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Overview
At the time of this report, the fraud and computer misuse estimates from the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey are published as official statistics in development.
The statistics present information on the prevalence and volume of fraud and computer misuse crimes experienced by individuals in Scotland, as well as the characteristics of victims and fraud crimes. The statistics are used to understand and research trends in crime, and to monitor progress against Scottish Government’s Cyber Resilient Scotland strategic framework.
This report presents the findings of our assessment. It evaluates whether Scottish Government’s statistics meet the standards of Trustworthiness, Quality and Value of the Code of Practice for Statistics (the Code) required for accreditation.
Why we did this review
In 2025, the Scottish Government published the first estimates from the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) on the prevalence and volume of fraud and computer misuse crimes experienced in Scotland. The new survey questions were developed over a period of several years and largely replicate the fraud and computer misuse questions in the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) managed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
To determine whether the new SCJS fraud and computer misuse estimates could be published as accredited official statistics, we carried out an assessment of whether the statistics meet the standards of the Code. In doing so, we drew on our assessment of the CSEW fraud and computer misuse statistics, which confirmed the accredited official statistics status in 2018.
Highlighted findings
The fraud and computer misuse estimates fill a significant knowledge gap on crimes experienced by the Scottish population. In 2024/25, almost half of all crimes captured by the survey were fraud and computer misuse crimes, highlighting the importance of measuring these crime types.
The development of the fraud and computer misuse statistics involved close collaboration between the Scottish Government, Ipsos and ScotCen, and ONS. The Scottish Government adapted the well-established CSEW questions for Scotland and refined them through piloting and user feedback to strengthen the design and implementation of the questions, although limited information has been published on the development, testing and evaluation of the questions.
The fraud and computer misuse statistics are based on a nationally representative survey of people aged 16 and over, use sound sampling and weighting methods, and involve robust validation and quality assurance of data and incident coding. The accompanying quality information is transparent about the strengths and limitations of the statistics, while the main findings report prominently communicates uncertainty around the estimates.
The SCJS fraud and computer misuse questions and offence coding are aligned with the CSEW questions, which ensures the comparability and coherence of estimates across Scotland and England and Wales.
The main findings report explains the statistics clearly and provides advice to users on appropriate interpretation. The Scottish Government made several changes to the presentation of the statistics to ensure that the new estimates would be interpreted correctly; for example, it adopted ONS’s ‘headline crime’ terminology to differentiate the overall estimate (with fraud and computer misuse crimes) from the property and violent crime estimates.
Microdata from the 2023/24 and 2024/25 data collections are not yet available in the UK Data Service due to delays in the deposit process. As a result, researchers do not currently have access to data from the new fraud and computer misuse questions, which hinders reuse of the data and limits their value for research and analysis.
Our judgement
We conclude that the SCJS fraud and computer misuse statistics meet the standards of Trustworthiness, Quality and Value of the Code. The statistics are of high quality, add insight on crime victimisation in Scotland, and meet user needs. The Scottish Government plans to review the survey questions to ensure that they remain fit for purpose and continue to meet user needs.
We have identified no requirements and therefore judge that the statistics can become accredited official statistics (called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007).
Based on the findings of this review, we have identified three recommendations that the Scottish Government should address to further enhance the statistics’ Trustworthiness, Quality and Value:
Next steps
We expect the Scottish Government to provide a public update on progress against the recommendations by December 2026.