Scottish Health Survey: content review outcomes report

Accidents

There was strong support received through the review process to retain accident questions in SHeS with some minor amendments to the existing module. We will continue to include the accidents module in the main questionnaire every second year (in odd years).

Based on requests from PHS and Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH), we are updating the terminology used in the accidents module to replace the term ‘accidents’ with ‘unintentional injuries,’ as ‘accidents’ implies that events are inevitable and unavoidable, whereas a high proportion of these incidents are considered to be preventable.

Similarly, we are updating the term ‘road traffic accident’ to ‘road traffic collision.’

We are including two new response options in the cause of the unintentional injury question – choking and poisoning – based on a request from the Scottish Community Safety Network.

If the cause of the unintentional injury is ‘road traffic collision,’ we will ask two new follow-up questions about the mode of transport the respondent was using at the time of the collision and the other type of vehicle(s) that were involved in the collision. This was requested by both PHS and GCPH to help monitor risks of active travel.

We are also updating the response options for the question which asks about who the respondent received help or advice about the injury from to include minor injuries unit and NHS 24.  This is based on a request from the Scottish Community Safety Network, to better reflect the pathways the public are encouraged to take in the event of an injury.

A request from the Scottish Community Safety Network regarding adding additional response options to the question about what could have been done to avoid an accident i.e. installation of safety equipment; information leaflet/education; environmental changes, or personal protective equipment, will not be included as this focuses on respondents’ opinions rather than their experience and is out with the scope of the health survey.

For the full unintentional injuries module with the updated questions see annex 2.