2011 UK Census

We gave a brief introductory overview of these results in the first results blog posting Profiling the respondents. Now, let's take a look at how users say that they access data in more detail.

Question How/where did you access these 2001 Census products? (Tick all that apply)

We'll look at the question results broken down by whether users made use of data from:

• a combination of the three Census offices
• just England and / or Wales
• just Scotland
• just Northern Ireland

A number of the options that were listed are online services which are all linked below:

Neighbourhood Statistics (NeSS)
NOMIS
National Statistics (NS) website
CASWEB
Web Interface to Census Interaction Data (WICID)
Scottish Census Results Online (SCROL)
Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics
GROS Website
Northern Ireland Neighbourhood Information Service (NINIS)
Northern Ireland Census Access (NICA)
NISRA website

Different users have tried and used some, none, or all of these services. For users who have used more than one service, we are interested in gathering your views of the user experience of similar or complimentary services.

If we look at results for users who use data from only one of the three Census offices, and compare the percentage use of a 'broadly' comparable service that provides that data, such as Neighbourhood statistics, we see that the proportion of use is similar.

This could be because these were the only means to get certain data in a certain format for each country, or that the services offered the best common features or functionality of those that serve this data.

We are interested in gathering user views of how such similar services compare and contrast:

• which services have the best features or functionality
• which services did you find the easiest or most useful to use
• which services have room for improvement
• what are the examples of the best features or services that you would like to see in the optimum online web service for providing 2011 Census data.

Let us have your views either here or in the forum.

If you have not used any of the services before, then we recommend you try some and see what you think - they may help to identify and express features and options that you want to see in a 2011 Census web system.

As the results above show, many users have taken advantage of the broad range of data access routes available, both for accessing a single county's data, and especially for the expanded choice of options for the 179 users who use data from multiple countries.

So, do you think the broad array of options is overall beneficial. Or, maybe you find the decentralization inconvenient, with the array of options too confusing, and the amount of time needed to learn how to use and exploit all of the different features too great?

Let us know what you think.

In the next blog post we will take a look at the results from the questionnaire which asked for user views about a single access route for each Census office, and a single point of access for the UK as a whole.

See other posts similar to this one: