Scottish Health Survey: content review outcomes report

COVID-19

Despite not receiving any feedback on the COVID-19 questions during the initial review process, we subsequently received support from policy teams, especially for the need for long COVID data.

Due to the changing nature of COVID-19, we will review the questions with policy colleagues annually to ensure that the data is necessary and continuing to meet a clear policy need.

In 2024, we updated the list of long COVID symptoms to reflect the list used in the, now ended, COVID and Respiratory Infection Survey (CRIS).  We also added a new question that was used in the CRIS asking about whether participants with long COVID symptoms worsen following physical and/or mental effort.

"Do your symptoms tend to get worse after mental and/or physical effort? For example, completing a crossword, doing tasks on a computer, going for a walk or doing housework. This includes if your symptoms get worse more so than you would usually expect based on the activity you are doing. The worsening could start hours or days after you undertook the activity."

• Yes
• No
• Don’t know

We are going to include the same question module in 2025 and will review again in advance of the 2026 module.

For the COVID-19 module with the updated list of symptoms see annex 6.