THE number of people working at call centres in Scotland will more than double to 37,000 by the year 2000 as more companies set up telephone-based operations North of the Border, according to a survey conducted on behalf of Scottish Enterprise.

Call centres have emerged as a flourishing new source of employment in Central Scotland during the 1990s. Their functions range from selling banking and insurance services to giving advice on how to solve computer software problems.

Almost half the 16,000 call centre jobs created so far are in the greater Glasgow area, and the survey by the universities of Strathclyde and Stirling concludes that Glasgow will also capture most of the jobs to be created over the next two years.

Edinburgh accounts for 15% of the call centre jobs in Scotland, and Dunfermline - where Sky television has a huge customer service centre - ranks third with 10%.

The survey highlights three main reasons for locating call centres north of the Border.

First and foremost is the availability of a well-trained and flexible labour force with a large number of job-seekers, including graduates and school-leavers.

The other key attractions are Scotland's excellent telecommunications infrastructure and the availability of suitable office space.

While call centres bring welcome jobs to Scotland, many of them skilled, the downside is that the working hours are irregular and most of the posts being created are part-time.

More than three-quarters of the 119 call centres surveyed operate a shift system that allows them to remain open for up to 17 hours a day.

And while two-thirds of Scottish call centre jobs are full-time at present, this proportion is set to fall to just half by the end of the century. Most of the part-timers are women.

Some of the larger call centres require access to a large pool of relatively unskilled labour within easy commuting distance. A case in point is the new call centre being built in Hamilton by First Direct, the telephone banking arm of Midland Bank, which will employ 5000 staff.

But most call centres in Scotland are much smaller - the average number of employees is 138 - and not all of them are restricted to simple clerical processing functions.

McQueen in Edinburgh, for example, employs computer science graduates fluent in foreign languages to advise customers throughout Europe on how to sort out their software problems.

Tom Hart, the business operations director at McQueen, said: ''Scotland provides an excellent environment in which to live and work, and we have experienced few problems in recruiting high-calibre well-qualified and multi-lingual staff.''