Scottish Health Survey – telephone survey – August/September 2020: technical report

1.4 Fieldwork Procedures

1.4.1 Survey recruitment

A letter stating the purpose of the survey was sent to each sampled address inviting all adults aged 16 and over to opt in to the telephone survey, either via an online portal, by email or by calling the survey freephone number. An interviewer from ScotCen then contacted those who opted in, by telephone, to complete the interview. All adults aged 16 and over within these households were eligible to take part. As a thank you, each participating adult received a £10 Love2Shop gift voucher.

1.4.2 Collecting data

Interviewing was conducted using Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI), where the questionnaire answers were input directly to a laptop.

Towards the end of the interview self-reported height and weight measurements were taken from those who were willing to provide them. Unlike the face-to-face survey (where blood pressure, waist circumference and saliva samples are taken for a subset of the adult sample), no interviewer-administered biological measurements were taken as part of the telephone survey.