Long-term health condition: number of conditions

A long term condition is any condition(s) which has lasted, or is expected to last at least 12 months. For the long term health conditions question, respondents were asked to tick all the long term condition boxes that applied to them, of which there were 9, plus an option to write-in.

This variable reports how many boxes have been ticked i.e. how many conditions from the list a person has.

Total number of categories 11

Individual question 18: Do you have any of the following which have lasted or are expected to last at least 12 months? (Tick all that apply)

• Deafness or partial hearing loss
• Blindness or partial sight loss
• Full or partial loss of voice or difficulty speaking (a condition that requires you to use equipment to speak)
• Learning disability (a condition that you have had since childhood that affects the way you learn, understand information and communicate)
• Learning difficulty (a specific learning condition that affects the way you learn and process information)
• Developmental disorder (a condition that you have had since childhood which affects motor, cognitive, social and emotional skills, and speech and language)
• Physical disability (a condition that substantially limits one or more basic physical activities such as walking, climbing stairs, lifting or carrying)
• Mental health condition (a condition that affects your emotional, physical and mental wellbeing)
• Long-term illness, disease or condition (a condition, not listed above, that you may have for life, which may be managed with treatment or medication)
• Other condition, please write in:
• No condition

Data on long term health conditions are used for identifying health and social care service needs, informing service planning and development, allocating resources at national and local level, monitoring and assessing health policies and monitoring health inequalities.

The question on long term health conditions included in the 2021 England & Wales census did not include tick box responses for each type of condition, and therefore cannot be compared with Scotland's Census 2022 data.

England & Wales (2021) question:

Do you have any physical or mental health conditions or illnesses lasting or expected to last 12 months or more?

• Yes
• No

The long-term conditions question changed between 2011 and 2022 with the addition of a new tick box to cover conditions involved with speech difficulty or loss of speech. In addition, following extensive consultation with users, descriptions were added to each category to provide a clear definition for each condition. If required, individuals could also access lists of the specific conditions that went into each category in additional question guidance. These changes halved the number of write-in responses provided in 2022 compared with 2011. 

A long term condition is any condition(s) which has lasted, or is expected to last at least 12 months. People were asked to tick all boxes that applied to them, of which there were 10. This variable reports how many boxes have been ticked i.e. how many conditions from the list they have. For LTCOND2 each tick simply counts as 1 i.e. a person could have ticked one box to refer to several long-term health conditions but this will only be recorded as 1. If the individual has ticked one of the boxes stating they have a condition as well as the ‘No condition’ box the ‘No condition’ tick will be ignored.

Total number of categories 10

20: Do you have any of the following conditions which have lasted, or are expected to last, at least 12 months?

Tick all that apply.

• Deafness or partial hearing loss
• Blindness or partial sight loss
• Learning disability (for example, Down's Syndrome)
• Learning difficulty (for example, dyslexia)
• Developmental disorder (for example, Autistic Spectrum Disorder or Asperger's Syndrome)
• Physical disability
• Mental health condition
• Long-term illness, disease or condition
• Other condition, please write in

The question is aimed at meeting user demand, and to help improve the planning and provision of services for people with a specific long-term health condition.

This question was new to Scotland’s 2011 census so there is no comparison to be made with 2001 questions and England & Wales don’t have a similar question included in their questionnaire. Northern Ireland did have a question on long-term health conditions in their questionnaire, but with a different set of response categories which limits comparability with data for Scotland.

It is known that a response to question 20 was missing for a significant number of people in submitted census questionnaires. This report Long Term Condition Quality Report provides some technical details on the measures that were taken to address this quality issue during data processing.