Census and social science evidence inquiry video

Just watched the Science and Technology Committee oral evidence session in its inquiry into ‘The Census and social science’. The first part of the video is about engineering – so you need to skip to 10.18 for the Census part. This shows three 3 peoples’ views regarding the need (or lack of) the census.  Professor Les Mayhew believes that we are already have alternatives that are much better,  more timely and accurate to the census. However, the other two considered the census to be a valuable source, with Professor David Blane stating that both Finland and Italy who have linked registers are green with envy with the UKs census, and notes that we need to rid ourselves of the idea that you will ever get yourself a perfect dataset. Professor Heather Joshi , highlights that the census can be used as a Benchmark of data that isn’t readily available from administrative resources.

A fascinating debate that covers some of the issues:

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=9634

Just noticed that there is a further session, which takes place on 14 December2011:

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/science-and-technology-committee/news/111208-census-ev-session/

MPs announce evidence session on the Census and social science

The Science and Technology Committee will hold the following oral evidence session in its inquiry into ‘The Census and social science’ on 7 December 2011.

The inquiry looked at:

1. How do social scientists use Census data?
2. What impact will the ending of the Census have on social science research?
3. What alternatives to the Census would provide population and socio-demographic data of equivalent or higher quality?
4. What other existing sources of population and socio-demographic data could be improved upon?

For more infromation see:

• MPs announce evidence session on the Census and social science

Coming soon Population 24/7

The CDU will shortly be hosting a new interface to some great work by the GeoData Institute at the University of Southampton.

Population 24/7 allows you to look at populations during different times throughout the day and year. So, you could see how school time or University term time affects the distribution of a given population.

The interface was built by Homme Zwaagstra on outputs created by the work of Professor David Martin, Samantha Cockings and Samuel Leung.

More details on the project can be found at http://www.southampton.ac.uk/geography/research/projects/space_time.page

At the moment we are turning the interface into a service based at the CDU by adding authentication, usage logging and automated monitoring software.

Population 24/7 screenshot

Population 25/7 is built using a Node.js webserver that utilises Python, Zip and GDAL to create GIS output files of the data as GeoTIFF, XYZ Ascii or Arcinfo Ascii Grid format.

Beyond 2011 Consultation

The Office for National Statistics has launched the Beyond 2011 programme to investigate and assess alternative options for producing the population and socio-demographic data required by users in England and Wales.

The consultation will be open for 14 weeks from 17 October 2011 to 20 January 2012.

The consultation document and online questionnaire are available onthe Office for National Statistics website.

The Office for National Statistics are running a series of workshops during November to support this consultation. Workshops are planned for the following dates and locations:

• 03 November 2011 – Leeds
• 08 November 2011 – Cardiff
• 14 November 2011 – London – FULLY BOOKED
• 25 November 2011 – London (extra event added)

If you wish to attend one of these workshops please email  beyond2011@ons.gov.uk stating the date and location you would like to  attend and the organisation, if any, you will be representing.

More details on the Office for National Statistics Beyond 2011 programme website

Census Aggregate SDMX-RDF Linked Data

The 2001 Census Aggregate data is a complex major UK data set. In addition to providing a straightforward data extract in CSV (comma separated values) format, the CAIRD II project aimed to provide enhanced metadata to academics and researchers.

In line with the open data agenda, we want to make data more accessible and useful to app and website developers. Use of an open format rather than a proprietary format allows developers to more easily use data. Third party software and code libraries, many of which are free, greatly speeds up and simplifies the work to retrieve and incorporate the data.

The SDMX organisation provide a number of open formats for describing statistical data which are suitable. Some of this work has been adapted for use as RDF Linked Data by the publishing statistical data Google group and some of which is described by Jeni Tennison in her blog. The SDMX-RDF work expands the usefulness of SDMX data by describing the concepts of SDMX using the linked data framework – RDF. SDMX-RDF provides a ready to use framework that existing SDMX data can be readily connected into.

RDF provides the capability to link our data to other related information on the linked data web and also allows other providers to link to our information.

Geography information for the UK census can pose unexpected challenges. There are several hundred thousand areas, which when expressed as RDF data expands to one file of 2.8 Million lines of text (or 235,000 files of 16 lines of text).

We are expecting to gain access to the 2011 census data in the second half of 2012. To maximise the benefit and value from the latest census we would like to be able to compare the data with 2001 and even 1991 and 1981 censuses. The questions, geographic areas and the predefined options change from census to census and between England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Metadata and comparability information are often requested and we expect this to be very useful to researchers. Use of the RDF Linked Data framework will provide us with a direct way to indicate comparability within and across censuses.

CDU team.

Riots and deprivation mapped

An interesting article in the Guardians datablog:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/aug/16/riots-poverty-map-suspects

They looked at a claim by David Cameron that “These riots were not about poverty”. They mapped where accused “rioters” lived and looked at IMD scores. They found that the majority of areas where suspects live are deprived, and that 41% of suspects live in the 10% most deprived places in England. It’s always interesting to see data mapped.

Use InFuse to experience the dawn of a new era of access to the UK Census!

InFuse is a revolutionary new interface to UK Census aggregate datasets that combines recent innovations in dissemination technologies to make it easier for users to:

• Find data of relevance to them by providing simple ways of searching across entire datasets
• Understand data by providing information about its meaning (metadata) within the InFuse interface, and bundled with data in downloads

Please give InFuse a go at http://infuse.mimas.ac.uk.

Access to InFuse is currently limited to members of UK Higher and Further Education Institutions, and is controlled by UK Access Management Federation (Shibboleth) authentication.

InFuse will continue to develop to provide new and improved features, as well as access to an increasing range of datasets. The initial release provides access to aggregate statistics for England and Wales from the UK 2001 Census.  Aggregate statistics for Scotland and Northern Ireland will be added soon, together with digital boundary data in GIS formats.  Aggregate statistics and boundaries from the UK 1991 Census are being processed for release later in 2011.  Aggregate statistics from the 2011 Census are expected to be available for release from mid-2012 onwards.

The help pages and FAQs accessible from the interface provide support for using InFuse and some initial answers to obvious questions.  Please contact us using the links on the interface if you have any comments or further questions, which will play an important part in the continuing development of InFuse.

InFuse is developed and provided as a service by the Census Dissemination Unit (CDU), one of the units of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Census Programme, based within Mimas at The University of Manchester.  InFuse will eventually supersede the CDU’s current Casweb interface, but the two services will continue to run in parallel for some time.

New case study using Mosaic data

It is always interesting to find out what people do with the data that we provide. We’ve just published a case study from the North West Public Health Observatory. They looked at the relationship between Body Mass Index (BMI) and deprivation. This study used Mosaic classifications data that can be downloaded from the CDU: http://cdu.mimas.ac.uk/experian/
Take a look at the case study at: http://cdu.mimas.ac.uk/case-studies/harrison/

2011 Census consultation

The Office of National Statistics have opened a round of consultation on the main 2011 census statistical outputs for England and Wales, they are also running roadshows at various locations:

• Leeds – 14th February
• Chester – 15th February
• Birmingham 16th February
• London – 17th February
• London – 22nd February
• Newport – 25th February

The consultation documents show a list of proposed geographies and table layouts. Take a look to see if they meet your needs.

A Tale of Two Censuses

An interesting article in the BBC website comparing the 1911 and the 2011 censuses:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12324970

It discusses how the census form has grown in detail. How the suffragettes boycotted the census, which put the more recent Jedi census stunt into perspective.