Diet and Nutrition Survey of Infants and Young Children in Scotland, 2011

Response rates and sample

Of the 987 individuals living in Scotland sampled from Child Benefit Records, 97% were eligible to take part in the survey. Of these, 65% were fully productive, i.e. three or four dietary recording days^[5] were completed resulting in a sample size of 616 fully productive individuals. Weighting factors were applied to ensure that the results were representative of the Scottish population of children according to 2011 Child Benefit data.

The profile of the achieved Scotland sample was very close to that of the population of infants and young children in the United Kingdom (UK) in terms of age and sex and region, but not ethnicity. After applying weighting factors, 95% of children in DNSIYCS were white, a higher proportion than in the UK sample (82%). There was a wide range of socio-economic circumstances for the children in the survey; larger proportions of their parents were home owners (55%) than living in rented accommodation (42%). This compared to 47% and 46% respectively for the UK sample. A fifth (19%) received Healthy Start (HS) vouchers, a similar proportion to the UK sample.