divided and discriminatory attitudes are most common. The survey examines potential sources of discrimination with respect to employment and the labour market. A similar story emerges on the following slide, which shows that, although more people agree than disagree that people from ethnic minorities provide Scotland with much-needed skills, 18 per cent disagree. As far as ethnic minorities are concerned, discriminatory attitudes appear to be most common with regard to questions of employment.Another question that allowed us to compare groups was who would make a suitable primary school teacher. That enabled us to get at the question of the gender stereotyping of occupations. Members can see from the next slide that gender stereotyping is still alive and well, in that, whereas 67 per cent of people thought that women were very suitable for becoming primary school teachers, only 41 per cent thought that men were. About a quarter of respondents thought that women were more suitable for that post than men were. The slide also shows that there is not a high level of perception that either wheelchair users or gay men and lesbians are necessarily suitable as primary school teachers. We considered the degree to which people felt that existing public policy towards the four groups was or was not going far enough in trying to reduce discrimination. The hierarchy of groups shown in previous slides is replicated, the important consequence of which is that, although gay men and lesbians are thought to be relatively likely to be subjected to discrimination and prejudicial viewpoints, and although we know that the incidence of discriminatory attitudes towards gay men and lesbians is relatively high, that is also the group for which support for equal opportunities policy to go further is lowest. Only 26 per cent of people think that equal opportunities for gay men and lesbians have not gone far enough. In contrast, that figure is 58 per cent for disabled people. The next slide is headed "% who say a great deal/a lot of prejudice exists". Although the people who think that more should be done for the various groups are least likely to hold prejudicial viewpoints, around 22 per cent of the people who think that discrimination exists in respect of gay men and lesbians think that equal opportunities for that group have gone too far. In the third section of the report, we try in fairly extensive detail to disentangle the relative importance of three possible explanations of why discriminatory attitudes exist where they do. The first explanation is sociological and essentially claims that discriminatory attitudes are the product of different positions in the social structure, different experiences of the life course and social influences to which people have been subjected. For example, we would expect younger people who have been brought up in a society in which discrimination towards ethnic minorities has been for the most part socially less acceptable to be less likely to hold discriminatory views in respect of ethnic minorities than older people who have had a different experience.The second possible explanation centres on a competition for resources. For example, someone might hold discriminatory views because they feel that they are competing for economic resources or jobs in the labour market with various groups that are different from them.The third explanation for the existence of discriminatory viewpoints is a social-psychological one. People have identities. When they start to feel that others are different from them and that they do not have much in common with those groups, there is a sense of social-psychological difference and distance.I should point out that those explanations are not completely contradictory. For example, it is perfectly possible to believe that different social experiences will lead to different psychological outcomes. However, the statistical analysis in the report indicates that the explanations are to some degree independent.Members might be asking, "How the hell do we disentangle the various possible explanations?" First, I should make it clear that we did not ask the respondents to choose which of the three models explained their attitudes. Instead, we tried to explain those attitudes by asking a range of questions that tapped different social positions, economic outlooks and social-psychological outlooks. As the subsequent charts in my presentation show, we then said that, if for example age mattered, we would find that older people would be more likely than younger people to hold discriminatory viewpoints. We could use that as an indication that different social experiences by age are crucial.As the report contains a large number of potential indicators of the three models, I will simply focus on those that appear to have most value and analytic purchase. In the sociological model, the indicators are primarily age and education; in the economic model, the indicators are differences by income and subjective perceptions of whether people are coping on their income; and in the social-psychological model, we asked people how much they felt they had in common with gay men and lesbians, how much men and women have in common with each other and so on and whether the respondents would prefer to live in an area where there were different kinds of people or where people were much the same as one another—again, we were trying to tap the underlying social-psychological orientation.The subsequent charts in my presentation give members a taste of the evidence that we received. Although I do not propose to discuss the charts in detail, I will give an indication of how to read them. For example, on the right-hand side of the chart headed "Sociological 1", we examine the differences in attitudes towards same-sex relationships and find out whether people feel that those relationships are always wrong. First, we compared people according to their educational background and then compared the attitudes of younger and older people. Members will see that only 12 per cent of people who have a university degree believe that same-sex relationships are always wrong, whereas 41 per cent of people who do not have any educational qualifications take the view that such relationships are always wrong. We would therefore conclude initially that educational background appears to make a difference in that respect and that the more highly educated someone is, the less likely they are to hold discriminatory views.There is a similar and even starker difference with respect to