Health InequalitiesIf your lifestyle survey aims to address issues around health inequalities in
your area, you will need to include questions or methods which will allow you to
‘estimate’ the socio-economic status of respondents. This could come through:
- using questions to measure social class
- using proxy measures for social class. For example,
gathering socio-economic data through questions on car
ownership, housing tenure and newspaper readership
- gathering postcode of respondents. This is usually
available from the sampling frame – by using ID numbers, we
know who the questionnaire is from and so can place them
into a postcode. Using postcode to LSOA look-up tables
allows us then to access census or other low level data.
Click here to see sample questions on measuring
social class or proxies for social class.
Lifestyle surveys provide an opportunity to collect data to
measure the levels of inequality in local areas. In
developing questions for this purpose it is important to
both:
- Understand the background issues on measuring
inequality and be aware of some of the indicators that
have been developed, many of which are now used widely
in measuring inequality (e.g. the indicators used in the
Index of Multiple Deprivation).
- Be
aware of the picture at national level and the
indicators being used to monitor changes in the level of
inequality to 2010. These are available in the
Department of Health document Tackling Health
Inequalities - A programme for action. See
Annex C at
http://www.dh.gov.uk/assetRoot/04/01/93/62/04019362.pdf
Lifestyle Surveys can also provide valuable input into
Health Equity Audits. These are processes which
are used to identify how fairly services or other
resources are distributed in relation to the health
needs of different groups and areas, and the priority
action necessary to provide services relative to need.
For further details see the
Guide for the NHS and a useful SEPHO presentation on
HEA's. |
