Health and Wellbeing Census – retaining data where information wasn’t provided: FOI release

Information requested

You asked a range of questions on the use of SCN as an email address in 2022, the Scottish Government response to this, and the impact on ethics, data quality and the processing and sharing of the health and Wellbeing Census 2022 data by Scottish Government.

Response

Some of the information you have requested is available from websites, details of which can be found below. Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

Also, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Where possible, the reasons why we don't have the information are explained below.

Furthermore, an exemption under section(s) s.38(1) (personal information) of FOISA also applies to some of the information you have requested. This exemption applies to the names of certain individuals contained in communication within the Scottish Government, and between the Scottish Government with external stakeholders.

Your request stated that you were not requesting any documents and only requesting minimal data which should be immediately to hand. Under section 1(1) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), a person who requests information from a Scottish public authority which holds it is entitled to be given the information by the authority. “Information” is defined in FOISA as “information recorded in any form”. Requesters don’t have the right to be given unrecorded information. Information will also be unrecorded if it can only be inferred by the absence of recorded information. Unrecorded information can be provided outwith the FOI process.

Your questions, and our response, are set out below.

How and when was the Scottish Government notified of this issue about SCN being an email address in 2022?

The Scottish Government became aware that the SCN was being used in pupil's email addresses in early 2022 after the HWB Census went live. Enclosure 1 contains information referencing this.

How many councils are impacted by this issue of SCN numbers also being email addresses (and/or being visible in directories or used for other purposes).

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.

If it’s more than one council, which councils are they?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.

Did the Scottish Government ensure that the Health and Wellbeing Census Ethics Peer Review group were notified about this new development?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.  The Census was already live when the Scottish Government  became aware of this.

Did the Scottish Government take any internal or external legal advice on this development or  proactively notify the ICO?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.

After becoming aware of this, what advice did the Scottish Government issue to the affected council/councils to ensure that pupils and parents were able to have informed choice to participate in the Health and Wellbeing Census?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.

Weeks ahead of the deadline for completing the Health and Wellbeing Census, one council insisted on continuing data collection, without answering questions about this matter or informing parents. Did the Scottish Government advise any council to do that?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.

The council provided no information about the missed opportunity that would be experienced by children completing it a week or two later once information was available. Did the Scottish Government provide formal or informal advice to any council to say something along those lines?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.

Could any child have experienced a missed opportunity if the Census had been delayed a few weeks and still carried out before deadline and if so, what would that missed opportunity be?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.

Did the Scottish Government provide councils with any sort of target response rate for their area as a whole or at a school level?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held. Each local authority was responsible for deciding whether or not to undertake their own Health and Wellbeing Census.

Did the Scottish Government provide councils with any sort of formal or informal indication that it might be easier to secure funding from the Scottish Government if they had participated in the Health and Wellbeing Census or if funding requests were evidenced by data from the Health and Wellbeing Census?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held as the provision of funding to local authorities is wholly unrelated to the health and wellbeing census.

Is the Scottish Government aware of any reason why a council may have felt pressured to continue to capture data when there was an obvious risk they were doing it in a way that was noncompliant with data protection regulations?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held. Each local authority was responsible for deciding whether or not to undertake their own Health and Wellbeing Census.

While the Scottish Government can’t comment on this specific case, is the Scottish Government legally and ethically permitted to retain data with SCN and link it with other data, in any case where respondents and their parents weren’t told this and when the council then refused to tell them?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held. The data is required for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest, and only used for statistical and research purposes only.

Why did the Scottish Government want data transferred to them with SCN attached to do the cross linking themselves?

Section 25 applies as this information is otherwise already accessible. This information is available in the Scottish Government Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) and in response to your FOI 202400391660 (31 January 2024). All correspondence is available in FOI/202200270559 Children's health and wellbeing census 21/22: FOI Review.

Does the Scottish Government hold data on individual children and families that councils don’t hold?

Section 25 applies as this information is otherwise already accessible. Scottish Government collects other data relating to children and families that local authorities do not hold through surveys such as the Scottish Health Survey, Growing Up in Scotland, and the Scottish Household Survey.

Where a local authority has failed to meet their responsibilities around privacy notices and accurately reflecting what data is being shared with the Scottish Government, and has still transferred data to the Scottish Government, including data with SCN attached, is the Scottish Government still permitted to retain, link and share it:

• Legally?
• Ethically?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.

Now the Health and Wellbeing Census data has been transferred to the Scottish Government, what process does the Scottish Government have to go through to prove it is ethically and legally permitted to retain the data?

Section 25 applies as this information is otherwise already accessible. The Scottish Government Data Protection Impact Assessment and Privacy Notice sets out the Scottish Government’s responsibilities and procedures regarding data retention. The Scottish Government Social Research Ethics Guidance and Sensitivity Checklist sets out social research protocols.