age. Among younger people—those aged 18 to 24—only 16 per cent think that same-sex relationships are always wrong. By contrast, 51 per cent of those aged over 65 take that view. There is clearly a substantial generational difference in attitudes to that question.We are basically looking at the size of the differences in the various charts. Just skating through the charts, we can see that there are similar—although not such big ones—differences in the degree to which people think that women should be homemakers. Interestingly, which is perhaps the exception that proves the rule, the question of whether a wheelchair user would be suitable as a primary teacher is one of the rare examples in which the general rule, that better-educated people and younger people are less likely to hold a discriminatory point of view, is broken. In this case, younger people are less likely to think that a wheelchair user would be a suitable primary teacher.On the economic question, I shall pick out an example that, unsurprisingly, shows that economic situation makes a difference. It is the question of whether ethnic minorities take jobs away from people who are already in Scotland. Of the people who feel that they live comfortably on their income, only 16 per cent take that view, but among those who find it difficult to live on their income, 34 per cent take that view.On the chart headed "Psychological - 1", we can see some quite large differences, in particular with respect to attitudes towards homosexuality. Members will notice that, for example, people who say that they would like to live with similar kinds of people are much less likely to regard same-sex relationships as acceptable. People who would like to live in an area where there are the same kind of people as them are much less tolerant of homosexual relationships than are those who are happy to live in an area where there are different kinds of people. We can see that those psychological differences exist to some degree in all four of the examples shown on the charts, but they are weakest—perhaps unsurprisingly—with respect to disabled people.If we compare the two psychological charts, our general conclusion is that, just as discriminatory attitudes are most common in respect of gay men and lesbians and least common in respect of disabled people, with ethnic minorities coming somewhere in the middle, the same pattern is equally true of the differences that we found. For the most part, we found that different sections of Scottish society are most divided in their views on homosexuality and least divided on their views on disabled people. To that degree at least, the position of the various groups is rather different from one another.I would like to give the committee some idea of how we concluded that it is the social-psychological explanation that seems to provide the most immediate explanation of discriminatory attitudes, where they exist. The chart entitled "Comparing Explanations" illustrates that by bringing together some of the information on same-sex relationships from earlier charts. The bars on the left hand side compare younger with older people, the bars in the middle compare people on low incomes with those on high incomes, and the bars on the right hand side compare people who feel that they have a lot in common with gay men and lesbians with those who do not. I want members to notice that the differences are largest with respect to age and psychology and that those differences are bigger than the differences with respect to economic background. For the most part, the economic explanation appears to be the least important, but it is often quite difficult to disentangle the relative importance of social backgrounds such as age or education from social-psychological measures. The underlying measure that I introduced to members at the beginning of my presentation was prejudice. Sixty-eight per cent of people said that we should get rid of all kinds of prejudice and 26 per cent said that it is sometimes okay to be prejudiced. The next chart demonstrates that for the most part that question provides us with an indication of underlying prejudicial attitudes. In other words—surprise, surprise—those who said that there was sometimes good reason to be prejudiced were most likely to take a discriminatory viewpoint on the questions of which I have given members a taste. For example, 60 per cent of those who think that there is sometimes good reason to be prejudiced think that same-sex relationships are always wrong. That figure falls to 34 per cent among those who think that we should get rid of all kinds of prejudice. As well as giving us an indication of underlying discriminatory attitudes, the question indicates the degree to which discriminatory attitudes vary by group.If, as in the chart headed "Who says prejudice OK?" we examine the degree to which groups differ on the question, we find that social-psychological questions seem particularly to identify those who think that prejudice is okay and those who do not. Of those who prefer to live in an area with different kinds of people, only 15 per cent think that there is sometimes good reason to be prejudiced. Among those who like to live in an area with similar kinds of people, the figure is 36 per cent. The other types of explanation also show differences, but for the most part they are smaller.The conclusion that we reach on the third question is that we cannot discard any of the explanations—all are valuable in certain situations—but that the social-psychological explanation appears to be the most important in explaining underlying discriminatory viewpoints. For example, when people think that they have something in common with a group—that a group is similar to them—they are less likely to hold a discriminatory viewpoint. Equally, if people are happy about living in a society in which there is diversity and with people who are different from them they are less likely to hold a discriminatory viewpoint.We came to the conclusion that if the committee is interested in reducing the incidence of discriminatory attitudes two strategies are potentially open to you. Those strategies are not necessarily contradictory. The first is to encourage people to believe that groups have something in common and are an integral part of Scottish society. The second is to say that it is perfectly acceptable in our society for people to be different. Both strategies may be of interest to those who are interested in changing the picture that we have tried to paint for you in our report.