Specified Sport and Physical Activity Datasets: FOI release

Information requested

Average sedentary time for adults and children in Scotland at a more granular geographic level - specifically by council area or data zone, and region - and whether it would be possible for us to access or use it within our tool.

Response

Scottish Health Survey data, including that on sedentary behaviour, is available at Local Authority level combining 4 years of data to get sufficient sample sizes. Sedentary data is not routinely published on the Scottish Health Survey dashboard at local authority level, however, the data is available from the UK Data Service. See Scottish Health Survey: access our data - gov.scot for more information on accessing Scottish Health Survey data. Alternatively, a request can be made to the Scottish Health Survey Team for analysis and/or provision of data - Scottish Government statistics: request our data - gov.scot.

To note – the questions on physical activity and sedentary behaviour of adults in the Scottish Health Survey were markedly changed for the 2025 survey onwards. This means that 2025 data cannot be combined with data from earlier years to create the estimates for smaller geographies. These will be possible once four years of data from the new questions has been collected.

Estimates are not possible at data zone level.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.