1991 SARs have attracted a wide range of users from a wide range of disciplines and sectors. They have been predominantly used by academics for research purposes, though they have also been used in the policy field and for teaching.
Research using the SARs has covered a wide range of areas in a number of different disciplines including sociology, human geography, demography, economics and social policy. Many users of the 2% Individual SAR have exploited the large sample size and relatively detailed geography to look at social and demographic differences between sub-populations (especially ethnic groups) and between geographical areas. Users of the 1% Household file have exploited the hierarchical nature of the data to look, in particular, at various aspects of household and family structure and inter-relationships within households. Users of both data sets have undertaken various types of multivariate analysis, taking advantage of the large amount of individual level information on the SARs in comparison to other census outputs. The unique characteristics of the SAR data sets have opened up whole new areas of research which would not have been possible with conventional Census or survey data.
The rest of this unit comprises a topic based tour of research applications using SAR data. Where appropriate links are made to other learning and teaching units based on the SARs.
Also, as a snap shot of all people resident in the UK on census night, the census will include non-uk citizens, refugees, asylum seekers and, in theory, the homeless.