Understanding Wales at the neighbourhood level (National Survey for Wales): April 2013 to March 2014

Main points

The project contains five interlinked work strands.

1. Produce small area estimates of the percentage of adults who use the internet, have access to the internet at home, are in self-reported poor health, or are Welsh speakers. These estimates are produced from the National Survey for Wales 2013-14 using only individual-level characteristics and produced at the Middle Layer and Lower Layer Super Output Area levels.
2. See whether taking local area characteristics (such as being in the same region or rural/urban classification) into account improves the estimates.
3. Compare some of the estimates (Welsh speaking and poor health) with results on the same topics from the 2011 Census. This is an unusually robust way of validating for these kinds of small area estimates.
4. Adjust the estimates to sum to known values at higher spatial scales (for example, published local authority results) and see whether this improves the estimates at small area level.
5. Produce small area estimates of four healthy lifestyle indicators (smoking, obesity, frequent physical activity, and alcohol consumption beyond recommended guidelines) at Upper Super Output Area from the Welsh Health Survey 2008 to 2013, and compare the estimates with the direct survey figures. Examine the potential for producing robust small area estimates from smaller or less frequent base surveys.