Scottish Health Survey 2016 - volume 2: technical report

Appendix C: Glossary

This glossary explains terms used in the report, other than those fully described in particular chapters.

Age Standardisation

Age standardisation has been used in order to enable groups to be compared after adjusting for the effects of any differences in their age distributions .

When different sub-groups are compared in respect of a variable on which age has an important influence, any differences in age distributions between these sub-groups are likely to affect the observed differences in the proportions of interest.

Age standardisation was carried out, using the direct standardisation method. The standard population to which the age distribution of sub-groups was adjusted was the mid-2015 population estimates for Scotland. All age standardisation has been undertaken separately within each sex.

The age-standardised proportion p' was calculated as follows, where p _i is the age specific proportion in age group i and N _i is the standard population size in age group i:

Therefore p' can be viewed as a weighted mean of p _i using the weights N _i. Age standardisation was carried out using the age groups: 16-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74 and 75 and over. The variance of the standardised proportion can be estimated by:

Anthropometric measurement

See Body mass index ( BMI)

Arithmetic mean

See Mean

Bases

See Unweighted bases, Weighted bases

Body mass index

Weight in kg divided by the square of height in metres. Adults (aged 16 and over) can be classified into the following BMI groups:

BMI (kg/m ²) - Description
Less than 18.5 - Underweight
18.5 to less than 25 - Normal
25 to less than 30 - Overweight
30 to less than 40 - Obese
40 and above - Morbidly Obese

Although the BMI calculation method is the same, there are no fixed BMI cut-off points defining overweight and obesity in children. Instead, overweight and obesity are defined using several other methods including age and sex specific BMI cut-off points or BMI percentiles cut-offs based on reference populations. Children can be classified into the following groups:

Percentile cut-off	Description
At or below 2nd percentile	At risk of underweight
Above 2nd percentile and below 85th percentile	Healthy weight
At or above 85th percentile and below 95th percentile	At risk of overweight
At or above 95th percentile	At risk of obesity

Cardiovascular Disease

Participants were classified as having cardiovascular disease ( CVD) if they reported ever having any of the following conditions diagnosed by a doctor: angina, heart attack, stroke, heart murmur, irregular heart rhythm, 'other heart trouble'. For the purpose of this report, participants were classified as having a particular condition only if they reported that the diagnosis was confirmed by a doctor. No attempt was made to assess these self-reported diagnoses objectively. There is therefore the possibility that some misclassification may have occurred, because some participants may not have remembered (or not remembered correctly) the diagnosis made by their doctor.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease ( COPD)

COPD is defined by the World Health Organisation ( WHO) as 'a pulmonary disease characterised by chronic obstruction lung airflow that interferes with normal breathing and is not fully reversible.' It is associated with symptoms and clinical signs that in the past have been called 'chronic bronchitis' and 'emphysema,' including regular cough (at least three consecutive months of the year) and production of phlegm.

Electronic cigarettes

Electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes are battery-powered handheld devices which heat a liquid that delivers a vapour. The vapour is then inhaled by the user, which is known as 'vaping'. E-cigarettes typically consist of a battery, an atomiser and a cartridge containing the liquid. Earlier models, often referred to as 'cigalikes', were designed to closely resemble cigarettes but there is now a wide variety of product types on the market. The liquid is usually flavoured and may not contain nicotine, although in most cases e-cigarettes are used with nicotine. Unlike conventional or traditional cigarettes, they do not contain tobacco and do not involve combustion ( i.e. they are not lit). The questions about e-cigarettes were amended in 2016 to include the term 'vaping devices'.

Frankfort plane

The Frankfort Plane is an imaginary line passing through the external ear canal and across the top of the lower bone of the eye socket, immediately under the eye. Informants' heads are positioned with the Frankfort Plane in a horizontal position when height is measured using a stadiometer as a means of ensuring that, as far as possible, the measurements taken are standardised.

GHQ12 The General Health Questionnaire ( GHQ12) is a scale designed to detect possible psychiatric morbidity in the general population. It was administered to informants aged 13 and above. The questionnaire contains 12 questions about the informant's general level of happiness, depression, anxiety and sleep disturbance over the past four weeks. Responses to these items are scored, with one point given each time a particular feeling or type of behaviour was reported to have been experienced 'more than usual' or 'much more than usual' over the past few weeks. These scores are combined to create an overall score of between zero and twelve. A score of four or more (referred to as a 'high' GHQ12 score) has been used in this report to indicate the presence of a possible psychiatric disorder.

Reference: Goldberg D, Williams PA. User's Guide to the General Health Questionnaire. NFER-NELSON, 1988.

Household

A household was defined as one person or a group of people who have the accommodation as their only or main residence and who either share at least one meal a day or share the living accommodation.

Household Reference Person

The household reference person ( HRP) is defined as the householder (a person in whose name the property is owned or rented) with the highest income. If there is more than one householder and they have equal income, then the household reference person is the oldest.

Ischaemic heart disease

Ischaemic heart disease ( IHD) is also known as coronary heart disease. Participants were classified as having IHD if they reported ever having angina, a heart attack or heart failure diagnosed by a doctor.

Long-term conditions & limiting long-term conditions

Long-term conditions were defined as a physical or mental health condition or illness lasting, or expected to last 12 months or more. The wording of this question changed in 2012 and is now aligned with the harmonised questions for all large Scottish Government surveys.

Long-term conditions were coded into categories defined in the International Classification of Diseases ( ICD), but it should be noted that the ICD is used mostly to classify conditions according to the cause, whereas SHeS classifies according to the reported symptoms. A long-term condition was defined as limiting if the respondent reported that it limited their activities in any way.

Mean

Most means in this report are Arithmetic means (the sum of the values for cases divided by the number of cases).

Median

The value of a distribution which divides it into two equal parts such that half the cases have values below the median and half the cases have values above the median.

Morbid obesity

See Body mass index.

Multiple risks

Four risk factors were examined in chapter 6 – (i) being a current smoker (ii) drinking alcohol at hazardous/harmful levels ( i.e. drinking above the recommended maximum of 14 units per week) (iii) being obese with a BMI of 30 or more (iv) not meeting the physical activity guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate activity or 70 minutes of vigorous activity (or combination of both) per week. These risk factors are widely accepted as having a negative impact on health.

The number of risks was totaled and the prevalence of 2 or more risks (defined as multiple risks) was examined by area deprivation and prevalence of long-term conditions and limiting long-term conditions. See also Long-term conditions and limiting long-term conditions.

NHS Health Board

The National Health Service ( NHS) in Scotland is divided up into 14 geographically-based local NHS Boards and a number of National Special Health Boards. Health Boards in this report refers to the 14 local NHS Boards. (See Volume 2: Appendix B)

Obesity

See Body mass index

Overweight

See Body mass index

Percentile

The value of a distribution which partitions the cases into groups of a specified size. For example, the 20th percentile is the value of the distribution where 20 percent of the cases have values below the 20th percentile and 80 percent have values above it. The 50th percentile is the median.

p value

A p value is the probability of the observed result occurring due to chance alone. A p value of less than 5% is conventionally taken to indicate a statistically significant result (p<0.05). It should be noted that the p value is dependent on the sample size, so that with large samples differences or associations which are very small may still be statistically significant. Results should therefore be assessed on the magnitude of the differences or associations as well as on the p value itself. The p values given in this report take into account the clustered sampling design of the survey. See also Significance testing.

Quintile

Quintiles are percentiles which divide a distribution into fifths, i.e., the 20th, 40th, 60th and 80th percentiles.

Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation

The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation ( SIMD) is the Scottish Government's official measure of area based multiple deprivation. It is based on 37 indicators across 7 individual domains of current income, employment, housing, health, education, skills and training and geographic access to services and telecommunications. SIMD is calculated at data zone level, enabling small pockets of deprivation to be identified. The data zones are ranked from most deprived (1) to least deprived (6505) on the overall SIMD index. The result is a comprehensive picture of relative area deprivation across Scotland.

This report uses the SIMD 2016. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/SIMD

Significance testing

Where differences in relation to a particular outcome between two subgroups, such as men and women, are highlighted in volume 1 of this report, the differences can be considered statistically significant, unless otherwise stated.

Statistical significance is calculated using logistic regression to provide a p-value based on a two-tailed significance test. One tailed-tests are used when the difference can only be in one direction. Two-tailed tests should always be used when the difference can theoretically be in either direction. For example, even though previous research has shown a higher prevalence of hazardous levels of alcohol consumption among men than among women, and we may expect this to be true in the most recent survey, a two-tailed test is used to confirm the difference.

Standard deviation

The standard deviation is a measure of the extent to which the values within a set of data are dispersed from, or close to, the mean value. In a normally distributed set of data 68% of the cases will lie within one standard deviation of the mean, 95% within two standard deviations and 99% will be within 3 standard deviations. For example, for a mean value of 50 with a standard deviation of 5, 95% of values will lie within the range 40-60.

Standard error

The standard error is a variance estimate that measures the amount of uncertainty (as a result of sampling error) associated with a survey statistic. All data presented in this report in the form of means are presented with their associated standard errors (with the exception of the WEMWBS scores which are also presented with their standard deviations). Confidence intervals are calculated from the standard error; therefore the larger the standard error, the wider the confidence interval will be.

Standard error of the mean

See Standard Error

Standardisation

In this report, standardisation refers to standardisation (or 'adjustment') by age (see Age standardisation).

Unit of alcohol

Alcohol consumption is reported in terms of units of alcohol. A unit of alcohol is 8 gms or 10ml of ethanol (pure alcohol). See Chapter 1 of volume 1 of this Report for a full explanation of how reported volumes of different alcoholic drinks were converted into units.

Unweighted bases

The unweighted bases presented in the report tables provide the number of individuals upon which the data in the table is based. This is the number of people that were interviewed as part of the SHeS and provided a valid answer to the particular question or set of questions. The unweighted bases show the number of people interviewed in various subgroups including gender, age and SIMD.

Weighted bases

See also Unweighted bases. The weighted bases are adjusted versions of the unweighted bases which involves calculating a weight for each individual so that their representation in the sample reflects their representation in the general population of Scotland living in private households. Categories within the table can be combined by using the weighted bases to calculate weighted averages of the relevant categories.

WEMWBS The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale ( WEMWBS) was developed by researchers at the Universities of Warwick and Edinburgh, with funding provided by NHS Health Scotland, to enable the measurement of mental well-being of adults in the UK. It was adapted from a 40 item scale originally developed in New Zealand, the Affectometer 2. The WEMWBS scale comprises 14 positively worded statements with a five item scale ranging from '1 - None of the time' to '5 - All of the time'. The lowest score possible is therefore 14 and the highest is 70. The 14 items are designed to assess positive affect (optimism, cheerfulness, relaxation); and satisfying interpersonal relationships and positive functioning (energy, clear thinking, self-acceptance, personal development, mastery and autonomy).

References:
Kammann, R. and Flett, R. (1983). Sourcebook for measuring well-being with Affectometer 2. Dunedin, New Zealand: Why Not? Foundation.
The briefing paper on the development of WEMWBS is available online from: http://www.wellscotland.info/guidance/How-to-measure-mental-wellbeing/How-to-start-measuring-mental-wellbeing/The-Warwick-Edinburgh-Mental-Wellbeing-Scale-