USING DATA FROM THE 1991 CENSUS

The 1991 census for England and Wales provides a substantial amount of data on demography, ethnicity, housing tenure, employment status, and other social factors for geographical areas ranging in size from enum eration districts upwards. Many in the health service and in the acade mic community are making use of the data in the 1991 census. However, users of census data need to be aware of the problems and limitations of these data, which include the format of the data, data modification and suppression, sampling error, and underenumeration. An important i nnovation of the 1991 census was that the census form included a quest ion on the postcode of respondents; this allowed the Office of Populat ion Censuses and Surveys to produce a postcode-enumeration district lo ok up table which overcomes many of the problems previously encountere d in trying to assign postcodes to enumeration districts. The new look up table also includes the grid reference of postcodes, and this will improve the geographical referencing of census data.