The table provides information about the proportion of Scottish adults, across four age groups, who engaged in various cultural activities during the previous 12 months. Overall, participation was strongly age-related: younger people were more inclined to attend performances and undertake crafts, whereas older groups showed higher involvement in cultural purchases.
Among those aged 16-24, performance-related activities were by far the most popular, with just over a third (35%) taking part, followed closely by crafts (30%). This contrasts sharply with the 45-74 age group, where the figures for these activities were only 17% and 11% respectively, the lowest across all cohorts.
Cultural purchases, on the other hand, displayed the opposite trend. Only 10% of the youngest group reported buying cultural items, compared to nearly one in five of the 45-74 group and over a fifth (22%) of those aged 75 and above, making it the most common cultural activity for the oldest category.
Computer-based activities were consistently the least popular in every group, attracting no more than 10% participation.
In summary, while the youngest Scots were more likely to actively engage in artistic and performance-based activities, older adults tended to participate passively through cultural purchases, highlighting a clear generational divide in cultural preferences.