The SSSC has now published the revised version of the 2012 Scottish Social Services Workforce Data report which can be found here.

What error did we find?

We found an error in the headcount data for 2012. We use data provided to us by the Care Inspectorate and the errors were caused by revisions made in 2012 to the program that extracts the data from the Care Inspectorate's annual returns from registered care services. The error was not identified by the Scottish Social Services Council at the point the data was transferred to the SSSC by the Care Inspectorate in 2012 but has since come to light following the SSSC's comparison of the data from 2012 with the data from 2013 which was received by the SSSC in July 2014.

What did the error in the 2012 data mean?

The error resulted in the sector's workforce headcount being underestimated by approximately 1,200 people in 50 services. As the size of the sector's workforce is around 190,000 then this underestimation accounted for about 0.6% of the sector's workforce. The underestimation of the headcount had implications for most chapters in the Scottish Social Services Workforce Data Report and for many of the individual level data items reported in the online data and interactive visualisations. This is because the headcount figure is used to gross up responses on individual data items (such as age, ethnicity, job function, gender etc.). So an error in the headcount figure leads to errors in the grossing up of other variables.

What data did the error affect?

The error affected data in chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8 of the original 2012 Scottish Social Services Workforce Data report. It also affected: the data by area for 2012; the 2012 data within the interactive visualisation section of the data site; and any data queries answered by the SSSC using data from 2012.

Correction of errors

The errors have been corrected in all the areas affected.