UK Pharmacy Laxative Purchases for Seasonal Weight Management Analysis, 2013-2014

UK loyalty card data from a major pharmacy retailer spanning December 2013 to December 2014. The dataset contains regression results analyzing purchasing patterns for 748,375 buyers to explore seasonal links between laxative use and weight management behaviors. It was authored by Romana Burgess and released on figshare under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Analyze seasonal purchasing trends for laxatives based on the described January and summer peaks.
• Compare purchasing patterns between stimulant and non-stimulant laxatives based on the described misuse potential.
• Validate findings by correlating laxative purchase data with weight management product purchases mentioned in the description.
• Use negative control product categories (painkillers, cold and flu, hay fever, shampoo) to contextualize results as described.

Strengths

• Data is derived from a large-scale real-world source of 748,375 buyers.
• Covers a specific 13-month time range from December 2013 to December 2014.
• Includes comparative analysis with weight management products and negative controls as described.
• Analysis is based on pre-registered hypotheses, suggesting a structured research approach.

Limitations

• Dataset is very small at 5.5 KB, indicating it contains summary results rather than raw transaction data.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for certain analyses.

Provenance

Source

Real-world loyalty card data from a major UK pharmacy retailer.

Collection Method

Analysis of self-medication purchasing patterns using regression models.

Time Range

December 2013 to December 2014

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-18 17:35:54; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom