Scottish Continuous Recording System (SCORE)

Time

2007 - Mar 2015 (Annual)

SCORE was discontinued in Mar 2015

Dataset Quality

- According to the Scottish Government, SCORE has only approx.78% coverage of new RSL lets due to its voluntary status. It is suggested that there are particular gaps in Glasgow RSLs, meaning that overall results are not fully representative of the sector. It is noted that many responses to the survey are incomplete and, in some instances, the effective response rate has dropped as low as 35%, potentially creating bias. The robustness of results, particularly those related to household income, has been questioned due to the basic recording of this data within RSLs and limited triangulation. It only contains data relating to new lets so it cannot be assumed to be a valid proxy for the whole RSL sector. Furthermore, RSLs represent less than half of the social rented sector and, as no comparable data is available for LA new lets, no understanding of its representativeness for the whole sector can be gleaned.

SCORE is a voluntary survey of all RSLs requesting information on characteristics of all their new lets

Dataset Access and Use

Some data tables are published with the annual reports and are thus freely available through the Scottish Government website. Additional data would also be available through application and agreement with government. The smallest scale of data that could be obtained is not clear.

The website suggests a favourable attitude to access for research purposes. The access request form does, however, require clarity regarding any data linkage that researchers are looking to carry out.

Geography

SCORE collects data at the individual RSL level, however, annual reports and the data tables released with them are aggregated to at least the local authority level. Some measures are given for Scotland as a whole.