Use of the Census Samples of Anonymised Records (SARs) and Survey Data in Combination to Obtain Estimates at Local Authority Level

Abstract

Synthetic estimation techniques are methods for obtaining improved local estimates by combining data that are available for local areas with other data that are not. The Samples of Anonymised Records (SARs) provide large representative samples of 278 small areas of Britain and are thus of great value to planners. This paper describes an approach which takes advantage of the fact that the SARs comprise individual records. Estimates of the proportions of local authority populations suffering serious illness were produced by use of data from the 4th National General Practitioner Morbidity survey and the 2% anonymised sample of individual 1991 Census records. These estimates were compared with external validation criterion, all-cause mortality. The correlation was high, providing some evidence of the validity of the approach. The method could be adapted to produce a variety of different estimates.

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