Scottish Health Survey: content review outcomes report

Discrimination and harassment

While there was some support for retaining the discrimination and harassment questions in SHeS, this was not backed up with strong policy need, with the exception of PHS who noted that they include the data in the PHS’ Mental Health Indicators set.

While PHS noted that they would prioritise retaining the existing questions they also suggested that we add an additional internationally validated tool to the module, such as The Everyday Discrimination Scale, to ‘improve the available data in this area, as it is being increasingly understood that experiences of discrimination are an independent determinant of health.’ PHS also suggested ‘adding questions to the scale focused on accessing health and social care services, so that experiences in these settings can be considered in the data.’ GCPH suggested we replace the existing questions with the Everyday Discrimination Scale. The Everyday Discrimination Scale is longer than the existing discrimination and harassment question set and we do not have space to include this in SHeS.

The discrimination and harassment questions included in SHeS are also included in the Scottish Household Survey (SHS) on a biennial basis from 2025. SHS has a larger sample size than SHeS and will meet PHS’ needs for the Mental Health Indicators set and we are therefore removing the discrimination and harassment module from the health survey to avoid duplication and reduce the length of the questionnaire.