Health and Care Experience Survey: results 2019/2020

3. About the Respondents - Demographic & Health Information

A total of 160,372 people responded to the survey. This chapter provides a summary of their responses. Unlike the rest of the survey results in this report, this analysis is based on unweighted data.

Age and Gender

More women than men responded to the survey. Fifty seven per cent of responses to the survey were from women and forty three per cent were from men. This compares to the 2019 population estimates from the National Records of Scotland^[5] which show that fifty two per cent of the population aged seventeen and over are female.

Older age groups were more likely to respond to the survey than younger with the majority of respondents being aged fifty five or more (sixty two per cent). This is higher than the 2019 National Records of Scotland population estimates which show thirty nine per cent of the population aged fifty five or more (based on the population aged seventeen and over).

The weighting methodology^[6] attempts to adjust for these differences between the survey and population demographics.

Deprivation and Rurality

Analysis of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD)^[7] and Urban/Rural Indicator^[8] was based on the datazone of respondents postcodes. Response levels were lower in deprived areas, with the most deprived quintile showing an eighteen per cent response rate, compared to thirty four per cent from the least deprived quintile.

There was a higher response rate from people living in rural areas than urban areas, with remote rural areas showing a response rate of thirty seven per cent compared with twenty one per cent of those living in large urban areas.

A full breakdown responses and demographics can be found in the Technical Report available at: www.gov.scot/ISBN/978-1-80004-187-5

Health Information

Respondents were asked to rate their health in general. Sixty nine per cent rated their health as good or very good, twenty five per cent rated it as fair and six per cent rated it as bad or very bad.

Just over half of respondents said that they had one or more long-term health conditions. The prevalence of these increased with age, from thirty eight per cent of respondents aged between seventeen and twenty four, to sixty five per cent aged over sixty five. The most commonly reported conditions were chronic pain lasting at least three months (reported by sixteen per cent of respondents) and deafness or a severe hearing impairment (reported by eleven per cent of respondents).

Finally, people were asked to rate their quality of life as a whole. Of those who responded, seventy eight per cent said that their quality of life was good or excellent, seventeen per cent said it was fair, and five per cent rated it as poor or very poor.

People's ability to look after their own health

People were asked how well in general they felt they were able to look after their own health. Most respondents (ninety two per cent) said that they could look after their own health very well or quite well.