There are two days left to make comments to the Health Statistics Users Group on strategic priorities for health and social care statistics and information. All user comments received by the end of January 2011 will feed in to the annual statement of strategic priorities for official statistics on health and social care.

It is particularly helpful if you can include some comments on the information areas that have been identified, using the framework provided, as well as indicating your priorities.  Although there is an opportunity to comment on all the information areas, please note that you are free to comment on just one or two of those information areas, if those are the only ones of particular concern to you.

Alternatively, if you just wish to endorse, query, or add some further detail, to the comments that were made at the workshop, then this is also helpful.

Accessing the workshop outputs and making comments. You can see the output from the workshop on the HSUG web site by following the link to emerging strategic priorities on health and social care statistics. You can also go directly to the report of the workshop on the RSS website or go directly to the user survey.

The last fieldwork for the Citizenship Survey will be March 31st 2011. The Citizenship Survey has been used since 2001 to understand the attitudes and diversity of neighbourhoods. It has been a face to face household survey carried out by the Department for Communities and Local Government covering a representative core sample of almost 10,000 adults in England and Wales each year, plus a minority ethnic boost sample of 5,000 and a Muslim boost sample of 1,200.

The press release announcing the closure states that the survey is  ‘complex and expensive’ and refers to the ‘current drive to deliver cost savings across government and to reduce the fiscal deficit’. A report of the consultation during November 2010 is promised. There is no further attempt to justify cancelling a survey which has been used to inform a wide range of social policies, and without which there will be no regular monitoring of attitudes and behaviour in local neighbourhoods.

The December 2010 (Vol 7, no. 4) of Significance Magazine (a joint publication of the American Statistical Association and the Royal Statistical Society) has an interview with Bob Groves by Julian Champkin on the US Census on page 174-175.

(Supplied by David Swanson)

The December 2010 (Vol 7, no. 4) of Significance Magazine (a joint publication of the American Statistical Association and the Royal Statistical Society) has a piece by Jack Miles on the reduced 2011 census of the UK (as well as comments about reduced statistics in the UK) on pp. 73-74.

(Supplied by David Swanson)

The December 2010 (Vol 7, no. 4) of Significance Magazine (a joint publication of the American Statistical Association and the Royal Statistical Society) has a piece by Jon Baskerville on the reduced 2011 census of Canada (as well as comments about reduced statistics in the UK) on page 172.

The piece ends with the observation, “…if Canada finds a compulsory census incompatible with the freedom of its citizens, will the world have to follow??”

(Supplied by David Swanson)

Ellen Goddard, professor of rural economy, expects that data from the now voluntary Census Long Form will be so unreliable that researchers will need more money to gain access to private databases, according to a CTV News Report. The extra money for purchasing data, or to undertake fresh research, may not be available from strained government research funding for universities. As a result, less useful research will be undertaken, claims the report.

To meet $7m cuts, Statistics Canada is ending the Industrial Pollutant Release Survey, and the Quarterly Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Survey, both pilot projects; the National Population Health Survey; the Survey of the Suppliers of Business Financing; and the Survey on Financing of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Globe and Mail report.

The cuts fuel the widespread dismay for the ending of the compulsory census ‘long form’ which allows high quality social and employment analysis of Canadian provinces and neighbourhoods. See posts on October 26th and August 11th, and new press coverage of EU concern.

The Economic and Social Data Service has appealed for evidence that might help to save the General Lifestyle Survey (GLF), using the following information (taken from an email generally circulated to all GLF users):

The future of the GLF (previously known as the General Household Survey) is under threat and we need your help.

 The GLF may cease to continue in 2012. THE EU_SILC questions currently on the GLF may be moving to the Family Resources Survey in 2012 which would leave the GLF with only a few sections (health questions on adults’ and childrens’ health conditions and use of health services; smoking and drinking; and family information questions, including marriage, cohabitation and fertility histories). Therefore ONS are considering moving these sections onto the Opinions survey (aka Omnibus Survey) – however the Opinions survey has a different design than the GLF; the survey is cross-sectional and currently selects one adult at random.  In contrast, the GLF is longitudinal and interviews all adults in the household. The achieved sample size of adults that provide a complete response is similar for both surveys.

We need your help – users of the health, smoking and drinking, and family information data, and the GLF in general asked to provide ESDS with information on:

–         what you use the GLF for and why it is important for your work

–          the impact of moving these topics to the Opinions survey and also the impact of not running these questions at all. If the impact is likely to be high then please give details.

 Any other comments that will help argue the case to keep the GLF are very welcome.to Vanessa.Higgins@manchester.ac.uk by December 8^th.