Summary of project findings

Ross Bond & Michael Rosie

Summary of key points from 'identity-related' analysis from 2001 Scottish Social Attitudes survey

• The trend in 'best choice' national identity since the 1970s shows an increase in Scottishness and a decrease in Britishness.

• Given a 'multiple choice' of national identities the vast majority (86%) choose Scottish, 50% choose British, and 41% choose both.

• Both the 'multiple choice' and 'Moreno' measures show that the prioritisation of a Scottish as opposed to British identity is much more marked in Scotland than is true of Welsh and English identities in Wales and (especially) England.

• A Scottish national identity is relatively important to people's self-perceptions when compared to other sources of identification such as class, gender, or employment status. Only parenthood has a similar level of importance.

• Scottishness is salient across all categories of respondent, regardless of gender, age, class, education or religion.

• The relative significance of Scottish and British identities is reflected in attitudes to the Scottish and British flags. Overall, the Saltire tends to be regarded with pride and the Union flag with indifference.

• While national identity is associated with party identification and constitutional attitudes, there is considerable 'non-alignment' between these three variables such that, even among those who identify as most strongly Scottish, around half support neither the SNP nor Scottish independence. Devolution is the most popular means of government across all national identity categories.

• In terms of other key political attitudes, a common finding is that national identity is associated with the degree but not the direction of opinion. Thus there is no polarisation of political opinion associated with national identity. For example, the more strongly Scottish identifiers are more likely to trust the Scottish Parliament rather than Westminster to work in Scotland's best interests, and to believe that the former should have most influence over the way Scotland is run. But majorities in every category of national identity favour the Scottish Parliament on these questions.

• Similarly, while national identity is associated with evaluations and expectations of the Scottish Parliament's performance in at least some policy areas, it is not the case that more strongly Scottish identifiers are uniformly more positive in this respect, nor is it true that feeling more British is associated with negative evaluations and expectations.

Summary of key points from 'identity-related' analysis from 2003 Scottish Social Attitudes survey

• Identity measures show similar results to 2001 with a marked prioritisation of Scottish as opposed to British identity. Again parenthood and Scottishness stood out as the identities most important to respondent's self-perceptions (each chosen by 49%), and Scottishness proved salient across all categories of respondent.

• We created a variable dividing respondents into those who chose Scottishness as key to their self-identity ('Prioritised Scots'); those who did not, but who chose Scottishness from the multiple-choice list ('Background Scots'); and those who did not choose a Scottish identity on either question ('non-Scots').

• Membership of these three groups varied across three potential 'identity resources': birthplace; ancestry (defined by parental birthplace); and length of residence in Scotland. Those without such resources were most likely to describe themselves as 'non-Scots', although sizeable minorities did describe themselves as Scottish.

• The potential, and limitations, to 'becoming' Scottish were illustrated among respondents born outwith Scotland to non-Scots-born parents. One third (33%) of this group regarded themselves as Scottish, with a small number (6%) actually prioritising that Scottishness. There was, however, a clear cleavage across length of residence: very large majorities who had been resident in Scotland for 0-10 years (88%) or 11-24 years (80%) regarded themselves as 'non-Scots'. By contrast amongst those resident for 25+ years a majority (62%) felt themselves to be Scottish with a notable minority (20%) prioritising that identity. Any route into Scottishness may thus be time consuming!

• Respondents were offered two scenarios of people claiming to be Scottish: someone born in England but living permanently in Scotland; a 'non-white' person living in Scotland and with a Scottish accent. Respondents were asked whether they thought that most people and they themselves would consider them to be Scottish.

• For both scenarios there is a marked tendency for respondents to claim a more inclusive perspective than they assume is held by other people. This tendency is more marked in relation to the non-white scenario than the English-born scenario.

• Being born in England is a significant barrier to a successful claim to be Scottish. More respondents would (probably or definitely) not regard an English-born Scottish resident as Scottish (54%) than would (44%).

• Attitudes to members of 'visible minority' groups claiming Scottish nationality are considerably more inclusive. More respondents would (probably or definitely) regard a 'non-white' Scottish resident as Scottish (70%) than would not (23%). Thus, although most respondents appear to view skin-colour as relatively unimportant to Scottish identity, a sizeable minority believe the opposite. We must also be conscious here of the role of accent.

• Attitudes on the English-born scenario vary across respondent's own identities. Interestingly, the group least likely to accept the claim to Scottishness in this scenario are the 'non-Scots', a large majority of whom would not accept such a person's claim. It seems likely, therefore, that self-definition as 'non-Scots' relates in part to beliefs that such a claim to Scottishness would not (and perhaps should not) be accepted.

• By contrast, we found no statistically significant differences between identity groups with regards to the 'non-white' scenario.

The above largely draws on chapters/articles focussing on the Scottish data (see, e.g., National Identities in Post-Devolution Scotland - available at http://www.institute-of-governance.org/onlinepub/bondrosie.html).

We have also done some comparative work which brings in the other parts of the UK - see "4 nations ch draft 1 final" - on Leverhulme cd-rom

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Last modified: 7 March 2005
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