1. Background

1.1. These web tables provide information from the National Travel Survey (NTS) about travel within Great Britain (GB) by Scottish residents. The NTS covers a sample of households across GB, and is conducted on behalf of the Department for Transport (DfT).

1.2. GB results appear each year in DfT publications, some of which include a few figures for Scotland. There are a set of tables published showing results for regions and countries in GB, these are available on the DfT website at: http://www.dft.gov.uk/statistics?orderby=title&post_type=table&s=nts99

1.3. We gratefully acknowledge the help of DfT Transport Statistics staff in the production of this publication. Some tables have not been updated due to time constraints. For ease of comparability, table numbers in this publication remain the same as in the 2007/2008 publication.

1.4. Numbers in the tables are rounded, figures may not therefore sum to totals or 100%. Calculations have been carried out on unrounded data.

1.5. Detail on the NTS's coverage and definitions appear on the DfT website at: http://www.dft.gov.uk/statistics/series/national-travel-survey/

1.6. During 2011 DfT carried out a consultation on the future of the National Travel Survey. As part of this consultation survey coverage was considered and a decision made to cease collection of data for Scotland from 2013. This document includes comparison of the NTS data with other data sources, in particular the Scottish Household Survey.

Sample sizes

1.7. The NTS is not designed to produce annual figures for Scotland: between 1989 and 2001, each year's sample included only around 300 Scottish households; from 2002 onwards, the sample has an average of about 850 Scottish households per year.

1.8. Therefore samples for a number of years are combined to produce Scottish results, and even they will be subject to sampling variability. For more information on sample sizes and standard errors see the 2010 NTS Notes and Definitions document at: http://assets.dft.gov.uk/statistics/releases/national-travel-survey-2010/nts2010-notes.pdf

1.9. Even combining years does not always produce large sample sizes. Sample sizes have been included in most tables and these should be considered when drawing conclusions from them.

1.10. Throughout the publication 2009/2010 refers to the combination of 2009 and 2010 calendar year survey data and not to the financial year.

Note on 2007 and 2008 NTS trip data

1.11. The NTS travel diary was redesigned for the 2007 survey to make it more appealing to respondents and easier for them to use. These changes appeared to result in an under reporting of short trips in 2007. More detail is included in the background notes section of the spreadsheets.