Active Adults Survey 2012

What is the Active Adults Survey?

For 25 years the Active Adults Survey has been the most comprehensive source of information about the amount and types of sport and physical activity that adults in Wales do. The Active Adults Survey 2012 has been commissioned by Sport Wales and will be carried out by the independent research organisation Ipsos MORI. The survey aims to measure levels of sports participation, club membership, volunteering and other sporting matters among adults in Wales.

What will the survey be used for?

The data will be used by Sport Wales and our partner organisations including the Welsh Government, local authorities and national governing bodies of sport, leisure, education and health services, feeding into their strategic planning and operations. It will inform how leisure, health, education and other services can be improved for the future.

Why has my household been chosen for the survey?

As it is not possible to ask everyone to take part in the survey, a sample of households has been selected to represent Wales. The Active Adults Survey 2012 will collect around 22,000 responses from households randomly selected from the list of private addresses held by the Post Office.

Taking part is completely voluntary, but we hope you will take part as this will give us the best possible picture of sports participation in Wales, and will be useful for guiding planning and policy decisions around sport and exercise.

What happens next?

To take part, you do not need to do anything at the moment. An Ipsos MORI interviewer will call at your home shortly. He/she will show you their Ipsos MORI identification card, will explain more about the study and will be happy to answer any questions you may have. The interviewer will randomly select an adult from your household to take part in the survey and ask if they would like to take part in an interview at a time convenient for them. If an interviewer calls at an inconvenient time, please ask them to call back at a time that suits you. This can be in the evening or at weekends.

I would like to be interviewed in Welsh. How can I arrange this?

If you have received a letter and would like to be interviewed in Welsh, please tell the interviewer who visits you or contact Ipsos MORI using the details below.

What will the interviewer ask?

The survey covers many areas of sports membership and exercise. The interviewer will ask you about:

The results of the survey will be used to guide planning and policy decisions around sport and exercise.

I don't do much physical activity. Why is the survey relevant to me?

The interviewer will randomly select an adult from your household to take part in the survey. Although some people think they are not typical enough to be of any help in a survey, we need to represent all types of people. We cannot substitute another address for yours, or another person in your household, as this would mean that the sample would not represent all households and all types of people.

My child does a lot of sport or physical activity and this survey would be relevant to them. Can they take part?

This survey is only for adults aged 15 and over in Wales, but we conduct other surveys for children. For example, the School Sport Survey asks pupils about their participation in sport and physical activity.

Why did the interviewer ask for consent to interview my 15 year-old child?

According to the Market Research Society's (MRS) Code of Conduct, consent must be obtained from a parent or guardian to interview a child aged up to 15.

Is the information I give confidential?

Yes. All information given to Ipsos MORI, including all personal details, will be treated in the strictest confidence in accordance with the Data Protection Act and the MRS Code of Conduct. No-one from Sport Wales or any other organisation will see your individual answers or be able to identify any person or household from the data collected, unless you give them permission to do so.

What precautions for data protection have been taken?

Ipsos MORI, who have been commissioned by us to carry out the survey, strictly adheres to the MRS Code of Conduct and the Data Protection Act, and uses all personal information in a responsible and secure manner. Stringent measures have been taken to ensure personal data is securely stored and seen only by the personnel directly involved in the project. Once the survey is completed, Ipsos MORI will destroy all such data securely.

Why did you ask if you can contact me again for other research?

From time to time, Sport Wales - or another organisation working on our behalf - carry out follow-up research about similar issues. It would be helpful if we could ask you to take part in this research. It would happen between your interview and the end of January 2014. If you are contacted again, you would be free to decide not to take part and your name can be removed at any point that you like. If you agree to be contacted again, Ipsos MORI will pass your contact detail and responses to the survey to Sport Wales. Sport Wales - or another organisation working on their behalf - will only ever use this information for this follow-up research and not for any other purpose.

You asked if you could link my survey answers to other information. Why do you want to do this?

Data linking is the name given to the process of bringing together person-level records from independent sources to form a rich information database. To date this technique has been predominantly used within medical and health research, but it is currently being expanded to include other forms of data, including social services, housing, transport and education.

Linking information to other records:

• reduces demands on people to take part in surveys such as the National Survey for Wales;
• greatly reduces the cost of collecting information;
• allows different types of information to be more readily available and so reduces the length of time looking for data; and
• allows better use to be made of already existing information.

The Health Information Research Unit (HIRU) for Wales is a research unit based at Swansea University. The core of HIRU's work is linking information from a number of surveys and databases across Wales.

Respondents to the Active Adults Survey are asked for their consent to pass their anonymous survey answers to HIRU to ensure a greater use of the survey data.

Respondents who agree to this can change their mind about giving their consent at any time by contacting Lisa Walters, in the Welsh Government's National Survey project team, on 029 2082 6685 or by e-mail lisa.walters@wales.gsi.gov.uk.

I have changed my mind about being contacted for follow-up research or having my responses to the survey linked to other information. How can I tell you about this?

Please contact us at the details given below and we will remove your details.

What is Ipsos MORI? 

Ipsos MORI is a registered and independent survey organisation and strictly adheres to the MRS Code of Conduct. Ipsos MORI was awarded the international process Standard ISO 20252 and the International Standard for Information Security ISO 27001 by the accredited assessment body Marketing Quality Assurance (MQA), the first survey agency in the world to achieve both of these standards. For more information about Ipsos MORI please go to www.ipsos-mori.com.

Where can I get more information about the survey?

If you would like further information about the Active Adults Survey or if you don't want to take part, you can either:

Write to: Henning Goranson Sandberg, Active Adults Survey 2012, Ipsos MORI, 79-81 Borough Road, London, SE1 1FY

Email: activeadults@ipsos-mori.com, or

Telephone: 0808 238 5353

For previous survey results please contact Ipsos MORI or visit www.sportwales.org.uk/research--policy/our-surveys/active-adults-survey.aspx.