Scottish Health Survey: content review outcomes report

Alcohol and drinking experiences 

During the review process we received support to continue to include the existing alcohol and drinking experience questions in SHeS and requests to add additional questions to the module.

Based on feedback from PHS we are going to include additional response options to the location of alcohol consumption question including ‘at a Sports venue’, ‘at a concert venue’ and ‘at the cinema’.

PHS’ request to add a response for ‘with my children and/or dependants who I have guardianship of’ to the question about who you usually drink the most alcohol with is not being included as we already ask about drinking with family, and the need to ask specifically about children/dependants was not clear.

While requests were made by Alcohol Focus Scotland (AFS) to add questions about non or low-alcohol drinks to the module, there was not a clear policy need for this provided, and, given the space constraints in the survey, this is not something we will include at this time, but we will consider this in future.

AFS also requested that we ask respondents about alcohol purchasing habits, especially in relation to online sales. However, SHeS focuses on consumption of alcohol rather than purchasing habits and this data could be obtained from alcohol sellers.

During the review, PHS and an individual requested that we include recovery and treatment questions for those reporting having a problem with alcohol. We worked with policy colleagues in SG to determine whether it would be possible to add additional questions to the alcohol and drugs modules regarding treatment for problem alcohol/drug users. However, due to the small sample of respondents saying they had or currently have a problem with alcohol, it is not possible to ask additional questions of this subgroup.

PHS also suggested a few potential additional questions. However, they stated that retention of the current questions should be a priority over any of their suggestions and due to space limitations we have only included the addition of new categories to the location of drinking question which does not add to the survey length.

Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems suggested that there is a need to define and clarify what is meant by ‘a small and large bottle of beer, for example’ and to define the amount of alcohol included in a drink, referred to in the drinking experiences questions (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test – AUDIT). We will discuss the feasibility of including a definition of bottle size in the drinking behaviour questions. It is not possible to alter the wording in the drinking experiences questions as AUDIT is an established questionnaire used elsewhere and altering the wording may impact comparability.

Other requests, such as adding questions around the effects of alcohol on crime, marketing/brand awareness, knowledge of drinking guidelines, or units in preferred alcoholic drinks do not fit with health survey’s focus on health behaviours and experiences, rather than attitudes or awareness towards topics or behaviours.

Some requests were also made to ask respondents about any hospital admissions due to alcohol consumption. This information is available in a dataset, which links SHeS data to health records, including hospital admissions for alcohol, and can be accessed via a short application to be assessed by the PHS Data Protection Team. More information is available on the SHeS website.

For the full alcohol and drinking experiences module with the updated questions see annex 4.