Ipsos was commissioned by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) on behalf of the Department of Health to run the What About YOUth? 2014 (WAY 2014) survey.
WAY 2014 is a newly-established survey designed to collect robust local authority (LA) level data on a range of health behaviours among 15 year-olds. Findings from WAY 2014 relating to smoking have now been published in order to meet the Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF) release data requirements.
The PHOF included a placeholder indicator on smoking prevalence at age 15 and the data from this survey will now become the source for this PHOF indicator. The report covers all the information required for the PHOF on smoking prevalence plus other information on attitudes to smoking, e-cigarette use and use of other tobacco products (such as shisha) and will allow comparisons between local authorities and against the national position.
WAY 2014 is the first survey to be conducted of its kind and it is hoped that the survey will be repeated in order to form a time series of comparable data on a range of indicators for 15 year-olds across England. Other than smoking, data has been collected on other topics including general health, diet, use of free time, physical activity, drinking, emotional wellbeing, drugs and bullying. HSCIC plan to publish a main report covering all the key findings from the survey in December 2015.
Download the computer tables (PDF)
Technical details:
A sample of approximately 300,000 young people were selected from the National Pupil Database (NPD) and contacted to take part in the postal survey, with the option to complete it online. Fieldwork ran between 22nd September 2014 and 9th January 2015. A total of 120,115 participants responded to the survey and data were weighted by gender, ethnicity, Free School Meal eligibility, IMD quintile and local authority to reflect the known population profile of 15 year olds in England (sourced from the NPD).
A £5 shopping voucher was used as the token of appreciation, which was conditional on completing the questionnaire.
