Scottish Health Survey: content review outcomes report

Drugs

During the review process there was strong support for retaining the existing drugs questions.

Requests were made to regularly review the list of drugs included in the survey module to ensure the list is up-to-date.  We will ask SG drugs policy and analyst colleagues to review the list of drugs respondents are asked about in advance of the drugs module being included in the survey.

Requests were also made to add additional questions to the drugs module with a number of suggestions made such as, questions to explore knowledge of substance use treatment services and use of these services, and questions asking about the impact of drug use.

We followed up these requests with discussions with SG policy and analyst colleagues. Due to the sample size of those who reported a current or previous drug problem (<0.5% and 3% respectively in 2021) being small, it was agreed that it would not be possible to ask any follow-up questions of this group. Another suggestion made during this meeting was to ask respondents about their family/friends experiences of drug use.  This was also not deemed appropriate as respondents may not have full awareness of the situation or their experiences.

We do not generally include questions on knowledge, attitudes or opinions in SHeS as the focus of the survey is to estimate prevalence of health conditions and risk and it was therefore not deemed appropriate to include questions about knowledge of substance use treatment services.

We will therefore continue to include the current drugs module in the SHeS self-complete on a biennial basis (in odd years) without any additional questions.