IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v45y2013i6p1403-1420.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Getting the Foundations Right: Spatial Building Blocks for Official Population Statistics

Author

Listed:
  • Samantha Cockings
  • Andrew Harfoot
  • David Martin
  • Duncan Hornby

Abstract

When publishing official population statistics, many national statistical organisations define small areas termed ‘building blocks’ which are then aggregated into larger ‘output zones’ for data release. While output zones are known to have enormous influence on spatial analysis, there has not been any systematic analysis of the effect of building blocks on characteristics of output zones. This paper evaluates current international practice in building block design, identifying key conceptual and practical issues. Using the example of six local authorities in England and Wales, it employs automated zone design to evaluate the influence of two sets of building blocks (street blocks and postcodes) on output zone characteristics. Household-level census data, accessed under secure conditions, are used to evaluate the impact on both newly designed and maintained output zones. Postcodes are shown to be more effective building blocks than street blocks, providing more uniform population and household sizes, greater precision for matching postcoded data to census data, and enabling more zones to be maintained. However, street blocks deliver more compact output zones and greater internal homogeneity of tenure and accommodation type. The scale effect of the modifiable areal unit problem and the specific geographical patterning of variables are both shown to be important factors when designing building blocks. These findings have directly informed policies and processes for the 2011 Census in England and Wales and provide useful conceptual and practical guidance for any national statistical organisation or analyst designing their own building blocks. The paper concludes that some aspects of international building block design practice could be more effectively harmonised but that such design should always be nationally specific to incorporate locally varying conceptual and practical issues. Further research should extend this analysis to other building block types, notably grid squares.

