The SLS begins with information from the Scottish Census, and then adds in other administrative sources. Currently this includes:

• births, deaths and marriages
• weather and pollution data for each part of Scotland
• measures of how populated/rural an area is
• measures of deprivation
• education information

If individual research questions need health data – for example to find out how pollution is linked to lung cancer – data from NHS Scotland may be linked into the SLS sample for that one project. We do not store NHS data within the SLS at other times.