Glossary

‘Nearest green or blue space’ refers to “public green, blue or open spaces in your local area, for example a park, countryside, wood, play area, canal path, riverside, sea or beach”. Note that private household gardens are excluded.

Variation in survey responses by selected characteristics have been presented in this report. A brief description of some of these is given below, and more detailed information can be found in the glossary of the SHS - Annual Report 2022.

Sex: the respondent is asked “What is your sex?”, with possible responses ‘female’, ‘male’ or ‘prefer not to say’. Further information is available at: Sex, gender identity, trans status - data collection and publication: guidance.

Health: refers to a respondent’s self-reported, subjective view of their health, according to five categories ranging from ‘very good’ to ‘very bad’, or ‘don’t know’.

Disability: is defined according to the Equality Act 2010 definition. In the SHS, a respondent is considered disabled if they have a physical or mental health condition or illness lasting or expected to last 12 months or more, and that this condition or illness reduces their ability to carry out day to day activities.

Urban-rural classification: refers to the six-fold Scottish Government Urban Rural Classification, which considers both population and accessibility.

Deprivation: defined by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, which is based on several domains including health, income and access to services. In the SHS, deprivation is grouped into five categories (‘quintiles’).

95% confidence interval: a method to communicate the precision of an estimate. The interval consists of a range with an upper and lower bound. For a 95% confidence interval, if we repeated the Scottish Household Survey a very high number of times, on a new sample each time, then we would expect, on average, 95% of those intervals to contain the true population value that we are interested in.