If your household has been selected to take part in the Health Survey, we will first send you a letter to inform you and to ask for your participation. You will then receive a visit from an interviewer. Please note that all interviewers carry an identity card with their photograph and are registered with the police. Please ask to see this if you are unsure about a caller’s identity.

The interviewer will select eligible members of the household to be interviewed. This may be all members, or just some members, depending on the number of residents and their ages. The interview will cover topics such as general health and use of health services, fruit and vegetable consumption, smoking and drinking, attitudes to health, psychosocial health and social support. The interviewers also collect height and weight. Each year a different set of additional questions is asked, depending on the focus of that year’s survey. These questions may cover areas such as asthma, heart disease and physical activity. You may also be given a self-completion booklet to fill in. This is a written questionnaire which you fill in yourself. It is entirely confidential.

As a way of saying thank you we have attached a voucher to the letter we have sent you. This can be used at any Post Office to claim £5 in cash. If this letter and voucher is misplaced and you still wish to claim your £5 please contact us on 0800 526 397.

The questions you will be asked are all about your health and lifestyle, so they are interesting and easy to answer.

The interviewer will be able to come back at a more convenient time to interview any household members who are out.

With your permission, the interviewer may then arrange for a nurse to visit some members of the household. The nurse will ask some further questions, for example about prescribed medicines, and take some measurements. There are different measurements for different age groups.

Examples of the types of measurements taken include blood pressure, waist and hip measurements, saliva sample and urine sample. Please note that all information is collected in the strictest confidence in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. The data you give us will be treated anonymously and results are only ever presented as statistics. The nurse will have to get your written permission before saliva or urine samples can be taken. You are of course free to choose not to give a sample, even if you are willing to help the nurse with everything else.

iStockphoto.com/Carmen Martinez Banus