Quality report: Well-being of children and young people – School Health Promotion study
Data description
Statistical presentation
The School Health Promotion study, which the statistics are based on, describes the perceived health and well-being of children and young people and their lifestyles, schoolwork and studying. The data of the School Health Promotion study carried out by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) is collected in all of Finland from students in grades 4–5 and grades 8–9 of comprehensive schools, from students in the 1st and 2nd years of general upper secondary schools and from students in the 1st and 2nd year of vocational upper secondary education and training who are under the age of 21.
The School Health Promotion study is carried out nationally as an overall study with the aim of reaching the entire age group as respondents, which enables data production at the level of wellbeing services counties and municipalities. The School Health Promotion study is carried out in even-numbered years. The data in these statistics are based on the data collections carried out in the School Health Promotion study between 2006 and 2025. These statistics replace the previous separate statistics “Well-being of children and young people” and “Daily life of young people”.
The statistics are published every two years. The published data are final.
Relevance
The role of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare is to follow the health and welfare of the population. The School Health Promotion study implements this task among children and young people. At THL, the data are used, for example, in the development of school and student healthcare and in the monitoring of the mental well-being and substance use of children and young people. Educational institutions use the information provided by the School Health Promotion study in the development of the educational institution’s operating culture, in student welfare work and in the teaching of health education, among other things. Municipalities and wellbeing services counties use the findings in monitoring the health and wellbeing of children and young people and in welfare management, for example, when drawing up plans for the wellbeing of children and young people. At the national level, the results of the School Health Promotion study are used for purposes such as monitoring and assessing the implementation of policy programmes and different laws.
The questionnaires and the implementation of the School Health Promotion study are developed together with representatives of municipalities and educational institutions. The feedback received from students and teachers on previous questionnaires is taken into account. When the questions are selected, the monitoring data intended for the use of educational institutions, municipali-ties and wellbeing services counties and the comprehensibility of the questions to children and young people play a key role.
Data content of the statistics
The target group of the statistics consists of students in grades 4 and 5 and in grades 8 and 9 of basic education, students in the 1st and 2nd year of general upper secondary education and those students in the 1st and 2nd year of vocational education and training (VET) who are under the age of 21 in all of Finland. In general upper secondary schools, the target group is students completing the syllabus for young people or a foreign qualification in general upper secondary education. In vocational education and training, the target group of the statistics is students under the age of 21 who are studying for a vocational upper secondary qualification in a vocational institution. In general upper secondary education, the target group does not include subject students or students completing the syllabus for adults. In vocational education and training, the target group of these statistics does not include students aged 21 or over, persons in apprenticeship training, students studying for a qualification other than a vocational upper secondary qualification, or persons in preparatory education for programmes leading to an upper secondary qualification (TUVA).
Between 2006 and 2011, the data collections were conducted in Southern Finland, Eastern Finland and Lapland in even-numbered years and elsewhere in mainland Finland and in Åland in odd-numbered years. Since 2013, the School Health Promotion study has been implemented simultaneously across the entire country every two years. The statistical data for the period 2006‒2011 combines the research years 2006‒2007, 2008‒2009 and 2010‒2011 to ensure that the results are as comparable as possible with the research years 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2025.
Regional data are based on the municipality in which the educational institution or its unit is located.
The key concepts and variables used in the statistics have been described as part of the statistical report.
Statistical processing
Source data
The source data of the statistics is the School Health Promotion study implemented by THL every two years. The data in the statistics are based on the responses given by students on the questionnaire during a lesson. Responding is voluntary. The educational institution’s details and regional information obtained from registers maintained by Statistics Finland and the Finnish National Agency for Education on the basis of the information attached to the respondent’s ID are added to the data of the study.
Data collection
The data collection for the School Health Promotion study is carried out every two years between March and April in odd-numbered years. In 2025, the data for the School Health Promotion Study were collected from grades 4 and 5 of basic education during the period 3 March–7 April, from grades 8 and 9 of basic education and from general upper secondary schools during the period 1 April–9 May, and from vocational institutions during the period 3 March–9 May.
The data are collected in educational institutions in an anonymous, independently completed online questionnaire. Students complete the questionnaire by class or group during the school day. The teacher hands out the answer IDs to the students and supervises them as they fill out the questionnaire. One lesson has been reserved for responding. Filling out the questionnaire is voluntary for the students. The study includes separate questionnaires for four different school levels, and the questionnaires can be completed in Finnish, Swedish, English, Russian or Northern Sámi.
