Scottish Surveys Core Questions 2014

3 Disability: Long-term limiting physical and mental health conditions

Harmonised questions on long-term limiting physical or mental health conditions that limit daily activity are designed to identify respondents who may have rights under section 6 of the Equality Act 2010 ^[34] . Long-term limiting physical or mental health conditions are therefore taken as a proxy for disability.

Table 20: Age profile of those with long-term limiting conditions, SSCQ 2014

	Proportion in Age Group (Row %)						Adults	Col%
	16-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55-64	65+
Limiting condition	5.4	9.0	10.5	15.9	18.6	40.6	1,029,600	23%
No limiting condition	16.6	17.9	16.7	18.7	14.0	16.1	3,387,000	76%

Older people are more likely to suffer a long-term limiting health condition. 40% of those with limiting conditions are aged 65+, compared with 16% of those without such a condition. For this reason, age standardisation is applied to many of the analyses in the following section. For more information on this process, see section 11.10.

Where formal testing is conducted, the group without long-term limiting health conditions is used as the reference category for comparison. Where p-values are provided, a value of less than 0.05 indicates statistical significance at the 95% level. For more information about statistical tests, see section 11.11.

Summary Findings

• Unsurprisingly, the long-term limiting conditions group have considerably lower levels of good/very good general health than the rest of the population (27.5% compared with 88.6% in the non-disabled group).
• The smoking rate for this group is around 40% higher than for the rest of the population. Smoking prevalence among those with long-term limiting conditions has fallen in line with the change at national level since 2012, down 2.2 points to 27.7% in 2014.
• People with long-term physical or mental health conditions that limit their daily activities have lower levels of mental wellbeing.
• The gap in perception of the local crime rate has narrowed since 2012; the disabled group are still less likely to say that crime in their area has reduced or stayed the same in the last two years (74.8% compared with 78.2%) but the difference has reduced from 5.2 to 3.4 percentage points in 2014.

3.1 General Health

Table 21: General health by disability, SSCQ 2014; changes from 2013 and 2012

		2014		Change
		grp %	+/-	from 2013	from 2012
Disability	Limiting condition	27.5	± 1.5	+0.7	-0.4
	No limiting condition	88.6	± 0.6	-0.7	+0.3

As might be expected, there is a clear association between disability and self-assessed general health. Those without a limiting long-term condition are three times as likely to report "Good/Very good" health as those with a limiting condition.

Changes over time from 2012 are not statistically significant.

Disability is correlated with age; those reporting a long-term limiting health condition tend to be older. Controlling for this difference through age standardisation boosts the contribution to the group level statistic made by the younger members of the disabled group, who tend to rate their health higher. It therefore weakens the correlation between disability and general health somewhat, and the proportion of the disabled group reporting good/very good health rises to 30.4%. This is clearly still a much lower rate than those without limiting long-term conditions.

Table 22: Proportions rating general health "Good" or "Very good" - age standardised disability result, SSCQ 2014

	Base level	Age standardised
Limiting condition	27.5%	30.4%	± 2.0
No limiting condition	88.6%	87.8%	± 0.6

3.2 Smoking

Table 23: Smoking prevalence by disability, SSCQ 2014; changes from 2013 and 2012

		2014		Change
		grp %	+/-	from 2013	from 2012
Disability	Limiting condition	27.7	± 1.4	-0.2	-2.2
	No limiting condition	19.2	± 0.8	-1.5	-2.6

Smoking is more common among those with long-term limiting health conditions. Over a quarter of those reporting such a condition smoke, compared with around a fifth of those with no limiting condition.

Table 24: Smoking prevalence - age standardised long-term limiting health condition groups, SSCQ 2014

	Base level	Age standardised
Limiting condition	27.7%	32.1%	± 1.9
No limiting condition	19.2%	18.5%	± 0.8

This difference is accentuated when we account for the age differences between the two groups, as shown in Table 24. Because the disability rate increases with age, while younger people are more likely to smoke (probably due to higher mortality rates for smokers), this shows that smoking rates are consistently higher for the long-term sick and disabled across the board, as confirmed in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Smoking prevalence by long-term limiting health conditions and age group, SSCQ 2014

Table 25: Smoking prevalence by long-term limiting health conditions and age group, SSCQ 2014

	Limiting condition		No limiting condition
16-24	35.2%	± 8.2	18.8%	± 2.5
25-34	43.0%	± 5.8	25.3%	± 2.1
35-44	36.6%	± 4.9	21.8%	± 1.9
45-54	36.8%	± 4.0	21.3%	± 1.8
55-64	32.6%	± 3.3	15.6%	± 1.7
65-74	22.1%	± 2.7	13.0%	± 1.7
75+	9.2%	± 1.7	7.8%	± 1.7

3.3 Mental Wellbeing

The mental wellbeing of those reporting a long-term limiting health condition is around 2.8 percentage points lower than of those without such a condition.

Table 26: Average SWEMWBS score by disability, 2014

		2014
		Mean	+/-
Disability	Limiting condition	22.3	± 0.1
	No limiting condition	25.1	± 0.1

When the different age distribution of the long-term limiting conditions group is taken into account, this difference widens slightly to 3.1 points. Those with a long-term limiting condition have lower levels of mental wellbeing than those without.

Limiting conditions include people with physical and/or mental health conditions that limit daily activities. It is therefore not surprising that this group have lower levels of mental wellbeing.

Table 27: Average SWEMWBS score - age standardised disability groups, SSCQ 2014

	Base level	Age standardised
Limiting condition	22.3	22.0	± 0.2
No limiting condition	25.1	25.1	± 0.1

3.4 Provision of Unpaid Care

There is no statistically significant difference between those with and without long-term limiting conditions in their provision of care to others.

Table 28: Provision of unpaid care by disability, SSCQ 2014

		2014
		grp %	+/-
Disability	Limiting condition	18.4	± 1.4
	No limiting condition	17.7	± 0.8

Both the prevalence of limiting long-term conditions and the prevalence of unpaid care provision generally increase with age. When age standardisation is applied, the difference between the groups increases further, however this difference is still not statistically significant (p=0.07).

3.5 Perceptions of Local Crime Rate

People with long-term limiting conditions are less likely to report that crime in their area has reduced or stayed the same. Around three quarters report this change, while 78% of those without limiting conditions do so. However, since 2012 this difference has narrowed. The difference in 2014 was 3.4 percentage points, whereas in 2012 it was 5.1 percentage points.

Table 29: Local crime rate by disability, SSCQ 2014; changes from 2013 and 2012

		2014		Change
		grp %	+/-	from 2013	from 2012
Disability	Limiting condition	74.8	± 1.6	-0.9	+2.8
	No limiting condition	78.2	± 1.0	-0.0	+1.1

3.6 Confidence in Police

Analysis of Confidence in Police is conducted on latent classes across all six questions. These statistics are in development and are therefore provided in a supplementary paper available from the SSCQ website. ^[35]