Scottish Health Survey 2021 data on alcohol consumption and drug use: FOI release

Information requested

I have been looking into the consumption of alcohol and harmful drugs in Scotland. I was interested to read that consumption has been on a steady decline wince 2003! I did wonder, looking at your report, if there was more specific data on consumption in locations around Scotland, to see if there is a correlation between urban and rural areas.

To assist my research, I was wondering if I could access the data sets from your research under the Freedom of Information Act. I think it would be really interesting to look into the figures in more depth for age, gender, location and economic background. I would be really grateful for any help you can give me. If you do have some data you could kindly send me, I would really appreciate it if it could be in the form of excel or spreadsheet, rather than PDF?

Response

In terms of your first query, you can find alcohol data by health board and local authority areas in the Scottish Health Survey dashboard (Scottish Health Survey (shinyapps.io)). Please go to the rank tab, and select the topic, indicator and geography that you are interested in from the menu on the left hand side. The data presented in the dashboard can also be downloaded in .csv format from the data tab.

In terms of your second query, you can find various alcohol indicators by age, sex, Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, equivalised income and disability in the Scottish Health Survey supplementary tables: Scottish Health Survey 2021: supplementary tables - gov.scot (www.gov.scot). Individual level Scottish Health Survey datasets are also published and can be downloaded for further analysis from UKDS: UK Data Service. Please create an account to be able to access the data. Please note that the 2021 datasets will be available around March 2023.

About FOI

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