The Health Division has said that it will be conducting the Second European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) in Malta and Gozo with fieldwork planned for this autumn, starting in mid October over a period of three months.
This survey will be performed by the Directorate for Health Information and Research, within the Department of Health. Health interview surveys are designed to obtain valuable information regarding the nation’s health that cannot be obtained from routinely collected information.
The Department of Health stressed the importance of participation in this survey which will provide information which would help to ensure that health services are designed to reflect better the current health care needs.
The EHIS is being implemented in accordance with legal requirements as stipulated by the European Commission. During the survey, information on health related issues will be systematically collected by means of face to face interviews (without physical examination) in a representative sample of 6,200 individuals aged 15 years and over residing in Malta or Gozo.
The selected individuals will receive a letter, kindly inviting them to participate in the survey. Following this, these individuals will receive a phone call from authorised interviewers in order to arrange an appointment for the interview at the convenience of the interviewee.
If you are one of the chosen participants and you decide not to participate, you cannot be replaced by anyone else. For the survey to be truly representative of the Maltese population, only those individuals who are selected from the population register may participate in the survey.
For this reason, should you be one of the participants chosen, the Directorate strongly encourages you to participate as the validity of the survey results are highly dependent on the response rate.
The interviews will be conducted over a period of 8-12 weeks, mainly mid-October to mid-December 2014 and possibly spilling on to January 2015. All steps will be taken to ensure that the highest degree of confidentiality will be maintained throughout the whole process of the survey, and all output from the survey data will be in an aggregate
The Survey will gather information related to the health and well being of the population including dental, physical and mental health/illnesses, body height and weight, physical limitations in activities; use of health care services and medicines; and lifestyle (e.g. diet, physical exercise, smoking and alcohol).
The information will be gathered via two questionnaires. The first questionnaire is to be completed by a face to face interview and the second, shorter questionnaire which contains more sensitive topics, is to be filled in by the interviewee. Questionnaires are available in both Maltese and English for the convenience of the interviewee.
One of the goals of this survey is to offer comprehensive information on the population’s health status allowing identification of any priority areas. The added value of the European Health Interview Survey is its harmonised approach, the high degree of comparability among EU Member States and its foreseen regularity of implementation.
This allows changes in the health status of the Maltese population and the effect of health programmes and policies to be monitored. Furthermore, it facilitates cross-country comparisons between Member States, thus identifying issues which are particular to Malta.
Consequently, this Health Survey provides policy makers with relevant information allowing them to make more evidence-based policy decisions in the field of public health.
For further information on the European Health Interview Survey kindly visit: www.healthsurveys.gov.mt [1] or contact the Directorate for Health Information and Research on 25599000 or healthinfo@gov.mt [2].