Physical activity: adults comparison with England

The 2008 Scottish Health Survey and the 2008 Health Survey for England used similar, but not identical, methods to measure adult physical activity levels. In line with national recommendations, the Scottish Health Survey takes into account activity bouts as short as 10 minutes when summarising physical activity levels. Although the Health Survey for England was redesigned to catch such bouts in 2008, the summary variable reported has included data only from activity spells of at least 30 minutes duration because of the "difficulty in establishing the aggregated time on each individual day spent in different bouts of activity". 

Table 1 shows that a higher percentage of adults in Scotland achieved the recommended level of physical activity compared to England. This is the case for both men and women and across all but one age group (men aged 16 to 24).

Table 1: Percentage of adults aged 16 years and over in Scotland and England achieving the recommended level of physical activity per week by age group and gender, 2008

	16 to 24	25 to 34	35 to 44	45 to 54	55 to 64	65 to 74	75+	Total
MEN
Scotland	58%	63%	53%	43%	37%	21%	13%	45%
England	53%	49%	44%	41%	32%	20%	9%	39%
WOMEN
Scotland	42%	42%	43%	37%	29%	20%	4%	33%
England	35%	36%	34%	32%	28%	17%	6%	29%

Note: Recommended level of physical activity for adults is 30 minutes or more moderate-plus activity on five or more days per week. Episodes of activity less than 30 minutes have been excluded from England results.
Source: Scottish Health Survey and Health Survey for England.

Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.