< Previous | Contents | Next >

Scottish Household Survey Travel Diary results

3. Who travels most often (Table 1; Chart A)

3.1 Variation with age, sex, current situation, etc

3.1.1 The SHS interviewer asks the randomly-chosen adult whether he or she made any journeys or trips out of the house on the day before the interview. Table 1 shows the results. The first row of the table gives the figures for adults in each age group. In 1999/2000, 80% of adults aged 16 to 19 said that they had gone somewhere on the previous day, as did 82% of adults aged 20 to 29, and so on, with the figure for adults of all ages being 75%. It will be seen that the percentage is highest (82%) for those in the 20-29 and 30-39 age-groups, and lowest (40%) for the 80+ age-group. The number in italics at the right-hand end of the first row show that these results were produced from the answers given by 28,101 adults. (The sample sizes quoted in all the tables represent the numbers before any re-weighting was done — see paragraphs B3.3 and A4.2. Paragraph A1.2 explains why there may be differences in sample sizes between different parts of a table, and between different tables.)

3.1.2 Subsequent rows of Table 1 show how the likelihood that someone had made a journey on the previous day varied between different groups of people. The first pair of rows gives the figures for men and women of each age-group. Overall, men were slightly more likely to have travelled than women: 77% of men made a journey on the previous day compared with 73% of women. The figure for men is the higher for all age-groups apart from 16-19 year olds. The biggest differences can be seen in the older age groups where 61% of men in the 70 — 79 age-group and 55% of women made a journey in the previous day. Similarly, in the 80+ age-group 48% of men compared with 36% of women made a journey the previous day.

3.1.3 The next block of figures gives information by the current situation (or economic status) of the interviewee. 87% of adults in full-time employment and 83% of the self-employed and those in part-time employment made a journey the previous day in contrast to 53% of adults who are permanently sick or disabled, and 59% of those who were permanently retired. The next group of rows gives figures by social class, which range from 89% of adults in professional occupations saying that they had made a journey on the previous day compared with 80% of adults in unskilled occupations.

3.1.4 Chart A shows that the likelihood of travelling on the previous day rises with annual net household income. 63% of adults living in a household with an annual net income of up to £5,000 p.a. made a journey on the previous day, rising to 87-88% of adults living in household with an annual net household income of over £30,000.

Chart A: Adults (16+) who reported travelling on the previous day by annual net household income: 1999/2000

3.2 "Urban" and "rural" areas

3.2.1 The final part of Table 1 shows how the position varies between those living in "urban" and "rural" areas, using a six-way classification that was developed for the analysis of the SHS results. In this classification, a "small town" has a population between 3,000 and 10,000, and an area is described as "accessible" if it is within 30 minutes' drive of a settlement with a population of over 10,000 (otherwise it is described as "remote"). A "large urban area" is a settlement with a population of over 125,000. More details of the classification are given in Section A6. In 1999/2000, there was not much variation between urban and rural areas as 73% of adults living in "remote" rural areas said that they had made a journey on the previous day, as did 74-75% of adults in "urban areas" and "small towns". Slightly more adults (77%) in "accessible" rural areas said they had made a journey the previous day.

< Previous | Contents | Next >