Suggested Citation

  • Samantha Cockings & Andrew Harfoot & David Martin & Duncan Hornby, 2013. "Getting the Foundations Right: Spatial Building Blocks for Official Population Statistics," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(6), pages 1403-1420, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:45:y:2013:i:6:p:1403-1420
    DOI: 10.1068/a45276
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a45276
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a45276?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. I. G. Shuttleworth & C. D. Lloyd & D. J. Martin, 2011. "Exploring the implications of changing census output geographies for the measurement of residential segregation: the example of Northern Ireland 1991–2001," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 174(1), pages 1-16, January.
    2. Cockings, Samantha & Martin, David, 2005. "Zone design for environment and health studies using pre-aggregated data," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(12), pages 2729-2742, June.
    3. D Martin & G Higgs, 1997. "Population Georeferencing in England and Wales: Basic Spatial Units Reconsidered," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 29(2), pages 333-347, February.
    4. Flowerdew, Robin & Manley, David J. & Sabel, Clive E., 2008. "Neighbourhood effects on health: Does it matter where you draw the boundaries?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(6), pages 1241-1255, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Philips, Ian & Anable, Jillian & Chatterton, Tim, 2022. "E-bikes and their capability to reduce car CO2 emissions," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 11-23.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chunzhu Wei & Pablo Cabrera-Barona & Thomas Blaschke, 2016. "Local Geographic Variation of Public Services Inequality: Does the Neighborhood Scale Matter?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-20, October.
    2. Samantha Cockings & Andrew Harfoot & David Martin & Duncan Hornby, 2011. "Maintaining Existing Zoning Systems Using Automated Zone-Design Techniques: Methods for Creating the 2011 Census Output Geographies for England and Wales," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 43(10), pages 2399-2418, October.
    3. Rainham, Daniel & McDowell, Ian & Krewski, Daniel & Sawada, Mike, 2010. "Conceptualizing the healthscape: Contributions of time geography, location technologies and spatial ecology to place and health research," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(5), pages 668-676, March.
    4. Siegel, Martin & Koller, Daniela & Vogt, Verena & Sundmacher, Leonie, 2016. "Developing a composite index of spatial accessibility across different health care sectors: A German example," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 205-212.
    5. Chunzhu Wei & Mark Padgham & Pablo Cabrera Barona & Thomas Blaschke, 2017. "Scale-Free Relationships between Social and Landscape Factors in Urban Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-19, January.
    6. Cindy M. Padilla & Wahida Kihal-Talantikit & Verónica M. Vieira & Séverine Deguen, 2016. "City-Specific Spatiotemporal Infant and Neonatal Mortality Clusters: Links with Socioeconomic and Air Pollution Spatial Patterns in France," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-21, June.
    7. Sabel, C.E. & Kihal, W. & Bard, D. & Weber, C., 2013. "Creation of synthetic homogeneous neighbourhoods using zone design algorithms to explore relationships between asthma and deprivation in Strasbourg, France," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 110-121.
    8. Wayne M. Tsuang & Maeve MacMurdo & Jacqueline Curtis, 2022. "Application of Place-Based Methods to Lung Transplant Medicine," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(12), pages 1-9, June.
    9. Seth E Spielman & Eun-Hye Yoo & Crystal Linkletter, 2013. "Neighborhood Contexts, Health, and Behavior: Understanding the Role of Scale and Residential Sorting," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 40(3), pages 489-506, June.
    10. Eleonore M Veldhuizen & Karien Stronks & Anton E Kunst, 2013. "Assessing Associations between Socio-Economic Environment and Self-Reported Health in Amsterdam Using Bespoke Environments," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(7), pages 1-10, July.
    11. Martin Gaechter & Peter Schwazer & Engelbert Theurl, 2012. "Stronger Sex but Earlier Death: A Multi-level Socioeconomic Analysis of Gender Differences in Mortality in Austria," DANUBE: Law and Economics Review, European Association Comenius - EACO, issue 1, pages 1-23, March.
    12. Hamidreza Rabiei‐Dastjerdi & Stephen A. Matthews, 2021. "Who gets what, where, and how much? Composite index of spatial inequality for small areas in Tehran," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(1), pages 191-205, February.
    13. Christoph Lambio & Tillman Schmitz & Richard Elson & Jeffrey Butler & Alexandra Roth & Silke Feller & Nicolai Savaskan & Tobia Lakes, 2023. "Exploring the Spatial Relative Risk of COVID-19 in Berlin-Neukölln," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(10), pages 1-22, May.
    14. Danny Wende, 2019. "Spatial risk adjustment between health insurances: using GWR in risk adjustment models to conserve incentives for service optimisation and reduce MAUP," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 20(7), pages 1079-1091, September.
    15. Lee, Min-Ah, 2009. "Neighborhood residential segregation and mental health: A multilevel analysis on Hispanic Americans in Chicago," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(11), pages 1975-1984, June.
    16. I. G. Shuttleworth & C. D. Lloyd & D. J. Martin, 2011. "Exploring the implications of changing census output geographies for the measurement of residential segregation: the example of Northern Ireland 1991–2001," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 174(1), pages 1-16, January.
    17. Severine Deguen & Nina Ahlers & Morgane Gilles & Arlette Danzon & Marion Carayol & Denis Zmirou-Navier & Wahida Kihal-Talantikite, 2018. "Using a Clustering Approach to Investigate Socio-Environmental Inequality in Preterm Birth—A Study Conducted at Fine Spatial Scale in Paris (France)," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-19, August.
    18. Anthony Buttaro & Ludovica Gambaro & Heather Joshi & Mary Clare Lennon, 2021. "Neighborhood and Child Development at Age Five: A UK–US Comparison," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(19), pages 1-16, October.
    19. Stephen Matthews & Daniel M. Parker, 2013. "Progress in Spatial Demography," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 28(10), pages 271-312.
    20. Séverine Deguen & Wahida Kihal & Maxime Jeanjean & Cindy Padilla & Denis Zmirou-Navier, 2016. "Neighborhood Deprivation and Risk of Congenital Heart Defects, Neural Tube Defects and Orofacial Clefts: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-25, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:45:y:2013:i:6:p:1403-1420. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.