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The Irish Health Survey is a voluntary survey which is conducted annually. In Irish law, it is carried out under Section 24 of the Statistics Act, 1993, which allows this Office to invite people to provide information on a voluntary basis. In 2025 and 2031, it will be conducted under the provisions of European Union regulations 2019/1700, 2023/2529, and 2024/297.
The survey fulfils the need for public health policies to obtain reliable data on health status, access to health care, and health determinants. It allows for health comparisons to be made across Europe in the relevant regulation years.
The Central Statistics Office wishes to thank the participating persons for their co-operation in agreeing to take part in the survey, and for facilitating the collection of the relevant data about their children.
The children's module is a module included in the Irish Health Survey. It contains questions on health status, health care access and health determinants in the same structure as the questionnaire for adults.
The Irish Health Survey was designed in line with the fourth wave of the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS). The collection of the data under the aforementioned European Regulation implies that harmonised data can be obtained across the European continent in the relevant regulation years. The Irish Health Survey can be divided into three fundamental components. These are:
The module on health status is a central element of the survey. It allows measurement of the health status of the population in general, and not only in relation to specific health problems. It covers different aspects and dimensions of health: physical and mental health, chronic and temporary problems and specific conditions and neurodiversity. It covers the general impact on the functional status and the limitations in activities of daily living of the respondents. The first three general questions on self-perceived health, long standing illnesses or health problems, and activity limitations constitute the Minimum European Health Module (MEHM) and the CSO Data Standard for General Health.
The module on health care collects data on the use of health care services and the unmet needs for health care. Information on health care consumption is an essential part of the health information system in order to assign necessary resources to the population. This allows analysis of the relationships between health consumption and several determinants such as health status, lifestyles or socio-demographic characteristics as well as the relationships between different types of health care use.
The general focus of the health determinants module is to measure aspects in lifestyles or health-related behaviours. These may have a positive or negative impact on an individual’s health status. Questions are included on body mass index (BMI), physical activity, nutritional habits, social media use, alcohol consumption, smoking and cannabis use, social support and the provision of informal care or assistance.
The complete list of sub-modules are as follows:
The survey responses were linked to Census 2022 data in order to source relevant demographic data, including deprivation index and HSE Health Region.
A copy of the Irish Health Survey 2024 questionnaire (PDF 225KB) is available on the CSO website. .
A simple random sampling (SRS) method without stratification was used to select approximately 6,000 children aged between 2 to 17 years, at the time of sampling, from the Census 2022 frame. With an SRS approach, every individual within the target population, who were aged between 2 to 17 years, at the time of sampling, had an equal chance of selection regardless of demographics characteristics such as sex, age or general health status.
A letter was sent to the guardian of all 6,000 children in the sample asking them to complete the survey on behalf of their child. The letter contained a QR code and a request to complete the IHS via online questionnaire by typing in the survey link. After two weeks, a reminder letter was sent to those who were yet to complete the survey. The reference period for the survey is 2024. Data collection occurred in November and December 2024. There were 2,461 completed responses to the children's module within the survey, which resulted in a response rate of 39%.
The Irish Health Survey weighting procedure had two steps: non-response adjustment and calibration. Design weights were calculated for all people in the initial sample. The design weights are computed as the inverse of the selection probability of the unit and were the same for all sampled due to the simple random sampling approach. The purpose of design weights is to eliminate the bias induced by unequal selection probabilities.
The non-response adjustment used a propensity score adjustments method to assess non-response. Propensity score adjustment uses a logistic regression approach, utilising variables from the Census 2022 frame to estimate the probability of non-response for cohorts with specific characteristics related to non-response and the variables of relevance to the survey. Several iterations of the propensity score adjustment took place, optimising the model and including the following Census 2022 variables in the non-response calculation; deprivation index grouping, relationship status, principle economic status, internet at home, citizenship, number of carers in the household, sex, age, self-perceived general health, age, marital status, disabled to some extent, employment status, ethnicity, and level of education. Each group is then given a weight based on the estimated probability of responding. This eliminated the bias introduced by discrepancies caused by non-response, particularly critical when the non-responding people are different from the responding ones in respect to some census variables, as this may create substantial bias in the estimates.
Calibration of the non-response adjusted design weights then took place, calibrating to the Q4 2024 population estimates at the level of sex, five-year age group and NUTS 3 region using the Icarus-macro, developed by INSEE, for this purpose. To provide national population results, the survey results were weighted to represent the entire population.
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