This report summarises the presentations made and discussions held at the Second of the ESRC/JISC Workshops Planning for the 2001 Census. The report presents views of expert census users and summarises the recommendations to ESRC and JISC about what kinds of data from the 2001 Census should be requested from the UK Census Offices. The Workshops are supported by ESRC Award H507265031. The Census of Population is a very large exercise in data collection and processing. In 2001 some 25 million households in the United Kingdom will be contacted and asked to provide answers to a simple questionnaire of 25 to 30 questions. Such a task is likely to cost £125-150 millions to the Census Offices. Purchase of the data for academic research purposes is likely to cost ESRC and JISC some £1.5 to £2 millions directly and an equivalent amount indirectly on support over the following decade. It is therefore essential that the Population Census is very carefully planned beforehand and that the greatest possible value is extracted from the data collected. This edited collection of papers reports on presentations and discussions in the Fourth and Final Workshop in the series Workshops Planning for the 2001 Census - Determining Academic Community Needs and Strategy. The Fourth Workshop was entitled The 2001 Census: What do we really really want?. The aim was to gather together and summarise the principal recommendations of the First (Geography), Second (Interfaces) and Third (Special Data Sets) Workshops. The Workshop was twinned with another on The One Number Census: A Research Workshop, organised by Ludi Simpson. The One Number Census project is a major undertaking by the Census Offices to deal with anticipated underenumeration by estimating how many households and people are missed by the standard enumeration.
Part 1 of the report on Look Up Tables and Area Statistics contains chapters by David Martin on the output geography proposals for 2001, by Seraphim Alvanides and Stan Openshaw on further developments to the methods being used to define output areas and by Bob Barr on what the Look Up Tables associated with the 2001 Census should be like. These chapters contain key recommendations on census output geography. Part 2 of the report puts forward recommendations for the preparation of Microdata - Samples of Anonymised Records and Longitudinal Data from the 2001 Census. Angela Dale summarises the conclusions of the SARs Sub-Group of the Census Offices' Output Working Group. Brian Dodgeon and Heather Joshi document the essential features of the 2001 Census Link to the Longitudinal Study and make a final plea for some new questions. Part 3 of the report reviews proposals for the improvement of Interaction Statistics from the 2001 UK Census. Paul Boyle and Phil Rees make radical proposals for revamping the provision of Migration Statistics. Martin Frost concentrates on ways of improving the accuracy of the Workplace Statistics. The fourth part of the report gathers together recommendations about information technology interfaces to census data, arguing that the tools and infrastructure are now in place to make networked and standalone access to the different types of data so much easier for the new user. Donald Morse and Alistair Towers review what interfaces to boundary data should look like. James Harris argues for the development of interfaces based on general data standards and the Web to access census statistics. Oliver Duke-Williams outlines how complex migration statistics can be presented for access in a simpler and easier to use interface. Ian Turton identifies how current software developments in Java programming will make possible delivering easy to use interfaces to microdata very simple. Finally, Paul Williamson describes a design of a data dictionary for all census data sets. In Part 5, recommendations are summarised. Phil Rees reports on the views of 140 respondents drawn from the different corners of the academic community. The final pages try to draw out some general points from the very large number of recommendations made in the Fourth Workshop
