Health Survey for England, 2024

The Health Survey for England (HSE) is designed to estimate the proportion of people in England who have health conditions, and the prevalence of risk factors and behaviours associated with certain health conditions among the population and to monitor trends. It provides information about adults aged 16 and over and children aged 0 to 15 living in private households in England.

Each survey in the series includes core questions, measurements such as blood pressure, height and weight measurements, and analysis of blood and saliva samples. In addition, there are modules of questions on specific issues that vary from year to year.

The 2024 Health Survey for England was conducted via face-to-face interviewer visits. Full details of fieldwork processes can be found in the HSE 2024 Methods report, available on the first page.

A total of 9,220 adults (aged 16 and over) and 1,950 children (aged 0 to 15) were interviewed in the 2024 survey. 4,966 adults and 781 children had a health visit.

The 2024 report covers adult health, adult health-related behaviours, prevalence of overweight and obesity in adults and children, child health and health-related behaviours, social care receipt, loneliness and wellbeing, and chronic pain.

The Health Survey for England, in common with other surveys, collects information from a sample of the population. The sample is designed to represent the whole population as accurately as possible within practical constraints, such as time and cost. Consequently, statistics based on the survey are estimates, rather than precise figures, and are subject to a margin of error, shown as a 95% confidence interval. 

For example, the survey estimate might be 24% with a 95% confidence interval of 22% to 26%. A different sample might have given a different estimate, but we expect that the true value of the statistic in the population would be within the range given by the 95% confidence interval in 95 cases out of 100.

Where differences are commented on in this report, these reflect the same degree of certainty that these differences are real, and not just within the margins of sampling error. These differences can be described as statistically significant implying no more than a 5% chance that any reported difference is not a real one but a consequence of sampling error. Statistical significance does not imply substantive importance; differences that are statistically significant are not necessarily meaningful or relevant. 

Confidence intervals are shown for key statistics within this report in the accompanying Excel tables. Confidence intervals are affected by the size of the sample on which the estimate is based. Generally, the larger the sample, the smaller the confidence interval, and hence the more precise the estimate. 

Adult data within this report have been age-standardised to allow comparisons between groups after adjusting for the effects of any differences in their age distributions. When different sub-groups are compared in respect of a variable on which age has an important influence, any differences in age distributions between these sub-groups are likely to affect the observed differences in the proportions of interest. For information about the method used, see the HSE 2024 Methods report, available on the first page.

Estimates presented in the text are rounded to the nearest whole number. Where categories are combined, the sum of two estimates may sometimes appear to be greater or less than expected. This reflects the effect of rounding; for example, estimates of 10.6% and 12.7% would round respectively to 11% and 13%, but the sum (23.3%) will round to 23% rather than 24%.

The charts are based on unrounded estimates. Values given in the text may appear different in the corresponding chart. For example, an estimate of 10% in the text may represent a value between 9.5% and 10.4%. 

The 2024 HSE data collection methodology was similar to the methodology used in 2022, with some exceptions. Specifically, the self-completion could be completed online in 2024; telephone interviews were available in 2022, but not in 2024. No annual survey was undertaken in 2023.

Findings from 2024 can be compared to previous survey years, with the exception of 2021. As summarised in the HSE 2021 Methods report, adaptations made to the data collection methodology in 2021 mean that findings from 2021 are not directly comparable with other survey years. Estimates from 2021 are therefore greyed out in trend tables, and caution is advised if making inferences about any apparent changes in prevalence over time. Exceptions to this are data from health visits, which had the same methodology in 2021 and other years (a biomedical fieldworker would visit the household to collect biomeasures). It is worth noting, however, that the characteristics of the sample who had a health visit in 2021 may differ slightly from other years, due to the different methodology for the first stage. Data from HSE 2021 health visits can be compared with caution to other years and therefore are not greyed out in trend tables.