Official Statistics

Updates to the Participation Survey Publications

Updated 30 November 2023

Applies to England

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We have updated  all breakdowns by disability status in our annual publications to align with the Government Statistical Service harmonised standard.  The harmonised standard for disability is:

  1. Respondents that said ‘yes’ to the question “Do you have any physical or mental health conditions or illnesses lasting or expected to last 12 months or more?” and
  2. Respondents that said ‘Yes a little’ or ‘Yes, a lot’  to the question “Does your condition or illness/do any of your conditions or illnesses reduce your ability to carry-out day-to-day activities?”

Our breakdowns by disability status were previously based only on the answer to the first question, rather than both of these. As a result, we have made some revisions to the 2022/23 annual report and the associated tables. Full details of the changes in findings are available below. 

Please note that the 2021/22 annual report has not been updated, and therefore please use the revised 2021/22 annual data tables, 2022/23 annual data tables and 2022/23 annual report for the latest disability estimates.

We have not revised the data in our quarterly dataset. Instead, we changed the way we have labelled the data to ‘long lasting health condition or illness’. This data represents respondents who had said yes to having any physical or mental health conditions or illnesses lasting or expected to last for 12 months or more.  This is a different measure to the ‘disabled/non-disabled’ breakdown available in the annual data tables. 

2022/23 Participation Survey Annual Report Disability Revisions Note

As a result of this update of disability status definition, there were a few changes to the overall findings in the 2022/23 annual report:

  • Using the original definition of disability, we concluded that disabled adults engaged more digitally with the heritage sector (20%) than non-disabled adults (17%). With the GSS harmonised standard, our updated results conclude that there were no statistically significant differences observed in engaging in digital heritage engagement between adults of different disability status (19% of disabled adults, 18% of non-disabled adults).

  • Using the original definition of disability, we concluded that there were no statistically significant differences observed in awareness of Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022 between adults of different disability status. With the GSS harmonised standard, our updated results conclude that non-disabled adults (60%) were more likely to be aware of the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022 than disabled adults (57%).

  • Using the original definition of disability, we concluded that disabled adults (26%) were more likely to be aware of the Coventry City of Culture event than non-disabled adults (23%). With the GSS harmonised standard, our updated results conclude that there were no statistically significant differences observed in awareness of  this event between adults of different disability status (24% of disabled adults, 24% of non-disabled adults).

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