Eurobarometer 72.3 (Oct 2009)

Check-up and screening. Oral and dental health. Alcohol consumption. Smoking. Organ donation and transplantation. Blood donation. Sports and physical activities.

Topics: 1. Check-up and screening: participation in screening and health check-ups; own initiative, doctor’s initiative, or screening as reason for dental examination, X-ray examination, eye test, cholesterol test, heart test, hearing test, blood pressure test, prostate test (PSA test), and cancer test; period since last blood pressure test; idea of a healthy diet; frequency of physical activities at work, at home, and in leisure time in the last week; assessment of the danger of passive smoking.

2. Oral and dental health: time of last visit to the dentist; frequency of visits to the dentist in the past year; reason for the last visit to the dentist; reason for not visiting a dentist; accessibility of a dentist within 30 minutes from the place of residence, or the workplace; access to a dentist or a dental clinic; kind of visited dental office; number of daily meals and snacks; frequency of consumption of fresh fruit, pastries and cakes, sweets, soft drinks, jam or honey, and sugar-containing chewing gum; number of natural teeth; wearing a removable denture; period of use of the removable denture; frequency of occurrence of selected inconvenience and obstruction by oral or dental problems.

3. Alcohol consumption (only in EU27): alcohol consumption in the last year; frequency of consumption of more than five drinks on one occasion; alcohol consumption in the past month and drinking frequency; consumed amount of alcohol in one day; suspected reduction in alcohol consumption among young people and heavy drinkers at a price increase of 25 percent; influence of the price on the purchasing behaviour of the respondent with regard to alcoholic beverages; knowledge of the legal blood alcohol level allowed for car drivers in the own country; number of alcoholic drinks consumed in two hours after which a person should not drive anymore; attitude towards a standardized limitation of alcohol level of 0.2 g / l for young and novice drivers in the 27 EU member countries (non-EU member countries: in the own country); frequency of driving; attitude towards random police alcohol blood checks to reduce alcohol consumption before driving; requirement of an EU-wide ban on alcohol advertising aimed at young people; demand to ban the selling and serving alcohol to young people under 18 years in all EU member countries; attitude towards warnings on alcoholic beverages and in advertisements for alcohol to point pregnant women and drivers out to the dangers of alcohol consumption; preference for individual or governmental responsibility to protect the individual against alcohol damage; knowledge test on the potential increase of certain diseases due to alcohol consumption (liver diseases, heart diseases, cancers, asthma, depression, and birth defects); alcohol consumption as a contributory factor for selected social problems (marital difficulties, loss of productivity at work, underperformance at school, street violence).

4. Smoking (in EU 27 and the Turkish Cypriot community, Croatia, Macedonia, and Turkey): smoking status; consumption of water pipe, oral tobacco (snuff, chewing tobacco, etc.), and nicotine-containing products; current or past consumption frequency of selected tobacco products (manufactured cigarettes, hand-rolled cigarettes, cigars, pipe, and water pipe); daily consumption of cigarettes, cigars, or pipes; factors affecting the choice of cigarettes (price, package, taste as well as tar, nicotine, and monoxide carbon levels); smoking situation inside the respondent’s house (all rooms or only single rooms); permission to smoke in the own car; presence of smokers at the last visit in a bar or a restaurant; duration of indoor tobacco exposure at the workplace (passive smoking); attempt to quit smoking, and duration of the last attempt; aids used during the last quit attempt (e.g. nicotine patches, professional medical advice); motivation to quit smoking (concerns about the own health and about the effects of smoking on non-smokers, concerns to meet social disapproval, the price of tobacco products, smoking restrictions at work or in public places such as bars and restaurants, media campaign, availability of a telephone quitline, advice from a doctor, free or low-cost stop-smoking medication, warnings on tobacco packages, family, partner, or friends); suspected differences in the health risk from different types of cigarettes; aspects that can make a cigarette brand seem less harmful than others (e.g. menthol taste, tar and nicotine levels on the package, colour of the cigarette pack, specific terms such as “blue” or “nature” in the brand name); frequency of the perception of tobacco advertising in the past six months; frequency of purchase of tobacco products via the Internet, in vending machines, in self-service stores, in another country; attitude towards selected measures (banning tobacco products and tobacco advertising in shops, keeping tobacco products in shops out of sight, banning the sales of tobacco products via the Internet, pictorial warnings on health hazards on all tobacco products, banning flavours, packets without colours, logos, and advertising elements (plain packaging), increasing taxes on tobacco products, introduction of an extra fee on manufacturers to cover the health costs of tobacco use).

5. Organ donation and transplantation: discussions about organ donation or organ transplantation in the family; knowledge of national laws for organ donation and transplantation; personal willingness to donate organs after death; willingness to donate an organ of a deceased close family member; reasons for unwillingness to organ donation.

6. Blood donation (only in EU 27): own blood donation in the past; assessment of the safety of blood transfusions compared with ten years ago.

7. Sports: frequency of sports and other physical activities per week; location of sporting activities; own motivation for sporting activities; reason that prevents most from regular physical activity; attitude towards selected statements about sport and physical activity (scale: opportunities for physical activity are available in the residential area, many sports facilities are offered by local sports clubs, exercise fails to lack of time, no interest in physical activity in leisure time, local authority does too little for physical activities of their citizens); membership in a fitness club, sports club, or a socio-cultural club with sports facilities, e.g. youth club; volunteering in sport; time required for this volunteering per month.

Demography: nationality; marital status; family situation; age at end of education; sex; age; occupation; professional position; type of community; household size and household composition; own a mobile phone and fixed (landline) phone; possession of durable goods (entertainment electronics, Internet connection, possession of a car, a flat/a house have finished paying for or still paying for); financial difficulties during the last year; self-rated social position (scale); internet use (at home, at work, at school).

Also encoded was: date of the interview; time of the beginning of the interview; duration of the interview; number of persons present during the interview; respondent cooperation; interview language (only in LU, BE, ES, FI, EE, LV, MT und TR); size of locality; region; weighting factor.