To ensure informed consent, it was explained in the instructions for responding to the questionnaire which sensitive themes would be asked about in the questionnaire (mental health, violence, substance use, perceived gender, sexuality) so that the student could refuse to respond to the questionnaire if they so wished. It was also mentioned in the instructions that not all the questions would have to be answered, in which case the respondent could leave a question unanswered if they found it sensitive. None of the questions in the questionnaire were made mandatory.
The educational institutions inform the guardians of the survey in advance, and they are given the opportunity to refuse their child’s participation if the child is under the age of 15. According to the guideline of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK (2019), informing the guardian and the possibility to refuse the participation of a child under the age of 15 is applicable in surveys involving a large number of respondents and in studies that do not involve the processing of the personal data of minors.
In the 2025 data used in the statistics, there were 103,408 respondents from grades 4 and 5 of basic education, 94,743 from grades 8 and 9 of basic education, 47,248 from general upper secondary school and 24,469 from vocational institutions.
In 2025, the data covered 85 per cent of all students in grades 4 and 5 of basic education, and 73 per cent of the students in grades 8 and 9 of basic education in Mainland Finland and Åland. In upper secondary school, the data covered 70 per cent of all students who started their studies in the general upper secondary education syllabus for young people or a foreign qualification in 2023 and 2024. In vocational institutions, the data covered 37 per cent of all students under the age of 21 who started their studies for a vocational upper secondary qualification (not with an apprenticeship agreement) in 2023 and 2024. The lower coverage of the data from vocational institutions and the confidence intervals of the results must be taken into account when comparing the results.
In the data for 2025, 48.8 per cent of the respondents in grades 8 and 9 of basic education were aged 15, 33.4 per cent were 14, and 16.5 per cent were 16. Of general upper secondary school students, 17-year-olds formed the largest group (48.2%) and were followed by 16-year-olds (35.3%) and 18-year-olds (15.5%). Of students in vocational education and training, 41.3 per cent were aged 17, 35.3 per cent were 16, and 15.6 per cent were 18. The age is based on the age reported by the respondents. Students in grades 4 and 5 of basic education were not asked about their age.
Responses to the online questionnaires are collected through the THL form service. Only those who clicked the Submit button at the end of the questionnaire are included in the data compiled. Information on the respondent’s educational institution and the municipality in which the educational institution is located is obtained from the sample data.
Respondents to the School Health Promotion study have the opportunity to give feedback on the survey. The end of the form includes the following question: “What do you think of the survey? You may give feedback on the survey here if you want to:" (an open field in which the respondent can enter a maximum of 2,000 characters). In 2025, 116,525 children and young people answered this question.
Feedback responses were examined using natural language software. In the examination, the ten most frequently mentioned words were: hyvä, kysely, ihan, ok, kiva, pitkä, liian, aika, kysymyksiä, bra [good, questionnaire, quite, ok, nice, long, too, time, questions, good (in Swedish)]. The feedback responses are analysed and used in the development of the questionnaires.
Data validation
When examining information collected from young people, the possibility of implausible answers must also be taken into account. To identify such answers, the responses to the School Health Promotion study have been mapped both in terms of content and answer technique.
In 2025, respondents who had answered at least 75 per cent of the questions addressed to all respondents in less than 5 minutes (n=206) were removed as implausible from the data of all school levels. It is highly unlikely that the respondent would have had time read so many questions and their answer options in that time.
Implausible respondents were examined in the data on the basis of answer technique. In the data from grades 8 and 9 of basic education, general upper secondary schools and vocational institutions, implausible answers were mapped out by examining response behaviour in matrix questions in 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2025. Matrix questions with at least five rows in the questionnaires of the survey year were used in the examinations. Of them, matrix questions that are intended for all respondents and have been posed to all the three target groups were included.
The first examination is based on answers on the edge of the matrix, i.e. the respondent has selected the first answer option on the left on each row or the last answer option on the right on each row. Depending on the matrix, the left or the right edge can in most cases be regarded as an “abnormal” edge that accumulates relatively few answers. Answers on the “non-abnormal” edge of the matrix in turn are fairly common and can be considered usual.
When edge answers in matrices are analysed, one point is given for each matrix with the answers on the abnormal edge. Respondents who have skipped one row are taken into account by supplementing the blank row for the examination with the answer most commonly selected by the respondent in the matrix concerned. If the respondent has not provided an answer on more than one row in the matrix, they cannot score a point for the matrix.
