From our engagement with customers we know there are many users of this report. There are also many users of these statistics who we do not know about. We are continually aiming to improve our understanding of who our users are in order to enhance our knowledge on what the uses of these data are via recent consultations and feedback forms available online.
Below is listed our current understanding of the known users and uses of these statistics. Also included are the methods we use to attempt to engage with the current unknown users.
Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)
Frequently use these statistics to inform policy and planning.
For example Towards a smoke-free generation: tobacco control plan for England mentions SDD as the source of information on children smoking and one of the objectives stated in the plan is to “reduce the number of 15 year olds who regularly smoke from 8% to 3% or less”. Progress against this objective will be measured by this survey.
Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID)
Frequently use these data for secondary analysis and publications. For example, data from the survey are used to monitor indicator 2.09 (smoking prevalence at age 15) at national level in the Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF)
Data from the survey are also used by OHID in their annual commissioning prompts and data packs that are published to support LAs with planning.
Media
Results from the survey are used to underpin articles in newspapers, journals, etc
Public
All information is accessible for general public use for any particular purpose.
Local Government
Use the reports and tables for analyses, benchmarking and to inform decision making.
Public Health Campaign Groups
Data are used to inform policy and decision making and to examine trends and behaviours. For example Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) use results from this survey in some of their factsheets
Ad-hoc requests
The statistics are used to answer Parliamentary Questions (PQs), Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and ad-hoc queries. Ad-hoc requests are received from health professionals; research companies; public sector organisations, and members of the public, showing the statistics are widely used and not solely within the profession.
Unknown users
This publication is free to access via the NHS Digital website, and consequently the majority of users will access the report without being known to us. Therefore, it is important to put mechanisms in place to try to understand how these additional users are using the statistics and also to gain feedback on how we can make these data more useful to them.
On the webpage for this report there is a link to a survey which allows users to provide feedback which will be sent to the team responsible for the report to consider. We also capture information on the number of times the reports are downloaded, although we are unable to capture who the users are from this.
