Participants will be asked a range of questions about their participation in social and leisure activities. In 2006 this module was divided into a social participation module and a sport and exercise module. During the consultation phase, stakeholders recommended that these modules be combined and to reduce the number of questions related to sport. It was agreed that data on sport is well captured elsewhere, such as the Irish Health Survey.
Within this module respondents will be asked if they participated in various social or leisure activities such as community events, in physical activity, or online. Information on level of satisfaction with their social life and any barriers preventing any desired social participation will be collected.
There was an interest in collecting information on political participation. This includes whether the respondent voted in the last election, and if not, were there any barriers that prevented the respondent from voting.
Initially there was a lot of interest in collecting a wide variety of information on sport and exercise. However, following much discussion, stakeholders recommended this be deprioritised as this topic is well captured elsewhere. Topics within this area included participation in various physical activity or sport, barriers to participation in sport, the frequency of participation in sport, whether the respondent is a member of a disability specific sports team, the level of intensity of the physical activity they engage in, the length of time a respondent participates in each physical activity, the setting the sport takes place (for example, mainstream, community facility, or specialised setting), and whether the activity is team or individual based.
Volunteering was another topic where there was a lot of interest, but ultimately it was agreed that this topic was well captured elsewhere, for example, in the Census of Population. Participation in volunteering, the frequency of volunteering and the setting where the respondent volunteers were all suggested as topics of interest.
Unlike the 2006 survey, the IDS pilot will not include a question on the level of difficulty experienced when participating in various social activities. Nor will respondents be asked about how frequently they engage in various social or leisure activities. Information on whether the participant travelled for a holiday will also not be collected. These questions have been removed to make room for new topics.
There were requests to collect data on a number of other topics, but these were subsequently ranked as having lower support when compared to topics that will be included. These include data on the night-time economy, the number of friends or who the respondent socialises with, and general hobbies. There was interest in collecting information on disabled parent’s participation in school related events. There was also interest in social media participation and specific online activity. While some information on online participation will be collected, it will not go into detail on specific usage or participation.
While some information will be collected on political participation, there was an interest to collect additional data on this topic and on participation in activism, both in disability groups and other forms of activism. It was agreed the subgroups would be too small to get meaningful data from these cohorts and these topics would be better explored by other research methods.