Website of the Department of Health

Self care: a national view in 2007 compared to 2004-05

The Department of Health commissioned Ipsos MORI to undertake a longitudinal study, exploring attitudes of the public towards self care. This report presents the results of the 2007 study. The study aims to:

• Investigate the general public's perceptions and behaviour with regard to self care of their health as well as with regard to the NHS and social care.
• Capture the attitudes and behaviour of people with long term health conditions with regard to self care of their health and condition and their use of health and social care services.
• Where possible, comparisons are made to two previous baseline studies:
  'Public attitudes to self care - baseline survey'. 1,638 face-to-face interviews with members of the general public and people with long term conditions during August and September 2005.
• 'Views on self care of people with long term conditions - baseline study'. 4,083 face-to-face interviews with members of the general public and people with long term conditions during August and September 2005.

A further study will be carried out in 2009

Methodology

The study was carried out through an Ipsos MORI national omnibus, and face to face in-home interviews were conducted with a representative sample of the population. Fieldwork was conducted between 16 and 22 March 2007, and 1,975 interviews with British adults were achieved

• Download Executive summary (PDF, 81K)
• Download Part 1: Views of the general public (PDF, 224K)
• Download Part 2: Views of people with long term conditions (PDF, 327K)
• Download Part 3: Attachments (PDF, 221K)