Professor David Martin, Deputy Director of the UK Data Service, as part of our ongoing census series, discusses how the UK censuses have adapted to change over the past sixty years and some of the challenges we face in 2021/22.
All change
The process of constructing a census is one of adapting to continuous change, from deciding which questions are going to be asked to what technology will be used to collect, produce, and disseminate the data.
There’s a continuously changing set usa rcs data of tools and no modern census has been exactly the same as the one that went before: each has represented some significant technological advance.
Alongside the technological advances have been differences in societal attitudes and expectations of what should be asked in a census.
To take one example, in 1971 respondents were asked whether they had an inside toilet, as a lack of one was a signifier of household deprivation. In the 2021/22 censuses, this question would have been meaningless.
However, census questions can still help researchers understand the underlying issue of deprivation.
In the most recent censuses, questions about whether people have central heating and about levels of overcrowding of their housing address a similar concept, while recognising that what is perceived as deprivation has changed over time.
Developing census questions is thus a complex process, balancing continuity with previous censuses, against developing questions which measure current realities.