The use of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation as an indicator to evaluate the impact of policy on widening access to higher education

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Policy on widening access to higher education in Scotland is defined mainly in terms of students who live in deprived areas as defined by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. Although area measures can be informative, and are convenient because they require only a postcode to classify any person into a deprivation category, they are crude. We use data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the Growing Up in Scotland Survey and the Scottish Household Survey to analyse the extent to which neighbourhood measures can be used as the basis of valid indicators of widening access. We conclude that they are flawed, although not wholly useless, and ought to be supplemented by more valid measures of students' social circumstances.