Another examination is based on identifying diagonal response patterns in the same matrix questions. In a diagonal response pattern, the response begins from one edge of the matrix and proceeds diagonally row by row. The response may begin either from the top right or top left.
The majority of respondents do not answer diagonally in any matrix. A diagonal response in individual matrices can be considered credible. Responding with a diagonal pattern is considerably less common than answering to the abnormal edge of the matrix.
Each matrix that has been responded to diagonally scores one point. To gain a point, the respondent must have provided an answer on each row of the matrix.
Based on the examinations conducted, a small proportion of respondents was found to have abnormal response behaviour in matrix questions. When occurring in a couple of matrix questions, abnormal responses to the edge or diagonal response patterns may indicate a real phenomenon and do not yet reveal a rigid pattern in response behaviour. Only when the same formula is repeated from one matrix to another can the credibility of the respondent be questioned.
Based on the examination described above, respondents who responded to the abnormal edge in at least five matrices (five points) or provided a diagonal response pattern in at least four matrices (four points) were removed from the results of grades 8 and 9 of basic education and from the results of general upper secondary schools and vocational institutions. The removal rate was 1.2 per cent in 2025 (n=2,069). Similar response behaviour was not observed in the responses of students in grades 4 and 5 of basic education.
Implausible responses were also mapped out in previous years, before the method described above was developed. In 2023, efforts were made to identify respondents in the data of the School Health Promotion study who in certain questions select extreme answer options that are impossible in terms of their content. In the data used in 2023, those respondents were removed who reported that they could not see, hear, walk, learn, remember or concentrate at all and never had breakfast, the school lunch, supper, an evening snack or snacks during the school week.
Data compilation
After the data collection, the responses collected using the different questionnaires are combined into children’s data (4th–5th-graders) and young people’s data (8th–9th graders, general upper secondary students and vocational students). The data are enriched with the details of the educational institution and municipality-based regional data. Students’ responses are used to calculate national or regional (e.g. municipality-specific) percentages for the indicators used in the statistics. The percentages are calculated in proportion to the number of students who responded to the question or questions used for the indicator concerned.
The quality of the information to be published is verified by removing respondents who do not belong to the target group, respondents who have responded unconvincingly quickly, and respondents whose answer technique is implausible (for details, see section Validation of data).
Data revision
The statistics are based on a survey in which the data used have been obtained in full at once and the data will not be supplemented later.
Cost and burden
The respondent burden is assessed by looking at the time that students used for responding. In 2025, it took on average 19 minutes for students in grades 4 and 5 of basic education, 21 minutes for students in grades 8 and 9 of basic education, 18 minutes for general upper secondary students and 20 minutes for vocational students to respond. The responses were provided in less than half an hour by 91–92 per cent of students in basic education and vocational education and training, and by 96 per cent of students in general upper secondary education. When the time required for students to arrive at the beginning of the lesson, providing them with the instructions and handing out the devices is taken into account, the majority of the participants have time to respond to the entire questionnaire during the 45-minute lesson.
The time required for the implementation of the data collection in the educational institution includes the planning and preparation as well as the time required by the students to complete the questionnaire. The time spent on preparing the implementation of the survey in educational institutions varies by institution and is difficult to estimate. The instruction given to the educational institutions was to reserve one 45-minute lesson per respondent group for the implementation of the survey. The number of respondent groups varies by educational institution.
Quality assessment of the statistics
Accuracy and reliability
The statistics are based on the data reported by the respondents themselves. In some of the answers, they may have embellished, concealed or, on the other hand, exaggerated information, for example, in the case of sensitive questions. In a time series, in the results of the whole country or in a regional comparison, the significance of such error sources can be assumed to remain approximately similar.
Starting from the 2025 statistics, confidence intervals of 95 per cent will be reported for the data in the Result service of the School Health Promotion study (Tableau).
The reliability of the data can also be assessed by examining the proportion of non-respondents in all respondents to each question. In 2025, students in grade 4 and 5 of basic education tended to leave 1–4 per cent of the questions intended for everyone unanswered. With the exception of individual questions, the propor-tion of missing answers among students in grades 8 and 9 of basic education was 1–4 per cent but increased to 5–7 per cent in the last third of the questionnaire. The proportion of missing answers in the questionnaires completed by general upper secondary students was 0–2 per cent up to slightly over halfway through the questionnaire, increasing to 3–4 per cent after that. As a rule, the proportion of missing answers among vocational students up to halfway through the questionnaire was 0–3 per cent but increased to 4–5 per cent after this and to 5–7 per cent at the very end of the questionnaire.
