Health and Care Experience Survey 2021 to 2022: national results

Annex A: Design and Response

The survey is a random sample of patients registered with a GP practice designed in such a way as to provide results for individual GP practices as well as providing information for use by NHS Boards; Health and Social Care Partnerships and GP Clusters.

People eligible to be sampled for the survey were those who were registered to a Scottish GP practice at 6^th October 2021 and were aged seventeen or over at that date. A total of 537,924 survey packs were sent out and 130,352 were returned giving a response rate of 24%. This is an decrease in response compared with the previous survey which was 27%. The decrease in response is across all age groups and demographics.

The survey contains three free-text comment boxes asking respondents if there are any additional comments they would like to make about their experiences of their local GP practice, Out of Hours health care, or care and support services. A total of 47,614 respondents left a total of 56,846 comments, with 43,090 relating to the GP Practice, 7,469 relating to Out of Hours Healthcare, and 6,287 relating to Care, Support and Help with Everyday Living.

Throughout this report, with the exception of the data in Annex B, analysis is presented as weighted average percentages. Weighting the results in this way provides results which are more representative of the population of Scotland as a whole. Details of the weighting methodology can be found in this weighting methodology paper.

All changes over time that are discussed in the report are statistically significant at the five per cent level. Due to the large sample size, even small changes of 1% in the national results may be statistically significant.

More information about the survey design, response rates and methodology can be found in the Technical Report available at on the Scottish Government's website.