The Scania Public Health Cohort

1999/2000 survey

The Scania Public Health Cohort (SPHC) was established in 1999/2000. At baseline, a postal questionnaire was sent out to 23437 men and women, 18-80 years old. These individuals were randomly selected from the population register, such that equal representation was achieved from all municipalities in the county of Scania, Sweden. In total, after three reminders, 13589 individuals returned a completed questionnaire (response rate 58%).

Download the questionnaire here.

2005 survey

Out of those who answered the questionnaire in 1999/2000, there were 13005 eligible individuals in 2005, alive and still residing in the region of Scania, who were invited for a follow-up, using the same questionnaire and survey procedures as in 1999/2000. In total, 10472 individuals returned a completed questionnaire (response rate 81%).

Download the questionnaire here.

2010 survey

In 2010, there were 12002 eligible individuals from the original cohort (i.e. that defined in 1999/2000) who were invited to the second follow-up, again using the same questionnaire and survey methods. A total of 9027 individuals returned their completed questionnaires (response rate 75%).

In order to ensure enough individuals in the youngest age-brackets of the cohort, new individuals, randomly selected from the general population, were invited in 2010 (n=4030, ages 18-27, response rate 33%). The personal identification numbers of these were not recorded, why it was not possible to locate all the current addresses for 440 of them in 2016. However, 887 of those who were localized were still residing in Scania, the response rate in this group was 38% in 2016.

Download the questionnaire here.

2016 survey

The fourth complete assessment of the original cohort was made in 2016, when there were 10233 eligible individuals who were invited. This time, 6417 completed questionnaires were received (response rate 63%). The youngest individuals in the cohort were now 35 years of age and the oldest 97. Thus, a number of declines were stated to be due to old age and poor health.

In 2016 as well, a new selection of persons was made (n=5649 in the ages 18-27 and n=947 in the ages 28-34). This selection was performed in the same way as on the two previous occasions. Out of the people selected, 420 (365 and 55, respectively) did not live in Scania or their addresses could not be obtained, leaving 6176 (5284 and 892, respectively) eligible persons in this group.

Download the questionnaire here.

Register data

Register data from Statistics Sweden and the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare have been added to the survey data from the first three surveys:

From the National Patient Register, all in-hospital care episodes during 2000-2015.
From the Cause of Death Register, all deaths until December 31, 2015.
From the Prescribed Drug Register, all prescriptions issued between July 1, 2005 (start of the register), and December 31, 2015.
From the Longitudinal integrated database for health insurance and labor market studies (LISA), yearly data on socioeconomic variables for 2000-2014.

Request data

In order to get data from the SPHC, you first need to have approval for the study from the Ethical Review Authority. If you have any questions regarding what you should write about the study, or which variables are available, you are welcome to contact lupop [at] ed [dot] lu [dot] se.

Once you have obtained ethical approval, download and fill out the data application form and list of variables. E-mail these, and attachments as specified in the data application form, to lupop [at] ed [dot] lu [dot] se.