Conducting surveys of tenants and service users - a guide

In March 2013, Ipsos produced ‘Conducting surveys of tenants and service users – a guide’ for the Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR). This guide was designed by Ipsos to instruct landlords on good practice when conducting surveys of the tenants in their household stock. It has been used by all social housing landlords (local authorities and registered social landlords) in conducting surveys of tenants which are then submitted to the SHR as part of the compliance with the social housing charter. In March 2016, the SHR commissioned Ipsos to undertake a short review of this document to understand how well it functions in providing advice to landlords when conducting tenant surveys, and to identify any issues they face with the guidance or where additional clarity would be appreciated. Ipsos conducted 5 face to face in-depth interviews and one group discussion with senior, key stakeholders across the social housing field in Scotland. This enabled us to identify both general and specific areas of the guidance which required further information or clarification. The results of this research were fed back to the SHR. The SHR asked Ipsos to refresh and update the guidance in line with the research findings.

In May 2016, Ipsos produced the updated guidance for the SHR.

• The updated version can be found on the SHR’s website.