The number of missing answers in questionnaires filled out by grades 4 and 5 of basic education and by general upper secondary students was relatively small in the questionnaire in its entirety, so they are not likely to affect the quality of the data. On the other hand, respondents to the rest of the questionnaire in grades 8 and 9 of basic education and vocational institutions may be a selected group. It should be noted that in 2025, the questionnaire in Easy Finnish or Swedish was no longer used, but the teachers were asked to instruct students who had difficulty reading to answer as many questions in the questionnaire as they had time for. Between 2019 and 2023, a separate questionnaire in Easy Finnish or Swedish was used, but it was abandoned because the answers could not be combined with the answers produced by the standard language questionnaire due to its different content.
Children and young people who are absent from school on the day of the survey, who have severe functional impairments or disabilities, who are home-schooled, and young people who are completing a work experience learning period are not included in the data.
Starting from 2013, data collection for the School Health Promotion study progressed from paper questionnaires to online questionnaires so that only online questionnaires were used in 2021. As a rule, this change has not been observed to have a significant impact on the results.
The data in the statistics are reported as indicators. Some of the indicators are based on one and others on several questions. The development history of the questions is taken into account in forming time series of the indicators. The core questions included in the questionnaires of the School Health Promotion study remain unchanged. If there is cause to suspect that a change in the results has resulted from changes in the manner of measurement (such as the reformulation of a question or the place of a question on the form), the time series will be interrupted, or this will be reported as a new indicator. In 2025, the questionnaires were shortened, and the formulation of the questions was simplified. From the point of view of these statistics, the most notable change was that the four separate questions about the use of tobacco products in the questionnaires for grades 8 and 9 of basic education, general upper secondary schools and vocational institutions were replaced with one matrix question. From the point of view of examining the behaviour of the trend in the long term, the impact of the change on the continuation of the trend was considered to be minor.
More detailed variable-specific observations regarding quality are available in the Data resources catalogue.
Data resources catalogue
Timeliness and punctuality
The statistics are published within approximately four months of the end of data collection.
The indicators included in the Cost-effectiveness indicators in social welfare and healthcare (KUVA) are published as preliminary data in the Statistics and indicator bank Sotkanet within approximately one month of the end of the data collection.
Coherence and comparability
Between 2006 and 2011, the data collections of the School Health Promotion study were conducted in Southern Finland, Eastern Finland and Lapland in even-numbered years and elsewhere in mainland Finland and in Åland in odd-numbered years. Since 2013, the School Health Promotion Study has been implemented simultaneously across the entire country every two years. To clarify the statistics, the statistical data for the period 2006‒2011 combines the research years 2006‒2007, 2008‒2009 and 2010‒2011 to ensure that the results are as comparable as possible with the research years 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2025.
The data from grades 4 and 5 of basic education included four municipalities that did not provide any responses in 2025. For grades 8 and 9 of basic education, responses were received from all municipalities that had students in the grades concerned. As for general upper secondary schools, responses were not received from one municipality, and for vocational institutions, from seven municipalities which had new students belonging to the target group in 2023 and 2024.
When examined by wellbeing services county in 2025, data coverage varied between 80 and 89 per cent for students in grades 4 and 5, between 63 and 78 per cent for students in grades 8 and 9, between 63 and 82 per cent for students in general upper secondary education, and between 22 and 49 per cent for students in vocational education and training. Thanks to the high number of respondents, the 2025 results for different wellbeing services counties can be considered comparable, especially when confidence intervals are used.
When the results from previous years are examined, it must be taken into account that in 2015, the data collection conducted with the online questionnaires was plagued by technical problems, which resulted in an uncommonly small response rate. For this reason, the wellbeing services county and municipality-specific data for 2015 have been hidden and only the statistics for the entire country are available.
In the preparation of the School Health Promotion study, attention is paid to consistency and complementarity with the information produced by national and international studies focusing on children and young people as well as THL’s other surveys concerning the population. In Finland, the aim of national-level surveys tar-geted at schools is mutual complementarity, not overlapping (e.g. PISA, Child Victim survey, Youth Crime survey).
The questionnaires of the School Health Promotion study contain permanent and changing sections. The key monitoring indicators are included in the questionnaire in each data collection. Some of the monitoring questions are repeated in the questionnaire every four or six years. In addition, a few changing questions can be used to further explore a certain topical phenomenon. In 2025, questions related to the sense of security at school and spending time in nature were among those added to the questionnaires.
