Methodology and interpreting findings

• The National Survey of Charities and Social Enterprises (NSCSE) was conducted across 151 upper tier local authorities in England from September to December 2010.
  
  
• In total 112,796 organisations across all 151 single and two-tier authorities in England were invited to participate in the survey. Paper questionnaires were mailed to all selected organisations along with a cover letter that included a link enabling them to access the survey online. Two waves of reminder questionnaires were also sent out to organisations, and telephone reminders were conducted with a sample of non-responders. Organisations invited to complete the survey were able to complete the survey either online or on paper throughout the fieldwork period.
  
  
• A database of organisations eligible to participate in the survey was supplied by Guidestar UK. This was formed from the list of registered charities and registers of Community Interest Companies (CIC), Companies Limited by Guarantee (CLG) and Industrial and Provident Societies (IPS) in England.  In some areas a census survey was conducted (i.e. all organisations were asked to take part), and in others a random stratified sample of organisations was constructed, using organisation type (registered charity, CIC, CLG or IPS) as the main stratifier. Registered charities were further stratified according to income.
  
  
• A total of 44,110 organisations responded to the survey – this was a 41% adjusted response rate.
  
  
• Data from the survey have been weighted within each local authority and at a national level to ensure results are representative of the make up of the sector according to organisational type.
  
  
• Because a sample, rather than the entire population, was surveyed the percentage results are subject to sampling tolerances – which vary with the size of the sample and the percentage figure concerned. For example, for a question where 16% of the respondents in an unweighted sample of 200 respond with a particular answer, the chances would be 95 in 100 that this result would not vary more than five percentage points, plus or minus, from the result that would have been obtained from a census of the entire (infinite) population (using the same procedures).  Strictly speaking these tolerances apply only to random non self-selecting samples. However, they are a good guide here.
  
  
• Tolerances are also involved when comparing results between different elements of the sample and between two different waves of the survey. A difference must be of at least a certain size to be statistically significant. Each comparison made involves a number of elements to calculate whether a difference is statistically significant. This includes the proportion answering a question, the number of respondents and the population size. Caution must be taken when comparing any results of this survey. This is particularly the case where there are small sample sizes in a number of local authorities, due to small population sizes (where a census was conducted).