2011 UK Census

Anyone can view the site publicly, so we'll look at some site vistor statistics etc.

In order to edit content, add comments, post in the forum, and receive email updates, you first need to register, so we'll also look at the number of people who have registered, and what user sector they represent.

Site vistors
The site launched on 18th December 2008, and over the Xmas and New Year periods, through mid February, the website homepage has been viewed 2158 times in this first 10 weeks.

A breakdown showing some summary site usage statistics is shown in Table 1, and Chart 1 shows the number of pageviews of the site by day.

Table 1: Week 10 website statistics summary

Chart 1: Website pageviews by day (since site launch)

View full size chart

Excluding the website homepage, the most popular pages - those pages most viewed - are the blog home, the wiki index page and the forum.

The most popular page in the wiki section is the web dissemination sub section.

So far, excluding personnel from the three Census offices, we have 54 registered users who represent either individuals or larger user groups and communities. These users represent a spread across the user community as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Registered users by user group

The online approach
Hopefully most users will appreciate and take advantage of the additional opportunities offered by extending the approach to user consultation to include online activities. Our evolving approach, starting with the online questionnaire and continuing with this website, includes exploring new and emerging routes to supplement traditional methods and contribute to the overall 2011 Census output consultation program.

For the first seven weeks we ran a simple click poll on the homepage which gave users the chance to indicate their support for the inclusion of online consultation elements. The results indicated that 79 per cent of those that visited and voted preferred an online approach, and only 13 per cent preferred a traditional 'all paper' approach. This is an encouraging response to the addition of an online element in our approach to consultation, tempered perhaps by the possibility that users responding to a poll on a website may be automatically predisposed to favour an online approach in general.

Blog activity
In the first 10 weeks we have added 22 blog posts. Five of these have introduced slices from the detailed results of the online questionnaire, and there are many more of these to come in the weeks ahead. Others have covered some specific areas of interest which raise certain issues or ask for further feedback from users.

Table 3 summarizes the blog posts and the level user interaction with them.

Table 3: Week 10 blog post summary

So far there have been some user comments and feedback to the blog posts, but not as many as we would like to see. There may be a number of reasons that the content has not raised enough issues to stimulate user interaction, such as

• we have yet to address specific engaging issues or areas of user interest
• for the topics and questionnaire results posted, we have not provided sufficient commentary, analysis or Census office views
• for all topics covered we have not presented the material in the best manner
• users feel inimidated about adding comments in a publicly viewable arena

There may also be other reasons, so please let us know what we can do to improve the content and presentation in ways which might encourage more user involvement. We are always happy to have suggestions for topics for future blog posts.

We are also considering inviting experienced users to 'guest blog' on a topic of choice, so if you would like to be involved in this, or just suggest a topic, then please let us know.

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