Institutional mandate
The production of the statistics is based on the Act on the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (688/2008) (Finlex, in Finnish) and the Statistics Act (280/2004) (Finlex, in Finnish). One of the official tasks of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare is to produce statistical data on the health and welfare of the population, the factors affecting them, and the use and functioning of healthcare and social welfare services to support decision-making, development and research. THL’s statistical production practices are guided by the instructions, recommendations and regulations of Eurostat and the Official Statistics of Finland as well as the principles of statistical ethics.
Data sharing and publishing
THL publishes the data in the statistics publication calendar at the time indicated in advance. The data is made public to all users at the same time.
Statistics publication calendar
The regional and municipality-specific data of the School Health Promotion study are published as indicators in the Result service of the School Health Promotion study (Tableau, available in Finnish and Swedish) and in the statistical cubes (TIKU). Some of the indicators are also published in THL's statistics and indicator bank Sotkanet (sotkanet.fi). The distribution of responses for questions used in calculating indicators are published in the data cubes. Data from the statistical cubes and Sotkanet can be downloaded through an open interface.
A regional result is not published in the Result service of the School Health Promotion study, in the statistical cubes or in Sotkanet if the number of respondents in the group is fewer than 30. In rare phenomena (less than five cases), the result is not published if the number of respondents is fewer than 60.
Findings from the School Health Promotion study are also report-ed in the Tobacco statistics.
The statistical reports are public. However, the data of the School Health Promotion study is confidential. The Finnish Social and Health Data Permit Authority Findata grants permits for using the data based on the Act on the Secondary Use of Health and Social Data (552/2019) (Finlex, in Finnish).
Findata website
In addition to the extensive Tableau view with different possibilities for comparison, the educational institutions receive a PDF summary of the key indicators, which can be printed out for discussing it with personnel, students and guardians.
Confidentiality
As an authority, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare has the obligation to produce compiled data on the health and well-being concerned with the entire country. The data used to draw up THL’s statistics is primarily confidential, and personal data may not be published. The protection of processed data is based on the Act on the National Institute for Health and Welfare (688/2008) (Finlex, in Finnish), the Statistics Act (280/2004) (Finlex, in Finnish), the Act on the Openness of Government Activities (621/1999) (Finlex, in Finnish), the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (EUR-lex) and the Data Protection Act (1050/2018) (Finlex, in Finnish) as well as other regulations guiding the activities of the Institute.
THL’s datasets are secured at all stages of processing. Data and information systems can only be accessed by persons who have a permit to access certain data for clearly defined purposes. Others do not have the ability to view, process, change or delete data. Written instructions have been drawn up to ensure the data pro-tection of completed statistics. All THL personnel are bound by a confidentiality obligation.
The privacy notice of the School Health Promotion study can be viewed online at thl.fi.
Privacy notice
Special issues concerning the 2025 statistics
In 2025, the School Health Promotion study questionnaires were made shorter and clarified significantly. The reasons behind the need to redesign them were increased difficulties with reading literacy and, year after year, the wealth of feedback from students stating that they found the questionnaire too long. The formulations of the questions were reviewed with a specialist from the Finnish Centre for Easy Language and discussed in focus group interviews with approximately 450 children and young peo-ple. The time required for responding to the shortened questionnaire was tested with 500 students. The majority were able to respond to the shortened questionnaire during a 45-minute lesson.
After the clarification of the questions, the significantly shorter questionnaires in easy Finnish or Swedish language, which were used between 2019 and 2023, were discontinued. At the time, the answers received from the easy-language questionnaires were part of the educational institution-specific results but were excluded from the national and regional results and from scientific articles as their formulations did not correspond to the formula-tion of the standard-language questionnaires.
To collect views from students, an open question was added to the 2025 questionnaire: “What do you think adults should do to help young people / students do well?” This question will be processed separately from the other responses and it will not be dis-closed outside THL.
In 2025, in order to improve the response rate in vocational insti-tutions, the target group in vocational institutions was expanded to also include, on an experimental basis, students in preparatory education for programmes leading to an upper secondary qualification (TUVA) (n=4,811) and students of vocational institutions who were aged 21 and over (n=9,373). The results of these groups of respondents are not included in these statistics, but will be provided to the educational institutions separately from the responses of those under the age of 21 and completing a vocational upper secondary qualification. In addition, a national report on the results of TUVA students will be compiled.
