Representative
About
The ONS is keen to establish a long term, small area geography policy which will be used for Census 2011 and Neighbourhood Statistics. The aim is to support the production of coherent and useful data that can be used with confidence by all organisations.
The consultation paper is available online. This describes all policy proposals, the background to them, and a number of attendant issues. Please take the time to get involved by responding to the survey and joining in the debate around the blog posts.
Latest Posts
- The consultation has now closed .........
- Consultation period ends this Friday (16th Feb)
- Do you use Output Areas?
- Don't forget the surveys
- How important are postcodes?
- Should boundaries be tied to the real world?
- Festive messages
- Health data? Ethnicity data? Do we need bigger areas?
- Consultation document
- OAs and SOAs - Stick or Twist?
Geography
Posted by Census Data User (not verified) on 01/12/2006 - 14:27
As with all geographies whoever conceives it thinks it works. Rarely does it end up going ahead without interventions that go against the ethos of the original idea thus compromising the results from the beginning.
There are two points I'd like to make are.
1. Measuring change over time is an admirable aim, but what are you trying to measure?
• the change in land usage or
The main components here are land type, tenure and building types.
• the change in the composition in people.
Land doesn't move but people do. If you are measuring the change of people over time and not using linked records you are likely to be measuring different people using different snapshots in time.
Areas of deprivation can be measured and re-measured, most research points to a churning effect in undesirable areas with one group of residents being replaced by another group. An increase in affluence allows movement from these undesirable areas, to better areas.
As areas around water, transport infrastructure and inner cities increases in desirability the people who are in these areas change.
Mixed tenure developments suffer from similar issues with the less desirable housing usually being provided as affordable housing.
2. How much emphasis should be put on historical boundaries?
Are we more concerned in the here and now or historical aspect?
Should we not invest in algorithms to convert old data to new boundaries, rather than locking ourselves into something that might have been good when conceived but doesn't fit now.
I think that there would be less resistance in identify people from historical data that current.