Barry Leventhal: What information do you need from the 2021 Census?
30 July 2015

No, it’s not a trick question! The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is currently consulting with users on information needs from the 2021 Census in England and Wales – click on consultation for more details. The six year lead time would be extraordinary for any conventional survey, but is required by the census due to the amount of planning and preparation involved. So, now is the time to be considering your needs for the 2020s – and respond by the closing date of 27^th August.

ONS has put together a clear and comprehensive consultation document, focussing on the topics to be collected in 2021 – question design will come later. ONS believes that most of the questions asked in 2011 worked well, and is not planning to increase the burden on respondents. So the initial view is that the majority of the 2011 topics will be captured again next time round.

The topics that may be of particular concern are those that ONS is thinking of dropping – subject to user needs and other considerations. The first such topics are supervisory status and year last worked. In 2011, these were used to improve the coding of occupation and support the derivation of NS-SeC. However, supervisory status was also used to derive Approximate Social Grade – which we hope will be produced again - and so it would be a shame to lose it.

Information on income has been on users’ wish lists in previous censuses and was included in initial tests prior to 2001 and 2011. However, the income question was dropped each time, primarily due to concerns about adverse impact on response rates. Therefore ONS starts with the intention of not collecting income in 2021, but plans to explore producing income statistics using administrative data. This is consistent with an overall aim to increase the use of administrative sources to enhance the 2021 Census statistics, but is not guaranteed to be achievable at this stage. So should ONS continue to research the collection of income data?

There seem to be other potentially useful topics that ONS is considering dropping – e.g. car ownership, type of central heating and industry. Therefore, users of these topics need to inform ONS about their requirements without delay. Similarly, further information is required to support collecting number of rooms, long-term health problem or disability, volunteering and unpaid work, sexual identity and address of place of study.

ONS is looking for strong and clearly defined user needs, supported by clear evidence of the benefit of collecting the data. There must be a requirement for information on small geographical areas and/or small population sub-groups, in order to justify including a topic in the census. And there must be no alternative survey or administrative source that can provide suitable information.

This consultation is also your opportunity to inform ONS of any new topics that you believe will be important in the 2020s, and could only be collected via the census. For example, will it be important to have information on people’s use of computers or digital devices, the Internet or social media? If so, this needs to be explained, including how the results will be used.

MRS and CGG will be submitting a joint response to the consultation, and we will publish it on the MRS website. Anyone can respond, however – by the closing date of 27^th August – see the consultation website for further details. At the very least, please let me know of any definite information needs - well before 27^thAugust – and I’ll try to include them in our response.

While there’s no guarantee that ONS will listen, it’s better to identify your need now, rather than discover in 2021 that one of your key survey controls has been dropped from the census.

Barry Leventhal is Chair of the Census and Geodemographics Group, and is the author of a forthcoming new book on Geodemographics for Marketers.

Email: barry@barryanalytics.com

Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the MRS Census and Geodemographic Group unless otherwise specifically stated.