Your answers are valuable

Your answers are used by Statistics Norway to produce official statistics describing living conditions in Norway. The statistics and data are used by politicians, researchers, and others to gain insight into how the Norwegian population perceives their own health.

Data collected in this and other surveys are used to produce statistics on topics such as lifestyle, healthcare, employment and poverty-related issues. These statistics are available at ssb.no.

This survey is part of the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) and is conducted about every 5 years. Statistics produced with data collected in this survey enable us to compare health and living conditions in European countries. Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU, also publish statistics and reports from these data. These statistics are available at Eurostat’s web page.

In 2025 we will ask you about the following topics:

  • physical and mental health
  • level of functional abilities
  • communication with others
  • personal care, wellbeing, and lifestyle
  • dental and medical care
  • needs you may have for assistance and medication
  • exercise routines, eating habits and diet
  • smoking, snus, vaping, and alcohol consumption
  • social relations including receiving or providing assistance
  • employment, civil status and level of education

The interview will take approximately 30 minutes to complete, but this varies from person to person.

It may take less time to answer the questionnaire if you spend some time in advance of the interview considering how the list of topics we have listed above have been relevant to you in the past 12 months.

Specific information we will ask for are the number of healthcare and hospital visits you have had, how many hours you have needed or provided assistance, and if you have received any vaccinations or had medical tests done in the past 12 months.

If you are selected to answer the survey, you will receive a letter from us by mail or in Altinn. Later the same day, one of our interviewers will call you to conduct the interview. If you would rather arrange a time for us to contact you, please call 62 88 56 08 or send an e-mail to svar@ssb.no.

The interview can only be conducted over the phone in Norwegian or English.

If you have received a letter from us, but have not yet been called by our interviewers, we may not have your phone number. In that case, please contact us to update your contact information.

Approximately 12 000 individuals aged 15 years and over are randomly selected from the National Population Register to answer the survey.

  • Statistics Norway will treat your information as confidential. Individual answers will not be disclosed.
  • You can contact us at any time before the results are published if you wish to get access to your answers, correct them, delete them or withdraw from the survey. You can do this by calling or sending us an e-mail.
  • The survey is conducted in accordance with the Statistics Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). If you have further questions about GDPR, you can send an e-mail to personvernombud@ssb.no or read more at our information page about privacy.
  • After the data collection is completed, all ties to you as a person will be removed. All survey data will be anonymized by December 1, 2028.
  • To shorten the interview, we also collect data about participants from registers that Statistics Norway already has access to. This includes information from the National Population Register as well as information about education from school systems and the State Educational Loan Fund. We also collect information about income, employment, welfare benefits and other financial support from the Norwegian Tax Administration and Nav, and information on immigration from The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI), electoral participation from the Electoral Roll and information on housing from household and residence registers.

Do you have more questions?

If you have additional questions not addressed on this page, please see our contact information at the bottom of this web page.