Physical activity for health: framework

How we will measure progress

Increasing the proportion of the adult population meeting recommended levels of physical activity contributes to the Scottish Government National Outcome “We are healthy and active.”

The actions described in this Framework are intended to ultimately impact on physical activity levels, muscle strength and balance and sedentary behaviour.

At a national level, we have an overall target in Scotland to achieve a 15% relative reduction in the prevalence of physical inactivity in adults and in adolescents by 2030. This follows the global target adopted by the World Health Organization in 2018 in the Global Action Plan for Physical Activity (GAPPA). WHO class all who do not meet the recommended levels of 150 minutes moderate to vigorous physical activity each week as inactive.

WHO guidance indicates that the baseline year for this target is 2016.^[24] In that year 36% of adults in Scotland were classed as inactive. A 15% relative reduction in that figure would equate to a reduction of 5.4% in the percentage of those classed as inactive. Our aim, therefore, is to reduce the percentage of those who do not meet recommended levels of physical activity to 30% by 2030.

In addition, the proportion of the adult population meeting recommended levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity is one of our National Indicators for Health on the National Performance Framework. We aim for that to increase over time.

We have a range of further indicators relating to sport and physical activity that are regularly published on the Active Scotland Outcomes Framework. These help to provide an understanding of progress across the range of systems contributing to overall physical activity levels and include breakdowns by characteristics such as age, gender and socioeconomic status to inform equality considerations.

We are working to update the indicators to ensure they remain relevant and informative for tracking progress aligned to this new Framework.

Data is currently largely sourced from the Scottish Health Survey and the Scottish Household Survey but, as part of the indicators update, we will consider whether robust and reliable data could be derived from other sources (e.g. the SPANS survey) where other surveys do not provide suitable or sufficient data.

We will provide an overview of progress around the Strategic Outcomes for sport and physical activity in Scotland at regular intervals and also ensure that data from the national surveys is broken down by local area where possible to help local decision makers shape active systems at this level.