Has the Scottish Government requested the privacy notices and other communications provided by the  16 participating councils and checked them?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.  The provision of privacy notes is the responsibility of  local authorities.

Is the Scottish Government satisfied that the privacy notices and other communications provided by  the councils are adequate?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held. The provision of privacy notes is the responsibility of  local authorities.

Under the Public Task legal basis, respondents lost their rights to object, access or request their  data to be erased.  However if data was gathered from them and transferred to the Scottish  Government and cross-linked with other data, without them or their parents being properly informed  at a school or council level, what process could they go through with the Scottish Government to  request their data is deleted?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held. Respondents wishing to exercise their right to erasure can contact the Scottish Government. However, the right is not absolute and only applies in certain circumstances.

Why did the Scottish Government want partially completed surveys to be saved and submitted, where they have been abandoned prior to reaching the end of the survey?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held. Including partial responses improves the representativeness of results particularly where there may be small cohorts. Analysis of partial responses is valuable in understanding the data quality, question acceptability and survey length to improve future data collection.

At what point in the process were responses saved and submitted eg at the point the respondent answered individual questions, or after they stopped using the platform?

Section 25 applies as this information is otherwise already accessible. This is set out in the Scottish Government Health and Wellbeing Census Privacy Notice and in the Instructions for teachers available in FOI 202200290345

What mechanism was there for respondents to change their mind and opt-out whilst completing the survey as they couldn’t just abandon it without their previous answers still being saved and submitted? (eg would they have had to go back and delete previous answers?)

s.17(1) no recorded information is held. Respondents could request that the local authority deleted their responses. However, the right is not absolute and only applies in certain circumstances.

Does this meet with the normal ethical approach that during participation in research like this, respondents should be able to change their mind on responses they’ve provided so far and optout whilst doing it?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.

Is it ethical to have inconsistent question structures, especially for children, around “consent” to provide an answer – for example some questions said to skip the question if children didn’t want to answer it while others had an option to select “prefer not to say”?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.

How many partial responses were sent by councils to the Scottish Government?

Partial responses are defined (in SmartSurvey) as those where the respondent has loaded the first page and clicked the button to proceed from the first page to the next, and not clicked the Finish Survey button on the last page. Respondents may not have clicked the Finish Survey button for many reasons (e.g. ran out of time), and not necessarily just because the respondent decided to 'drop out' midway through taking part in the survey. Scottish Government analysis has investigated the drop out rate for the questionnaires (the last question responded to) at questionnaire level. This does not mean pupils answered all questions to that point, as all questions could be skipped (except school name and SCN).

The table below shows the percentage of pupils completing the last question in each stage questionnaire:

Stage questionnaire	P5	P6	P7	S1	S2	S3	S4	S5	S6
Percentage answering last question	96%	97%	95%	88%	85%	5%	90%	89%	89%
Number of responses included	19,567	19,317	20,081	17,673	16,688	15,315	11,740	8,728	4,940

Scottish Government notices referred to the submission of partial responses, and said: “What happens if I do not finish the survey? Your progress is automatically saved after each page when completing the survey. This means that responses provided will be saved and submitted on your behalf, even if the survey was not completed.” However none of our local authority specific information, including the pupil leaflet provided by the local authority, or the preamble to the survey itself, explained that if pupils only partially completed the survey, then their answers would still be saved and submitted. Is it acceptable for the Scottish Government to receive and store partial responses for pupils where they and their parents were not made aware that partial responses would still be submitted:

a.Legally?

b. Ethically?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.

How will the Scottish Government deal with the bias this introduces into the Health and Wellbeing data?

Section 25 applies as this information is otherwise already accessible. The Technical report sets out the comparison against the pupil population. Further information is in Enclosure 3: Health and Wellbeing Census 2021-22: Weighting report.

Professional external researchers may request access to Health and Wellbeing Census data. If one or more local authorities did not meet their obligations around data protection legislation relating to transparency, will the Health and Wellbeing Census data held by the Scottish Government meet the ethical standards that professional third party external researchers require?

s.17(1) no recorded information is held.

When the Health and Wellbeing Census technical report was published on 28 February 2023, it said that the data collected may be available on request.

a. How many requests have been received?
b. Who submitted those requests?
c. How many requests have been granted to access some/all data?
d. Who has been granted their request to access some/all data?

In response to the questions 30a-d above, Scottish Government has received one request to access the data has been received from Strathclyde University and granted via the SPBPP process. However data cannot yet be accessed until it is available in ADR-Scotland.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202400398313 - Information Released - Enclosures

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